Find your Total Daily Energy Expenditure, including your activity.
Your BMR is multiplied by a factor reflecting how active you are day to day.
TDEE: BMR × activity multiplier
Total daily energy expenditure is the number of kilocalories your body uses in a full day, including rest, movement, exercise and digesting food. This calculator estimates it by multiplying your BMR by an activity factor, from 1.2 for sedentary to 1.9 for very active.
TDEE is the calorie figure most nutrition advice refers to as 'maintenance'. Eat about this much and weight tends to stay steady; eat less and it tends to fall; eat more and it tends to rise. People use it to set targets for weight loss or muscle gain, athletes to fuel training, and dietitians to plan meals. Because it builds on BMR, you first need your BMR, which you can get from the BMR calculator.
1. Calculate your BMR with Mifflin-St Jeor or another accepted formula.
2. Choose the activity level that matches a typical week, not your best week.
3. Find the multiplier: sedentary 1.2, light 1.375, moderate 1.55, active 1.725, very active 1.9.
4. TDEE = BMR × Multiplier.
5. For weight loss, subtract a moderate deficit from TDEE; for gain, add a modest surplus.
6. Recheck after two to four weeks by comparing your actual weight trend with what TDEE predicted.
Daily energy has three broad parts. Resting metabolism, roughly the BMR, is usually the largest share, around 60% to 70% for most people. The thermic effect of food, the energy used to digest and process meals, is about 10%. The rest is activity: planned exercise plus everyday movement such as walking, climbing stairs, cooking and fidgeting. The activity multiplier bundles food and activity into one factor applied to BMR.
The factors 1.2, 1.375, 1.55, 1.725 and 1.9 are widely used conventions derived from studies of energy expenditure at different activity levels. Each represents the ratio of total energy to resting energy for a typical person in that group. A sedentary office worker uses about 20% more than BMR in a day; a labourer who also trains can use nearly double. Because they are group averages, the right multiplier for you may lie between two categories.
People differ widely in non-exercise activity, the calories spent on standing, walking and moving around outside workouts. Two office workers with the same BMR can differ by several hundred calories a day on this alone. TDEE also adapts: after sustained weight loss, energy use tends to fall a little more than weight alone would predict. The most reliable TDEE is the intake at which your weight stays stable over several weeks.
Tanvir's BMR works out to 1,450 kcal a day and he goes to the gym or plays badminton about four days a week.
Answer: TDEE 2,248 kcal/day
Choosing a higher activity level than your usual week justifies, which inflates TDEE.
Counting a physically active job as exercise and then adding gym sessions on top again.
Adding exercise calories from a tracker to a TDEE that already includes activity.
Treating TDEE as exact and not adjusting after watching your real weight trend.
Setting maintenance calories for a stable weight.
Planning a calorie deficit for weight loss or a surplus for muscle gain.
Adjusting food intake when training volume changes.
Comparing energy needs across people with different lifestyles.
How do I choose my activity level honestly?
Most people think they are more active than they really are. 'Moderate' means planned exercise 3-5 days a week — not just having an active job. Choosing a lower activity level here gives a more realistic calorie target.