TDEE: kcal/day
Your TDEE is the full number of calories you burn in 24 hours, combining rest, movement, and digestion. It is the anchor number for any fat loss or muscle gain plan. Coaches, dietitians, and macro tracking apps all build intake targets on top of it. Sedentary people often overestimate true burn by several hundred calories.
Eat below TDEE to lose weight and slightly above it to gain. Getting it wrong by even 200 calories per day can stall a cut for weeks. Maintenance simply means matching it.
The method is simple: TDEE equals BMR multiplied by an activity factor. The factor runs from 1.2 for sedentary desk workers up to 1.9 for very active people training hard twice a day. Moderately active exercisers who train three to five days weekly sit near 1.55.
Example: the 30 year old, 70 kg, 175 cm man from earlier has a BMR near 1648 calories. Multiplying 1648 by 1.55 gives about 2554 calories to maintain his weight. Eating 500 under that target would trim roughly half a kilo per week.
Choose Imperial or Metric, then fill in Age, Gender, Height, Weight, and the Activity Level dropdown, and press Calculate TDEE. The Imperial option accepts pounds and feet while Metric expects kilograms and centimeters. Be honest with the Activity Level selection, since most people overestimate how much they move.
Pick the factor matching your average week, not your best week, because one hard workout cannot cancel five desk days. If your weight holds steady for two weeks while you track honestly, the estimate is right; if not, adjust it by 100 to 200 calories and retest.
Use 1.2 for a desk job with little exercise, 1.375 for light workouts one to three days weekly, 1.55 for moderate training, and 1.725 or higher for daily hard sessions.
Yes. Standard activity multipliers assume a mixed diet absorbs the roughly 10 percent digestion cost, so you should not subtract TEF from the result a second time.
A daily deficit of 500 calories yields roughly 0.5 kg of loss per week. Keep the deficit under 25 percent of TDEE to protect muscle and energy levels.
Underreporting intake is the usual culprit, since people underestimate calories by up to 30 percent. Also recalculate after losing weight, because a lighter body burns less.
Not necessarily. Deduct only 100 to 200 calories on an off day, or eat the same amount daily and let the weekly average handle the math.