How many calories do you actually burn?

TDEE for men — the things to know

1,500 kcal is the practical floor

For most adult men, 1,500 kcal/day is the realistic calorie minimum. Going lower triggers metabolic adaptation, drops testosterone, and makes lifting feel awful. If your "fat-loss target" lands below that, dial the deficit back to 15–20% rather than 25%.

Lifting volume matters more than people think

Heavy strength training (3–5 sessions/week, near-failure work) burns less per session than steady-state cardio but raises resting metabolic rate slightly because it adds muscle. A man who lifts seriously for two years can carry 5–8 kg more muscle than his sedentary baseline, which lifts BMR by ~80–130 kcal/day for free. Be patient — that doesn't happen overnight, and it's why aggressive cuts that destroy muscle are short-sighted.

Age & the slow drift

Adult BMR drops about 2% per decade after the mid-20s, mostly because of muscle loss (sarcopenia) rather than a metabolism slowdown per se. Men who keep lifting hold this off into their 60s; men who don't typically lose 0.5–1 kg of muscle per decade by default. The same body weight at 50 with less muscle = lower TDEE = easier weight gain.

Surplus size for muscle gain

Despite the marketing, you don't need a 1,000 kcal surplus to build muscle. +200 to +400 kcal above TDEE supports gaining ~0.25–0.5 kg of mostly lean mass per month for natural lifters. Anything bigger ends up as fat — muscle protein synthesis caps regardless of how high you crank the kcals.

Full Mifflin-St Jeor formula and activity multiplier table on the main TDEE calculator page.