How to Calculate Your TDEE (Maintenance Calories)

You've probably seen the advice "eat in a calorie deficit" or "eat at maintenance to stay lean." Useful - except nobody tells you what your maintenance number actually is.

That number has a name: your TDEE, or Total Daily Energy Expenditure. It's the total calories your body burns in a day. Once you know it, every goal - losing fat, gaining muscle, or holding steady - becomes simple arithmetic instead of guesswork.

The good news is you can estimate your TDEE in about two minutes with a calculator or a bit of mental math. Let's walk through how, from the ground up.

What is TDEE, and why does it matter?#

Your TDEE is the total number of calories your body burns over 24 hours, including everything: staying alive, moving around, exercising, and even digesting food.

It matters because it's the dividing line for every goal:

• Eat below your TDEE and you lose weight.
• Eat at your TDEE and you maintain.
• Eat above it and you gain.

That's the whole game. If you've ever read our breakdown of what a calorie deficit really is, TDEE is the missing piece - it's the number you subtract from to create that deficit. Without it, "eat less" is just a vibe. With it, you have a target.

BMR vs TDEE: what's the difference?#

People mix these up constantly, so let's make it clear.

BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)#

Your BMR is what your body would burn if you lay in bed all day and did absolutely nothing - no walking, no eating, no moving. It's the energy cost of just being alive: your heart beating, lungs breathing, brain running, cells repairing.

For most adults, BMR makes up the biggest chunk of daily calorie burn, often 60 to 70 percent of the total.

TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)#

Your TDEE takes that BMR baseline and adds everything else on top:

• Movement and exercise (walking, workouts, chores)
• The energy cost of digesting food
• Small unconscious movements like fidgeting and posture

So the relationship is simple: BMR is your floor, and TDEE is your real-world total. You calculate BMR first, then scale it up to reach TDEE.

Step 1: Estimate your BMR#

You don't need a lab. A well-established formula (the Mifflin-St Jeor equation) gets you close using four inputs: weight, height, age, and sex.

Here's the shape of it, in metric units:

• Men: BMR = (10 x weight in kg) + (6.25 x height in cm) - (5 x age) + 5
• Women: BMR = (10 x weight in kg) + (6.25 x height in cm) - (5 x age) - 161

Let's plug in a real example. Say you're a 30-year-old woman, 65 kg, 165 cm:

• (10 x 65) = 650
• (6.25 x 165) = 1031
• (5 x 30) = 150
• 650 + 1031 - 150 - 161 = 1370 calories

So this person burns roughly 1,370 calories a day just existing. That's the BMR. Now we build up to TDEE.

Step 2: Multiply by your activity level#

To turn BMR into TDEE, multiply it by an activity factor that reflects how much you move. Be honest here - overestimating your activity is the single most common reason people's calorie math fails.

• Sedentary (desk job, little exercise): BMR x 1.2
• Lightly active (light exercise 1-3 days/week): BMR x 1.375
• Moderately active (moderate exercise 3-5 days/week): BMR x 1.55
• Very active (hard exercise 6-7 days/week): BMR x 1.725

Back to our example. If our 1,370-BMR person is lightly active:

1370 x 1.375 = about 1,884 calories per day.

That's her TDEE - her maintenance calories. Eat around 1,884 and her weight holds steady. This is the anchor for everything next.

A quick note on movement: walking is a big, underrated slice of your daily burn. If you're curious how much daily steps really move the needle, we cover it in how many steps a day to lose weight. Just remember SharkFit itself doesn't count steps - it's for logging what you eat and the workouts you do, which we'll get to.

Step 3: Set your target from TDEE#

Now that you know your maintenance number, you set your goal by shifting up or down from it.

To lose fat#

Subtract roughly 300 to 500 calories from your TDEE. Our example person would aim for about 1,400 to 1,580 calories a day. That produces a steady loss of around half a kilo of fat per week without leaving you starving.

Since roughly 3,500 calories equals about a pound of fat, you don't need a punishing deficit - small, consistent subtractions add up over weeks. If you want the full logic, how to lose fat easily walks through it, and why the scale fluctuates explains why day-to-day weigh-ins bounce around even when you're doing everything right.

To gain muscle#

Add roughly 200 to 400 calories above your TDEE - a modest surplus that supports muscle growth without piling on excess fat. If gaining is your struggle, how to gain weight easily has practical ways to hit that surplus.

To maintain#

Eat right around your TDEE. Handy after a fat-loss phase, or any time you just want to hold your current shape.

Don't forget protein and macros#

Calories decide whether you lose, gain, or maintain. But macros - protein, carbs, and fats - decide how good you look and feel while doing it.

Protein is the one to prioritize, especially in a deficit, because it protects muscle while you lose fat and keeps you full. A common rule of thumb is aiming for a solid gram of protein per pound of goal bodyweight. Our guide on how much protein to lose fat gives you a target, and macro tracking 101 shows how to split the rest of your calories across carbs and fats.

You don't have to nail every macro perfectly. Get your total calories right, hit your protein, and you're already ahead of most people.

Meet Priya, who finally stopped guessing#

Priya, a 28-year-old with a desk job, had been "eating healthy" for months with nothing to show for it. She sat down and did the math: her BMR came out near 1,350, and being sedentary (x 1.2), her TDEE landed around 1,620 calories.

The surprise? She'd been casually eating closer to 2,000 most days - snacks, chai with sugar, weekend dinners out. No wonder the scale wouldn't budge. She set a target of 1,300 calories, a gentle deficit below her real TDEE.

Then she did the part that made it stick: she logged her food. Within three weeks her weight trend was finally moving down, and she could see exactly which meals were eating up her budget. The number wasn't magic - knowing it was.

Your calculator is a starting point, not gospel#

Here's the honest caveat: every TDEE formula is an estimate built on averages. Your real number could be a few hundred calories higher or lower.

So treat the calculation as your starting line, then let reality correct it:

1. Calculate your TDEE and set a target.
2. Eat that target consistently for two to three weeks.
3. Track your weight trend, not single days.
4. Losing too fast? Add a little. Not losing? Trim a little.

This is where logging changes everything. When you record what you eat and watch your weight move, you stop arguing with a formula and start reading your own body's data. If you want an honest gut-check on stalls, why you're not seeing results is worth a read.

How SharkFit turns your TDEE into a plan#

Knowing your number is step one. Living by it is where a tool earns its keep - and this is exactly what the free SharkFit app is built for.

Once you've calculated your TDEE and picked a target, SharkFit lets you:

• Set a calorie goal and log meals by searching a food database - no manual math.
• Track your macros - protein, carbs, fats, fiber, sugar, and water - against daily targets.
• Build custom foods and meals for the dishes you eat all the time, so logging takes seconds.
• Log your workouts - exercises, sets, reps, and weight - so your training stays on track alongside your food.
• Watch your body weight trend over weeks with a trend view that smooths out the daily noise, plus measurements and progress photos.

That weight-trend view is the real-world feedback loop that tells you whether your TDEE estimate was right - and it's completely free for individuals. It's a genuine free way to track calories and macros, no paywall on the parts that matter.

Track. Transform. Thrive. SharkFit is your personal fitness companion, free.

Calculating your TDEE takes two minutes. Acting on it for a few weeks is what changes your body. Do the math once, then let honest logging do the rest.

Ready to put your number to work? Explore the free SharkFit app and see everything it can do.