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Most calculators hand you a number and keep the reasoning to themselves. This one shows the equation it used, the factor it multiplied by, and what the result does and doesn't tell you.
This calculation has been running on my own weigh-ins for years. It gets you within a few hundred kcal on day one, and your scale does the rest.
Your numbers
On your feet sometimes, with occasional walking. This is the same question the Fitener app asks: your day outside training.
Comfortable with the basics and training regularly. It only changes the result for muscle gain.
Fill in a body fat percentage and the calculator switches to Katch-McArdle, which works from your lean mass instead of estimating from height and age.
Maintenance is your estimated intake to stay where you are: your resting rate times your activity outside training. The target is maintenance with the adjustment for the goal you picked; the steps below show how.
Calorie figures are rounded to the nearest 10, as in the Fitener app, because the equations are not more precise than that: they were fitted on groups, and the spread between people with identical inputs is far wider than a single kcal. Work them out yourself and you will land within 5 kcal of what is shown here.
With a body fat percentage, the resting rate below is worked out from lean mass instead of scale weight.
Katch-McArdle, because you entered a body fat percentage. It works from your lean mass directly instead of estimating from height and age.
Light: On your feet sometimes, with occasional walking. This factor describes your day outside training, and it carries more uncertainty than any other step; see the note below.
Recomp. Your calorie target is held at the edge of the recommended deficit window for this goal instead of following the percentage exactly.
A measurement. Nothing on this page weighs what you burn; every step predicts it from averages, and the activity factor is the roughest of the four. Two people who both pick "Light" can differ by a few hundred kcal a day in real life, and neither of them is wrong about their day.
So treat the target above as a starting point, not a verdict. Eat to it for two to three weeks, weigh yourself on the same mornings, and compare weekly averages. If the trend goes the way you want, the number was close enough. If it does not, move the target by a hundred or two and give it another two weeks. Your scale corrects the estimate; the equations cannot.
Want this target as protein, fat and carbs in grams? Macro calculator · Estimating your strength instead? One rep max calculator
Total daily energy expenditure: an estimate of what you burn on an ordinary day. This calculator works it out the way the Fitener app does, as a resting rate multiplied by a factor for how active your day is outside training. Training itself is not counted in this number.
Katch-McArdle when you enter a body fat percentage, because it works from your lean mass. Without one it uses Mifflin-St Jeor, which estimates from weight, height, age and sex. Whichever is used, the activity factor is the least certain part of the result.
It starts from a 20% cut, then holds the target 300 to 500 kcal below your TDEE. It never goes below your resting rate: if that window would, the target stops at your resting rate instead.
Because both equations start from your body: less weight or less lean mass gives a lower resting rate, and the activity factor multiplies that. A target worked out once goes stale as your weight moves. That is why the target is worth revisiting every few weeks rather than setting once.
This page works it out once, from what you typed. Fitener runs the same equations on your own data. Connect a Withings scale and your weigh-ins arrive on their own; set up your plan with it connected and Fitener works from your latest weigh-in instead of asking for your weight. Every target in the app shows its arithmetic with your numbers, the way this page does.