TDEE Calculator for Bodybuilding

Enter your age, sex, height, weight and activity level to estimate total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), then pick a goal. A lean bulk adds about 10–15% to maintenance; a cut removes about 10–20%.

Runs in your browser; nothing you type is stored or sent. Estimates only, not medical advice. Updated 2 October 2026.

What TDEE actually means

Total daily energy expenditure is everything your body spends in twenty-four hours. It breaks into four parts, and understanding the split explains why two people of the same weight can need very different calorie intakes.

The largest piece is your basal metabolic rate, the energy needed to keep your heart beating, your brain running and your tissue repaired while you do nothing at all. For most lifters this is somewhere between sixty and seventy percent of the total. Next comes the thermic effect of food, roughly ten percent, which is the cost of digesting and absorbing what you eat. Protein carries the highest thermic cost of the three macronutrients, which is one of several reasons a higher protein intake helps during a cut.

The third piece is the energy your training actually burns. This is almost always smaller than people expect. A hard hour of lifting might cost three to four hundred calories, which a single post-workout snack can erase. The fourth piece, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, covers walking, standing, fidgeting and every unplanned movement. It varies enormously between individuals and it is the single biggest reason prediction equations miss.

The formulas this calculator uses

By default the calculator uses the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, which a systematic review for the American Dietetic Association found to be the most accurate predictive equation for resting metabolic rate in healthy non-obese and obese adults (Frankenfield et al., 2005).

Why offer Cunningham? Equations based on total bodyweight cannot tell muscle from fat. In recreational athletes, the Cunningham lean-mass equation predicted resting energy expenditure well, while Mifflin-St Jeor was accurate for fewer than half of the participants (ten Haaf & Weijs, 2014). It only helps if your body-fat estimate is reasonable, so leave the field blank if you are guessing.

A worked example

A 28-year-old man weighing 180 lb (81.6 kg) at 70 inches (178 cm) who trains four days a week (moderate, ×1.55).

BMR = (10 × 81.6) + (6.25 × 178) − (5 × 28) + 5 = 1,793.5 kcal. TDEE = 1,793.5 × 1.55 ≈ 2,780 kcal per day.

Rounded to the nearest 10 kcal. Two weeks of weigh-ins will tell you more than the equation.

How to adjust from the estimate

The number this tool gives you is a hypothesis. Here is how to test it.

Weigh yourself first thing in the morning, after using the bathroom, before eating or drinking. Do this every day for two weeks, then average each week. Daily weight swings of two to four pounds from water, sodium and glycogen are normal and mean nothing on their own; the weekly average is the signal.

If you are bulking and the weekly average is climbing by roughly a quarter to a half percent of bodyweight, you are in the right zone. Faster than that and you are adding more fat than you need to. If nothing moves after two full weeks, add about 150 calories per day and reassess.

If you are cutting and losing around half to one percent of bodyweight per week, hold steady. Losing faster than one percent per week, especially while lifting hard, raises the risk of shedding lean tissue alongside fat. If the scale stalls for two weeks, subtract about 150 calories or add daily steps rather than slashing intake aggressively.

How the macro split is built

Protein comes first and is set per kilogram of bodyweight: 1.8 g/kg for maintaining and bulking, and 2.2 g/kg for cutting, where extra protein helps protect lean mass (Morton et al., 2018; Helms et al., 2014). Fat is set at 27% of calories (25% on a cut), within the 15–30% range suggested for physique athletes. Carbohydrate fills the rest, fuelling hard training. The protein calculator explains the protein figure in more detail.

Where this estimate stops being useful

Prediction equations are built from population averages. Even the best of them miss individuals by a meaningful margin, so expect your real maintenance to differ from the estimate by a few hundred calories. Very muscular or very lean people, people coming off long diets, and anyone with a thyroid condition or medication that affects metabolism should expect larger errors. Treat the result as a starting point and correct it with two to three weeks of scale data.

Common questions

Calculator results are estimates for healthy adults and are not medical or dietary advice. See the full disclaimer.