Total Daily Energy Expenditure

Total daily energy expenditure, usually shortened to TDEE, is all the energy you spend in a day. It is your basal metabolic rate, plus the cost of digesting what you eat, plus deliberate exercise, plus everything else you do while awake.

That last part is larger than most people expect and varies enormously between people. Walking, standing, fidgeting and moving around a workplace can account for several hundred calories a day, and the difference between a desk job and a job on your feet can be bigger than the difference an hour in the gym makes.

Most calculators estimate it by multiplying a basal rate by an activity factor between 1.2 and 1.9. That is a blunt instrument, and the step between two factors is often three hundred calories. Where a device reports your energy for a whole day, including the part you burn at rest, the figure can be read rather than estimated, which is a far better answer.

What it is not

It is not a calorie target. It is what you spend, so eating that much holds your weight roughly steady; a target is this number adjusted for what you are trying to do. It is also not a constant, and it falls as you lose weight.

Where you see it in FitnessSyncer

Where a connected service reports whole-day energy, that figure is charted on your Dashboard as a measurement rather than an estimate. Our TDEE calculator sets out the activity factors in full and explains when you can skip them.