Find your metabolic rate
Uses the Mifflin-St Jeor formula.
BMR
1,618 kcal/day
calories your body burns at complete rest
TDEE — Moderate
2,507 kcal/day
For Weight Loss (−500 kcal)
2,007 kcal/day
For Muscle Gain (+300 kcal)
2,807 kcal/day
Your body burns 1,618 kcal just to stay alive. Eat close to your TDEE on rest days and add workout calories on active days.
How many calories does
your body burn at rest?
Enter your weight, height, age, and gender to instantly estimate your Basal Metabolic Rate — the calories your body needs just to stay alive each day.
Step by step
How to use the BMR Calculator
Enter your weight
Type your current body weight in kilograms.
Enter your height
Enter your height in cm or switch to feet/inches.
Add age and gender
Enter your age and set the gender field (1 for male, 0 for female).
Get your BMR
Instantly see your daily BMR in kcal — the calorie floor your body needs just to function.
Why use this calculator?
Set a calorie target
BMR is the foundation for calorie tracking. Multiply it by your activity factor using the Calorie Calculator to find your total daily energy expenditure.
Weight loss planning
To lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories than your total daily expenditure. Knowing your BMR makes this calculation accurate instead of guesswork.
Muscle gain diet
Building muscle requires a calorie surplus. Your BMR tells you the minimum you need before adding training calories on top.
How BMR is calculated — the Mifflin-St Jeor formula
BMR represents the calories your body burns just to keep you alive — maintaining heart rate, breathing, body temperature, and cell repair. This is typically 60–75% of your total daily calorie expenditure. Even if you did absolutely nothing all day, you would still burn your BMR in calories. This is why very low calorie diets (below BMR) are dangerous: they force the body to break down muscle and organ tissue for fuel.
To find your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) — the actual calories you burn in a day including activity — multiply your BMR by an activity factor: 1.2 for sedentary (desk job, no exercise), 1.375 for lightly active (exercise 1–3 days/week), 1.55 for moderately active (exercise 3–5 days/week), 1.725 for very active (hard exercise 6–7 days/week). Use the Calorie Calculator on this site to compute your TDEE directly from your BMR.
BMR declines with age, primarily because muscle mass decreases after age 30. Every kilogram of muscle burns roughly 13 kcal/day at rest, while a kilogram of fat burns only about 4.5 kcal/day. This is the physiological reason why strength training is the most effective long-term weight management strategy — it maintains or increases BMR by preserving muscle mass. Cardio burns calories during exercise but does not significantly raise BMR the way resistance training does.
Formula
Male BMR = (10 × W) + (6.25 × H) − (5 × A) + 5 | Female BMR = (10 × W) + (6.25 × H) − (5 × A) − 161
W is weight in kilograms. H is height in centimetres. A is age in years. The Mifflin-St Jeor equation is considered more accurate than the older Harris-Benedict formula for most modern adults. The result is calories per day burned at complete rest — your body’s minimum calorie floor.
Worked example
Male, 30 years old, 75 kg, 175 cm: BMR = (10 × 75) + (6.25 × 175) − (5 × 30) + 5 = 750 + 1093.75 − 150 + 5 = 1698.75 kcal/day. Female, 28 years old, 60 kg, 162 cm: BMR = (10 × 60) + (6.25 × 162) − (5 × 28) − 161 = 600 + 1012.5 − 140 − 161 = 1311.5 kcal/day.
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