What is TDEE and why is it important to know?

TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is the total amount of calories your body burns in a day. It includes your basal metabolic rate (BMR: the calories your body needs just to function), plus the energy you use for movement, exercise, and even digesting food. In short, TDEE is the best estimate of how many calories you need to maintain your current weight.

Knowing your TDEE is important because it gives you a baseline for any goal. If you want to lose weight, you need to create a calorie deficit by eating fewer calories than your TDEE. If you want to gain muscle, you need to be in a calorie surplus by eating more than your TDEE. Without knowing this number, it’s easy to either eat too much and stall your progress or eat too little and lose energy or muscle.

Once you know your TDEE, you can adjust your intake depending on your goal. Eat slightly below it for steady fat loss, slightly above it for muscle growth, or around it to maintain your weight and focus on balanced nutrition. Tracking against your TDEE helps you approach your health goals with structure, rather than guessing.

If you don’t always exercise or be as active as indicated in the calculation, you can also go with the BMR instead. Then each time you burn calories through exercise you can track those burned calories separately and add those calories to your BMR to know your TDEE or maintenance calories for the day.

Welling is an AI weight loss coach that uses your TDEE and your BMR and automatically sets your daily targets, whether your goal is to lose, gain, or maintain weight. Through a simple AI chat, it then tracks your calories and analyzes your diet so you know exactly how to reach your goals.