TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)

This is a formula used to calculate a rough estimate of your baseline daily calorie expenditure.

This gives you a starting point to base your deficit from if you don't yet know what your maintenance is. This is NOT a bullet proof perfect formula. It is a starting point.

Everything here is mostly straight forward except maybe the activity levels, so I'll talk about the activity levels here.

Activity Level

Sedentary: If your weekly activity consists of mostly sitting and less than 2 work outs per week.

Lightly active: You may workout 2-4 times per week and have a sedentary job, or no workouts and spend a good portion of your day on your feet walking about and active (10k+ steps per day)

Moderately Active: Moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days a week. You can compare this to lifting weights for 45min 5 days a week, or a very active sport 3x per week.

Very Active: Every day of the week you do some intense sport or activity for 1 hour+ each day, but otherwise have a mostly relaxed lifestyle. Or you may actually exercise less, but have a job working on your feet most of the day.

Extra Active: You intense exercise 4-7 days a week and work at a hard labor job. Construction workers would easily fit this.

‍

Macro Targets

Your TDEE profile is at the top, and you can edit it by tapping on any of them.

First you want to choose whether you want to be in a deficit or a surplus

🔥 Deficit numbers, more aggressive to the left.
💪 Surplus numbers, more aggressive to the right.

Target Calories

These are the total calories you'll be aiming for. Then below it'll break out into the different macronutrient groups.

Protein Grams

0.85g/lb is the lowest protein you should consume if you are performing resistance exercises. Protein helps with satiety and to trigger protein synthesis. But too much protein in a single meal can also cause digestive challenges. More on protein to come.

Fats and Carbs

This is where your energy comes from after you've allocated protein. You can divvy up between fats and carbs based on preference or whether or not you're training on a specific day.

Training days should require more carbs. Rest days more fats. With fats, try to avoid going too low (15% or less).

‍

‍