What is TDEE? (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)

theguy 0 Comments 01/06/2019 Cardio Get fit Health Healthy Food

Have your fit friends ever started rambling out all of these weird fitness terms and acronyms and then you just stand there and be like: “… ah yea, uh huh, right.” As straightforward as exercise and dieting might seem, there’s actually a lot of fancy lingo in it to describe specifics. Luckily for you, I decided to cover these funky terms in my videos, both basic stuff and more advanced, so that you can keep up with the conversations at the gym. And to start off, we’re going right to a big fundamental: TDEE. Total daily energy expenditure. In its simplest term, TDEE is the total amount of energy you use each day. This accounts for all forms of energy use, be it exercise, chores, digesting, and even simply living. In scientific literature, energy usage is split into more specific categories, but we’ll get to that some other time. The main gist is that TDEE consists of energy spent on every single thing you do.

Now why is this important in fitness? Well, our weight is directly tied to the amount of energy we use versus the amount of energy we take in. In this sense, energy is measured through calories. Take in more calories, aka energy, than we burn, then weight increases. Burn more calories, aka use more energy, than we take in, then weight goes down. Of course, intake of calories is from the food we eat, which explains the magical calorie number found in our food labels. Knowing this, we can see why TDEE is important. It is the starting point in which we want to base our goals. First know your TDEE and then adjust your calorie intake to be higher or lower depending on your goals.

Higher intake for gaining weight, and lower for losing. Sure, there are more specific things to consider, like hormones, macros, and habits, but TDEE is the foundation, the first thing to factor in before anything else. Perhaps the most confusing part of TDEE is actually calculating it. Worse yet is knowing that your TDEE is always changing, which many misunderstand and then become disappointed when their results start to stagnate. Just as everything you do sums up your TDEE, any changes can alter it. More exercise, fewer chores, more digesting, less mass, and so on. Unfortunately, outside of using scientific equipment like metabolic wards and doubly labeled water, calculating your precise TDEE isn’t readily available. The goal then is to find an estimate. This is often through TDEE estimators and calculators you can find on the internet. I’ll link some of them down in the description. Even then, these estimates are only just that… estimates.

It’s up to you to take your estimate and experiment a little to see how close it actually is to your actual TDEE. If you’re struggling to lose weight while eating below your estimated TDEE, your actual TDEE is probably lower, thus you need to further adjust your intake. Same for the opposite, where if you’re not gaining weight eating above the estimated TDEE, your actual TDEE is likely higher.

Thus, eat more. Just make sure you don’t go into the extreme, like eating below or above 1000 calories or so or more than 30% of your TDEE. And again, don’t forget that your TDEE will constantly change. Keep measuring your weight, re-estimate your TDEE, and adjust along the way. And that’s about it. TDEE explained. I hope I was able to clarify TDEE just a bit more for you. And as long as you enjoy this, I’m gonna keep covering more fitness terms in the future and make this series permanent with a catchy title or something. Maybe fitness term Fridays, Fitness Science explained, or some other cheesy phrase. You let me know what you think in the comments. Other than that, if you enjoyed and learned from this video, please give it a thumbs up and share it with your fitness-term loving friends.

As always, thank you for watching and GET YOUR PROTEIN! .