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Maintenance Calorie Calculator (TDEE)
TDEE, total daily energy expenditure, is the calories you burn in a day; at a steady weight it is your maintenance calories. This calculator estimates it from your age, sex, height, weight and activity level with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, and shows a range, because the activity level you pick is a guess.
Worked out in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent or stored.
Enter your details on the left. The equation’s answer for people like you appears here, as a range.
A population estimate
– kcal a day
This is not your number. It is the number for people with your age, sex, height and weight.
One level on a menu you pick by feel moves the answer by hundreds of kcal a day. That is why the range spans the levels either side of yours.
Your real number is measurable. Four weeks of morning weigh-ins and a food log measure it, with a range.
Measure it from your logWant to keep your weigh-ins? Create a free account.
How this works
- Resting rate. The Mifflin-St Jeor equation: 10 × weight in kg + 6.25 × height in cm − 5 × age, plus 5 for men and minus 161 for women. It was fitted on 498 healthy adults, 247 women and 251 men aged 19 to 78, whose resting energy was measured by indirect calorimetry (Mifflin et al., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990).
- Activity. The resting rate is multiplied by the conventional activity multipliers most calculators use: 1.2, 1.375, 1.55, 1.725 and 1.9. They are conventions with no single source.
- The range. The page shows the answer at the activity levels either side of yours (at the first or last level, the one level beside it), rounded to 10 kcal, because choosing the level is a judgement and the range shows what that judgement is worth.
- How good the equation is. A 2005 systematic review found Mifflin-St Jeor the most reliable of the four equations most used in practice, with noteworthy errors for individuals (Frankenfield et al., J Am Diet Assoc, 2005).
The method behind measuring it, with what spoils the measurement: How To Find Your Maintenance Calories From Your Own Log
Questions
What is TDEE?
Total daily energy expenditure: everything you burn in a day. At a steady weight it equals your maintenance calories, which is why the two names are used for the same number. A calculator estimates it; your own log measures it.
Is 2,000 calories a day maintenance?
Not for any particular person. 2,000 kcal is a reference figure for nutrition labels, not a measurement. For a made-up 38-year-old man, 170 cm and 78 kg, the equation gives about 2,280 kcal a day if lightly active, and 1,990 to 2,570 across the neighbouring activity levels.
How accurate is a maintenance calorie calculator?
As a starting point, reasonably. A 2005 systematic review found Mifflin-St Jeor, the equation used here, the most reliable of the four common equations, with noteworthy errors for individuals. The activity level adds more: one level moves the answer by hundreds of kcal a day.
How do I find my real maintenance calories?
Measure them. Log what you eat and weigh yourself every morning for about four weeks, then read the weight trend. The from-your-log calculator does that arithmetic in your browser, with a range.
Why doesn’t this page give me a calorie target or deficit?
Because it is a method page, not medical advice. A target depends on your health, history and goals, which a calculator cannot know. The honest next step is four weeks of logging, which tells you what you actually burn.
Is this calculator for Malaysia?
Yes. It works in kg and cm, and the log method it leads to works on any food, including mamak and economy rice, which is where barcode apps struggle. See six ways to track calories compared.
Built by Yap Pat Yih, founder of Habitus Mind.