TDEE, or total daily energy expenditure, is the number of calories your body burns in a day by doing things like eating and moving around. For example, a TDEE calorie calculator is a tool that helps you find out how many calories you should eat to balance your weight or lose some pounds.
What are TDEE and its uses?
TDEE is short for total daily energy expenditure and measures how many calories you burn in a day. When you’re looking at the TDEE calculator, it calculates your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and then adds an activity modifier to give you the total.
The BMR is the number of calories that your body needs to do essential functions like breathing and keeping your organs going. For example, it accounts for about 60% of the total calories burned daily, while activity modifier accounts for 40% of your overall calorie expenditure.
Using this calculator, you can figure out how many calories you need to burn daily to maintain or reach a particular weight goal (if losing weight). If gaining muscle mass is one of your goals, then increasing this number by 500-1000 would also help achieve those results.
Experts at Legion Athletics say, “If you eat your TDEE every day, you’ll maintain your weight. Thus, if you want to lose weight, you’ll need to eat below your TDEE.”
Are TDEE Calculators accurate?
TDEE calculators are not 100% accurate, but they can be very close. The biggest reason for this is that all of the TDEE calculators on the market today rely on your weight and body fat percentage as a basis for calculating your TDEE. Each calculator will ask you to enter these values and then use them to calculate how many calories you need per day to maintain your current weight.
However, if you lose or gain muscle mass, it’s possible that your calculator may overestimate or underestimate the number of calories you need each day.
For example: If your calculator estimates that two pounds of muscle burns 300 extra calories per day and you add those two pounds over time, then using this new number in place would result in an inaccurate calculation – i.e., it will show that these extra muscles are burning more than they do.
How to calculate TDEE?
To determine your TDEE, enter those values and how often you workout into the TDEE calculator above. The resulting number will be the number of calories needed per day for someone who is resting (they are not exercising) and eating at their current level of activity.
This can help you calculate how many calories should be consumed per meal or snack throughout the day to maintain current body composition and performance levels without gaining or losing weight.
The TDEE calculator is a handy tool for establishing the amount of TDEE you need to consume. It is used for losing weight or gaining muscle mass. If used correctly, it will help you reach your goals much faster than if you had done it alone by just guessing at how much food should be consumed each day.