What is Total Daily Energy Expenditure?

So Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), we gotta cover what the hell this means before diving into Macros and our Macro IQ – they all are most definitely interconnected, but understanding them individually is a must!

TDEE – this acronym stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure. I’m sure back in health class or at some point you have heard of BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), but these are not the same. Basal is a fancy way of saying bottom, therefore this means this is the lowest amount of calories your body needs to just exist. TDEE takes into account your activity level, hence Energy Expenditure. You need your BMR to calculate your TDEE.

The BMR is pretty simple as it only requires gender, height, weight, and age.

Just a quick FYI – we are simply discussing what these terms mean, not getting into how we lose weight with these numbers, just yet  (yay for more blogs and Macro IQ™ because we do all the work for you).

I won’t bore you with all the science and equation side of things, but if you are interested I included the equation below. There are also equations that measure lean body mass, yet that’s for another day when I feel like making things more complicated.

The Harris–Benedict equation revised by Mifflin and St Jeor to calculate your BMR. This is the first part towards calculating your Total Daily Energy Expenditure.

For now- Back to the basics and our favorite KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid). Diets, and life in general, go awry when too much information is being processed – confusion diminishes your chance of success and then you suffer from paralysis by analysis and your goals are incessantly out of reach.

TDEE is the number of calories  your body requires (or burns – depending on how you want to explain it, kind of a semantics debate at that point) to maintain your body in its current state. Meaning the calories you spend, the calories you should put in. Again, it takes the BMR into consideration, yet it also incorporates your active lifestyle and exercise, because if you burn more calories you need more calories to match your energy levels being used. Replacing what your burn, easy as that.

The activity levels explain your job and exercise program. The classificstions are: sedentary, light exercise, moderate exercise, heavy exercise, and physically strenuous.

Sedentary means you sit on your ass all day at your job and you do not exercise at all.

Light exercise means you are strolling through exercise 1 to maybe 3 times a week, barely breakin a sweat.

Moderate is 3-5 days of intentional exercise a week, using some weights and making part of your routine.

Heavy is putting in the hard work 6-7 days a week like a true gym rat.

Physically Strenuous means you are going balls to the wall. Not only busting your ass at the gym 6-7 days a week, but your job requires you to be on your feet doing physical labor.

Stating the obvious here – your TDEE will be higher the more activity you have in your life.

So there you have it. TDEE is simply the total amount of calories (energy) your body uses (needs) in a day to keep your body (weight) where it is at currently.

Easy as that…until we factor in body type, weight loss, and macros. The fun is about to begin.