Calorie Calculator (TDEE)

"How many calories should I eat?" has a personal answer, and this calculator computes it: your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) — the calories you burn across a real day including work, walking and workouts. Eat around it and your weight holds steady; eat consistently below it and you lose; above it, you gain. Every evidence-based approach to weight management is built on this single number.

The math is transparent: your BMR from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation (the most accurate standard formula), multiplied by an activity factor from 1.2 (desk job, little exercise) to 1.9 (physical job plus hard training). Choosing the honest activity level is the step people get wrong most — most office workers who gym a few times a week are "lightly" or "moderately" active, and overestimating here is the most common reason calculated targets don't match results.

Beyond maintenance, the calculator lays out four practical targets: mild loss (−250 kcal/day, roughly a quarter kilo per week), standard loss (−500), and mild or standard gain — the moderate deficits and surpluses that research and practice favor over crash approaches. The honest fine print is on the tool itself: formulas estimate, individuals vary, so treat the number as your starting hypothesis and adjust after 2–3 weeks of real-world results.