Your BMR, maintenance calories, goal targets and macros — from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, the most validated formula in clinical use. Thirty seconds, no email.
Total Daily Energy Expenditure is everything you burn in a day: your resting metabolism plus movement, exercise and digestion. It’s the single number a nutrition plan is built around.
Estimate BMR from age, weight, height and sex with Mifflin-St Jeor, then multiply by an activity factor between 1.2 and 1.9. That product is your maintenance calories.
BMR is what your body needs at complete rest — breathing, circulation, brain function — typically 60–75% of the total. TDEE stacks activity and the thermic effect of food on top.
Sedentary is desk work. Lightly active is 1–3 light sessions a week; moderate is 3–5; very active is hard training 6–7 days. Unsure? Go one level lower and eat slightly more if you stall.
Our default and the ADA-recommended BMR formula. We also show Harris-Benedict (revised) and Katch-McArdle when body fat is known.
The Mifflin-St Jeor equation is considered the most accurate for most people and is our default formula. The Katch-McArdle formula can be more accurate if you know your body fat percentage, as it accounts for lean body mass. We show results from multiple formulas so you can compare.
A common recommendation is to eat 500 calories below your TDEE, which creates a deficit of approximately 1 pound (0.45 kg) of weight loss per week. This is considered a safe and sustainable rate. Larger deficits can lead to muscle loss and metabolic adaptation.
It depends on your goals and how your activity level is already factored in. If you selected an activity level that includes your exercise, eating back exercise calories could lead to overcounting. If you chose a lower activity level and do extra workouts, you may want to eat back a portion (about 50-75%) of those calories.
TDEE calculators provide a solid estimate — typically within 10% of your actual expenditure. However, individual factors like genetics, hormones, NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis), and metabolic adaptation can cause variations. Use your calculated TDEE as a starting point, then adjust based on real-world results over 2-4 weeks.
There is no single best ratio, but a balanced split of 30% protein, 35% carbs, and 35% fat works well for most people. Higher protein (40%) can help preserve muscle during a calorie deficit. The most important factor for weight loss is total calories, not the exact macro split.
CalorieCue logs any meal from one photo in three seconds. Free on iOS.
Download on the App Store
