TDEE Calculator

TDEE is an acronym used to represent Total Daily Energy Expenditure and it refers to the number of calories you burn in a day.  TDEE is made up of your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR (the calories you burn at rest) added to calories you burn doing an activity.

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TDEE is generally recognized to be the calories it takes to maintain your current body weight and is the starting point that you should use when designing a diet.  If you want to lose weight, you should take calories away from the TDEE, and if you want to gain weight, you would add calories to the TDEE.

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Calculating Your TDEE

I’ve provided a quick and easy calculator to work out your TDEE – daily maintenance calories.  You just need to fill in some data and the calculator will do the rest.  Data such as age, height, gender, and age are easily entered.  You may have some questions about Daily Activity Level.  You can use the chart below to help:

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No exercise – a person who is very sedentary. For example, you may have a desk job and get little to no exercise per day.

Light exercise - Light exercise or performing a sport 1-3 times per week.

Moderate exercise - Moderate exercise or performing a sport 3-5 times per week.

Heavy exercise - Hard exercise or performing a sport 6-7 times per week.

Extreme exercise - Intense daily exercise and/or difficult physical labour.

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I cover the entire spectrum of activity levels – from a person who does no physical activity every day such as a desk worker who does no exercise all the way to a person who would be considered doing extreme exercise such as a person who works out 6-7 days a week and has a very physically demanding job (a roofer for example).

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Things To Know:

When determining your TDEE with this calculator, you should realize that it is a number based on “paperwork calculations”.  This means that it may look good on paper but may not be true in real life.  As a coach, I use TDEE as an estimate and run with it for a week.  Since this number represents maintenance calories, the client should maintain their weight for the week.  If the client drops weight on these maintenance calories, then I know that they were set too low, and the actual maintenance calories should be higher. 

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A Pretty Good Calculator

At best, the TDEE provides a (a pretty good) caloric starting point from which you can begin with and adjust accordingly.  Once your scale weight levels out (no reduction or gains), you will have your true TDEE and can effectively start your muscle gain or fat loss diet.

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Of course, you will need to track your food and calories consumed daily for this method to work, but it is a tried and true strategy that has proven the test of time!