Average Daily Calorie Needs (TDEE) by Age and Sex (2026)

“How many calories should I eat in a day?” almost never has a single answer, because the real number moves with your sex, your age, your body size, and how much you move. The tables below cut through that by holding body size fixed and showing exactly how estimated maintenance calories — your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) — change across the decades for a reference man and woman. Every figure here is computed with the same Mifflin-St Jeor formula and activity factors that power our TDEE calculator, so the numbers are reproducible rather than rules of thumb.

Reference bodies and assumptions

To make the age-and-sex pattern clean and comparable, every row uses one fixed body per sex:

• Reference man: 5'10" (177.8 cm), 175 lb (79.4 kg)
• Reference woman: 5'4" (162.6 cm), 150 lb (68.0 kg)

These are deliberately close to U.S. average adult dimensions. If your height or weight differs much from these, your own number will shift — taller and heavier means more, shorter and lighter means less. Treat the table as the shape of the relationship, then run your exact stats through the calculator for a figure that is actually yours. The maintenance column is your estimated TDEE; the cut column subtracts 500 calories (about 1 lb/week of fat loss) and the bulk column adds 300 (a lean surplus).

Daily calorie needs by age and sex — men

Estimated maintenance calories (TDEE) for the reference man (5'10", 175 lb) at two activity levels, with cut and bulk targets.

A man in his 20s who is moderately active needs roughly 2,767 calories to maintain; by his 60s that has fallen to about 2,457 — a 310-calorie decline across four decades, with no change in height or weight. Want this computed for your real numbers instead of the reference body? Calculate your exact TDEE in about ten seconds.

Daily calorie needs by age and sex — women

Estimated maintenance calories (TDEE) for the reference woman (5'4", 150 lb) at two activity levels, with cut and bulk targets.

The same age slope shows up for women: about 2,186 calories at maintenance in the 20s when moderately active, easing to roughly 1,876 by the 60s. The sex gap is real and consistent — at every age and activity level the reference woman's maintenance sits about 580-590 calories below the reference man's, driven mostly by her smaller body mass and the formula's sex constant. If your body is different from the reference woman, calculate your exact TDEE rather than reading off this row.

The key insight: TDEE drops ~60-80 calories per decade

The cleanest pattern in the data is the steady age-related decline. Because the Mifflin-St Jeor equation subtracts exactly 5 calories of basal metabolic rate per year of age, the per-decade drop is constant once you fix activity level:

• Sedentary: about 60 calories per decade (5 cal/yr × 10 × 1.2 activity factor).
• Moderately active: about 78 calories per decade (5 cal/yr × 10 × 1.55).

Over forty years that compounds to a 240-310 calorie difference at maintenance — roughly the calories in a bagel or two glasses of wine, every single day. This is why eating exactly as you did at 25 tends to add weight by 45: your expenditure quietly fell while your intake did not. The formula attributes the entire decline to age, but in practice much of it tracks the gradual loss of metabolically active lean muscle. That is one reason resistance training and adequate protein intake blunt the slope — they preserve the tissue that keeps BMR up.

Methodology — how each number was computed

Every figure in the tables was generated with the identical logic the site's TDEE calculator runs. Two steps:

BMR = 10 × weight(kg) + 6.25 × height(cm) − 5 × age + s
(s = +5 for men, −161 for women)
TDEE = BMR × activity factor

The basal metabolic rate comes from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation (Mifflin et al., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1990, PMID 2305711), the equation the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recommends as the most accurate predictive formula for resting energy expenditure in healthy adults. The activity factors — 1.2 for sedentary and 1.55 for moderately active — are the standard physical activity level (PAL) multipliers used across dietetics and reflected in the FAO/WHO/UNU human energy requirements report (2004). The midpoint age of each band was used (25, 35, 45, 55, 65). BMR is multiplied by the activity factor and rounded to the nearest calorie, exactly as the calculator does. For a deeper look at where these formulas come from and how they compare, see how to calculate your TDEE and our five-formula comparison against lab data.

How accurate are these for a real person?

Honestly: they are good estimates for the two reference bodies, not measurements for you. Predictive equations like Mifflin-St Jeor carry a standard error of roughly ±140-200 calories even when height, weight, and age are exact, and the activity multiplier is a coarse bucket — real non-exercise activity (NEAT) can differ by up to 2,000 calories between two similar-sized people. Body composition matters too: at the same weight, a leaner, more muscular person burns more than the formula predicts, because muscle is more metabolically active than fat. We covered the full accuracy breakdown in how accurate online TDEE calculators really are. The practical takeaway: use the table to understand the age-and-sex pattern, calculate your exact TDEE from your own stats, then verify it against two to three weeks of real weight data and adjust by 100-200 calories.

Turning your number into a plan

Once you have your maintenance figure, the cut and bulk columns show the standard adjustments: subtract about 500 for fat loss, add 250-300 for a lean gain. The next step is splitting those calories into protein, carbs, and fat — our macro calculator does that from your TDEE, and the cutting vs bulking macro guide explains the ratios. There is also a real-world budgeting angle here: food is a major monthly expense, and your calorie target drives your grocery bill. If you are mapping a nutrition plan against a household budget, the take-home pay calculator at pay.thicket.sh helps you see how much of your actual paycheck the plan consumes after tax.

The bottom line

For a reference moderately active adult, daily maintenance calories run from about 2,767 (man, 20s) down to 1,876 (woman, 60s), declining a steady 60-80 calories per decade regardless of sex. Men sit roughly 580 calories above women of comparable build at every age. These are clean estimates for two fixed bodies — the only way to get your real number is to feed your own height, weight, age, and activity into the tool. Calculate your exact TDEE now, then move on to macros to turn the number into meals.