TDEE calculator

Your total daily energy expenditure is everything you burn in a day: staying alive, moving about, and training. Work it out below, then get a calorie target for what you're actually trying to do.

Milo
Body fat

Worked out from your BMI, which is rough: it can’t tell a lean 90kg from a heavy 90kg. Pick Measure if you have a tape measure.

Your numbers will appear here.

How this is worked out

It starts with your basal metabolic rate, what you’d burn lying still for 24 hours, using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, which is the one that holds up best against measured data:

BMR = 10 × weight(kg) + 6.25 × height(cm) − 5 × age {+5 male / −161 female}

That gets multiplied by an activity factor, from 1.2 if you barely move to 1.725 if you train hard most days. The result is your maintenance: eat that and your weight sits still.

The goal target then applies a percentage rather than a flat number, because a 500-calorie cut means something very different to someone maintaining on 1,800 than to someone on 3,200. Losing steadily is 25% under maintenance; losing slowly is 15%; a lean gain is 10% over.

The protein figure is set from lean mass, not bodyweight, and rises as the deficit deepens: the harder you diet, the more protein it takes to keep muscle. That’s why body fat is worth filling in. If you don’t know it, Measure uses the US Navy tape method, which only needs your neck and waist (and hips, for women).

Give it a real body fat figure and a second estimate appears, using the Katch-McArdle equation. That one works from lean mass instead of inferring your composition from height and weight, so it’s usually the better number when composition is known. It’s shown alongside rather than instead of the headline, because Mifflin-St Jeor is what Milo uses in chat and the two should never quietly disagree.

The number is the easy part

Any calculator can hand you a figure. The hard bit is the next three months: eating roughly to it, noticing when it stops working, and changing it. Milo is a coach you text like a friend. You log what you ate in a sentence, and it learns your patterns, notices when your weight stalls, and adjusts the target from what you actually did rather than from a formula.

See how Milo works

Common questions

How accurate is it?

Any formula lands within roughly 10% for most people, which on 2,500 calories is a 250-calorie band. That’s the honest limit of estimating from height, weight, age and sex. The only way to know your real maintenance is to eat consistently for a few weeks and watch what your weight does — which is the thing Milo does for you.

Which number should I use, Mifflin or Katch-McArdle?

If you genuinely know your body fat percentage, from a DEXA scan or calipers, Katch-McArdle is usually closer, because two people of the same height and weight can carry very different amounts of muscle. If your body fat is itself a guess, that advantage disappears and Mifflin-St Jeor is the safer bet. When they land within a hundred calories of each other, it doesn’t matter which you pick.

Should I eat back the calories I burn exercising?

No, not if you picked an activity level that already includes your training. That’s the most common way people accidentally wipe out their deficit: counting the sessions twice, once in the multiplier and again as “earned” calories. Watch trackers also tend to overstate calorie burn considerably.

Why is my target different from another calculator?

Most use the same Mifflin-St Jeor base, so differences come from the activity multiplier and how the deficit is applied. A calculator using a flat 500-calorie cut will differ from a percentage-based one, especially at the ends of the range.

My weight has stopped moving. Is my TDEE wrong?

Probably it’s changed rather than being wrong. Maintenance falls as you get lighter, and after a few months of dieting most people are eating more than they think. This is exactly where a static calculator runs out — it can’t know that, because it never sees what you actually ate.

Other calculators

These are estimates from population averages, not measurements of you. Individual metabolism varies by roughly ±10% around any formula. Nothing here is medical advice — if you have a health condition, are pregnant, or are under 18, talk to a healthcare professional before changing how you eat or train.