Daily Calorie Calculator

Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is the number of calories your body burns in a day. Eat at that level and your weight stays the same. Eat below it and you lose weight; above it and you gain. This calculator uses the Mifflin-St Jeor formula, widely considered the most accurate BMR equation for most people.

• Weight loss planning: Set a calorie target 500 below TDEE for about 0.5 kg of weight loss per week.
• Muscle building: Add 300–500 calories above TDEE to support muscle growth while minimizing fat gain.
• Nutrition tracking: Use TDEE as a baseline before setting up a meal plan or tracking macros.
• Athletic performance: Athletes with high training loads often underestimate calorie needs. This calculator includes high activity factors.

1. 1Enter your weight in kilograms, height in centimeters, and age in years.
2. 2Select your gender. The Mifflin-St Jeor formula uses a different constant for men and women.
3. 3Choose your activity level from sedentary (desk job, no exercise) to extra active (hard daily exercise plus physical job).
4. 4The calculator first computes your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) using Mifflin-St Jeor.
5. 5BMR is multiplied by your activity factor to get TDEE: your actual daily calorie need.
6. 6It also shows targets for weight loss (−500 cal/day) and weight gain (+500 cal/day).

• Overestimating activity level: Most people select "moderately active" when they are closer to sedentary outside the gym. One hour of exercise in a mostly seated day is still sedentary. When in doubt, choose the lower option.
• Eating at BMR instead of TDEE: BMR is your resting calories only. Eating at BMR while active creates a dangerously large deficit. Use TDEE (the result here) as your baseline, then subtract 300-500 calories for weight loss.
• Ignoring calorie quality for calorie tracking purposes: 500 calories of vegetables and 500 calories of refined carbohydrates have the same calorie count but very different satiety and nutrient profiles. Calorie tracking is a starting point, not the whole picture.
• Not recalculating as weight changes: As you lose weight, your TDEE drops. People often plateau not because their body stopped responding but because their maintenance target shifted. Recalculate for every 5 kg of change.

• Start at maintenance before cutting: If you have never tracked calories, spend 2-4 weeks eating at your TDEE. This calibrates your sense of portions before you introduce a deficit. Jumping straight to a deficit makes it hard to know if the calculation is right.
• Use a 300-500 calorie deficit for sustainable loss: A 500 calorie/day deficit creates roughly 0.5 kg of loss per week. Larger deficits lose muscle alongside fat and are hard to sustain. Slower is usually more durable.
• Track for two weeks before drawing conclusions: Daily calorie needs vary with sleep, stress, and hormonal cycles. Two weeks of data gives a more reliable baseline than a single week. Average the actual intake and compare to the calculated TDEE.
• Add protein as a floor before other macros: Protein target (in grams) is typically 1.6-2.2 g per kg of body weight for active people. Set that floor first, then distribute remaining calories between carbs and fats to preference.