What Is TDEE? All About Total Daily Energy Expenditure

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Raagini Yedidi, MD, is an internal medicine resident and medical reviewer for Saluvia.

Total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) is the number of calories your body burns daily; it varies among individuals and is based on certain factors (e.g. age, and activity level).

TDEE includes the energy required for basic bodily functions (resting energy expenditure, or REE) and physical activity (non-resting energy expenditure, or NREE).

You can calculate TDEE using a TDEE calculator or by following the Mifflin-St Jeor equation and multiplying that number by an activity factor.

Short for total daily energy expenditure, TDEE is a measure of how many calories (or energy) your body burns (or expends) over a 24-hour period. Various factors can affect your TDEE, including your age, sex, height, weight, activity level, diet, and body composition (i.e. proportion of body fat vs. fat-free mass, such as muscle and bones).

Many of these factors can change over time, and so can your TDEE. For example, after about age 60, your TDEE generally declines by nearly 1% each year. Older people may have less muscle mass and tend to experience hormonal changes that can slow their metabolism (think: menopause and low testosterone , both of which often accompany aging).

Speaking of muscle, it’s more metabolically active than fat. Meaning it can burn more calories at rest (i.e. when you're relaxing). So, people who have more muscle mass may have a higher TDEE.

In general, people who are older, have more body fat than muscle, and maintain a sedentary lifestyle tend to have a lower TDEE. On the other hand, people who are younger, more muscular, and more active tend to have a higher TDEE.

Your TDEE represents the total number of calories your body burns daily. This includes calories burned when resting (aka your resting energy expenditure, or REE) and when active (aka non-resting energy expenditure, or NREE).

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Whatever you call it — RMR, BMR, or REE — your resting energy expenditure makes up the majority of your TDEE, accounting for around 60% of the measurement.

Basal metabolic rate is an estimate of how many calories you'd burn if you were to do nothing but rest for a day.

Then you have your non-resting energy expenditure, or NREE, which is the number of calories your body burns when active . In other words, your NREE is everything else that’s not factored into your REE. This includes both when you’re actively exercising as well as when you’re going about your daily activities, such as eating, walking, or talking.

The more active you are, the more energy your body burns. People who live an active lifestyle, have an active job, or work out frequently tend to have a higher NREE than those who don’t exercise as much and have a sedentary lifestyle or job.

Thermic effect of food (TEF): Also called diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT), TEF describes the number of calories your body burns simply through digesting the food you eat. In total, TEF makes up about 8%–15% of your TDEE.

Your body expends different amounts of energy to break down different macronutrients , the most important of which are protein, carbohydrates, and fats. Protein uses the most energy, while fat uses the least. Your body may burn about 20%–30% of the calories from protein to digest protein itself. Meanwhile, it only burns about 5%–10% of carbohydrate calories and 0%–3% of fat calories when digesting those macros.

Exercise activity thermogenesis (EAT): The second component of NREE, EAT describes the number of calories your body burns when you’re actively exercising (think: purposely trying to increase your heart rate). The portion of your TDEE that EAT represents can vary widely depending on how much you work out. For example: