What is a daily energy expenditure (aka TDEE) calculator?

A TDEE calculator is for estimating how many calories you need to either maintain, gain, or lose weight. It uses your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), activity level, and exercise intensity. It’s great as a rough starting point, but not an exact formula.

Here's an example: www.damnripped.com/tdee-calculator

BMR is based on your sex, height, weight and age. Then it asks for your activity level, which is often overestimated. It asks for exercise intensity, be conservative. It’s unlikely many people would actually be able to pick “intense” here, “difficult” or “moderate” is more reasonable.

I put “moderately active”, and “difficult” exercise. It tells me I need 2,190 calories to maintain my weight, which is about right based on what I’ve been doing for years. However if I put “very active” and “intense” exercise it tells me I need 2,500 calories to maintain, which I know is definitely not right for me - I put on weight when my calories are 2300 (I have tried it).

So if you do use a TDEE calculator, use it as a rough guide to just start somewhere and adjust based on your body measurements, hunger level, performance in the gym.

I don’t write a diet based on a person's TDEE, I base it on their BMR, and take into account their previous diet, strength level, and other factors. Activity levels can change from one day to the next, and often TDEE calculators can be too generous, so I set calories moderate to high (depending on the person and their strength). By doing it this way there’s room to either reduce or increase calories based on their weekly body composition data. It’s a process of trial and error really. When the calories come from whole good quality food, you can eat more volume compared to more processed foods. The quality of food matters just as much as the amount of calories you’re on.