TDEE calculator

What your body uses in a day, and what intake a given rate of loss would need — with the equations shown, because every calculator that hides them is hiding the same two.

Work it out

Sex at birth

Age

Weight

Height

Body fat % — optional

Activity

Total daily energy expenditure

kcal/day

Resting (BMR)

Protein target

1.2–1.6 g per kg body weight

These are estimates, and the honest error bar is wide. Measured resting energy expenditure varies by roughly ±10% around what these equations predict for an individual, and the activity factors are round numbers agreed by convention rather than anything measured about you. Treat the output as a starting point to test against the scales over a few weeks, not as a number to obey.

Protein is the one that matters on a GLP-1. Appetite falls faster than requirement, and lean mass is what gets lost when intake drops and protein does not keep up. The figure above is the usual 1.2–1.6 g per kg range; resistance training alongside it is what the trials consistently show protects lean tissue.

Rows shaded amber fall below the intakes usually considered a floor without supervision (about 1500 kcal for men, 1200 for women). If a rate of loss needs one of those, that is a conversation to have with your prescriber or a dietitian, not a target to set yourself.

The equations

Mifflin–St Jeor (1990) — the default, because it only needs what everyone knows about themselves:

men: BMR = 10 × kg + 6.25 × cm − 5 × age + 5
women: BMR = 10 × kg + 6.25 × cm − 5 × age − 161

Katch–McArdle — used instead as soon as a body-fat percentage is entered, because once lean mass is known it is the better estimate, and it does not need to know sex at all:

BMR = 370 + 21.6 × lean kg

TDEE is BMR multiplied by the activity factor shown beside each option (1.200 to 1.900, the conventional Harris–Benedict set).

The loss table uses 7700 kcal per kg of body fat, so 0.5 kg a week is a deficit of 0.5 × 7700 ÷ 7 = 550 kcal a day. That constant assumes the weight lost is fat; early weeks lose water as well, which is why the scales usually move faster than the arithmetic at the start and slower later.