Enter your stats and activity level. Get your TDEE and calorie targets for any goal.
Enter sex, age, height, weight and an activity level, then pick a goal. The page estimates your resting energy need, multiplies it by an activity factor to get daily maintenance calories, and shows the target that goes with your goal. The macro breakdown below turns that target into grams.
Be honest about activity. Most people overestimate it, because a desk job plus three gym sessions is not "very active". Choosing a lower factor and being pleasantly surprised is better than choosing a high one and wondering why the scale will not move.
A 30-year-old man, 5 ft 10 in (70 inches), 160 lb, moderately active:
| Step | Value |
|---|---|
| Resting need (Mifflin-St Jeor) | 1,692 cal |
| Maintenance with a 1.55 activity factor | 2,623 cal |
| Target to lose about a pound a week | 2,123 cal |
| Target to gain slowly | 2,923 cal |
At the 2,123 target the page's macro split gives 128 g of protein, 270 g of carbohydrate and 59 g of fat. The protein figure comes from body weight rather than from the calorie total, because 0.8 g per pound is the number that keeps muscle while you are in a deficit.
The resting figure is the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, which is the estimate most dietitians reach for first. It takes weight, height, age and sex and returns the calories you would burn lying still. Everything else is a multiplier: 1.2 for a desk and little exercise, up to 1.9 for hard physical work plus daily training.
The 500-calorie deficit behind the "lose" number is a convention with a real basis: a pound of body fat stores roughly 3,500 calories, so 500 a day is about a pound a week. It is also a rate that many people can sustain, which matters more than the arithmetic. Deficits of double that produce faster early loss, more muscle loss and a much higher chance of stopping.
Every one of these numbers is an estimate with a spread. Two people with identical inputs can differ by a couple of hundred calories a day in reality, because activity, digestion and genetics all vary. Use the number for two weeks, weigh yourself under the same conditions, and adjust by about 200 calories based on what actually happened. The scale is a better instrument than the formula.
Usually within a couple of hundred calories for most people. It is a starting point to be corrected by two weeks of real measurements.
The lower one, if you are unsure. Desk work with three workouts a week sits around 1.375–1.55, not higher.
No. A weekly average is what moves weight. Daily swings of a few hundred calories are normal and harmless.
Because muscle retention depends on grams per pound, not on a percentage of calories. That is why the two targets behave differently when you cut.
No. It is an estimate from a published equation. If you have a medical condition, are pregnant, or have a history of disordered eating, work with a professional instead.
Mifflin-St Jeor is a published equation from 1990. It is not a measurement of your metabolism.
Last updated: November 2, 2026. Reviewed by David Liu.