BMR and TDEE Calculator: Mifflin-St Jeor, and What the Activity Multipliers Are Worth

Basal metabolic rate from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, then total daily energy expenditure at every rung of the activity ladder at once — because the multiplier is the part of this arithmetic with no published derivation behind it, and the gap between the bottom rung and the top is about 1,100 kcal/day for an average adult. The equation’s own published accuracy is shown as a range beside the figure.

Last updated 5 Oct 2026

These are measurements of body size. They are not a judgement about you and they are not a diagnosis. They cannot see muscle, bone, where fat sits, or how healthy you are — two people with the same figure can be in very different health. Treat anything here as one rough signal among many, and speak to a doctor or dietitian before making a substantial change to how you eat.

Basal rate, the multiplier, and the whole ladder side by side

weight, height, age, sex and an activity figure → kcal/day, with the ladder and the error band

Sex as the equation uses itMifflin-St Jeor was fitted separately by sex and carries sex as a single term: +166 for male, 0 for female, on top of a shared constant of −161. It is a variable in a 1990 regression on 498 adults and nothing more. It is not a judgement about anybody, and where the question is not binary the honest reading is that the two answers bracket an estimate rather than that one of them is right. The difference the term makes is 166 kcal/day, whatever your size.

Body weight (kg)Weight in kilograms. The equation takes actual body weight, which is what it was fitted on, and its weight coefficient is 9.99 kcal/day per kilogram — so a 2 kg weighing error moves the answer by about 20 kcal/day, which is nothing, while a pound-for-kilogram mix-up moves it by hundreds.

Height (cm)Height in CENTIMETRES, not metres. This is the commonest way to be badly wrong here: the coefficient is 6.25 kcal/day per centimetre, so typing 1.75 instead of 175 removes about 1,080 kcal/day from the basal rate, and about 1,490 from the headline once a 1.375 multiplier is applied, with nothing on the screen looking unusual.

Age (years)Adults only; the page refuses below 18, because the equation was fitted on adults aged 19 to 78 and because children have their own equations with their own age bands. Age enters as a straight linear term, −4.92 kcal/day per year, which keeps subtracting for ever — so by the tenth decade the equation is extrapolating a long way past any data it ever saw.

Activity figureThese six figures are the weakest content on this page and the page says so rather than hiding it. The ladder 1.2 / 1.375 / 1.55 / 1.725 / 1.9 is on several hundred calculator sites, almost always attached to Harris-Benedict, and no primary study or derivation for it could be found in preparing this page. It is convention. What is published is the quantity it is trying to stand in for: the physical activity level, PAL, which is total energy expenditure divided by basal metabolic rate and is measured by doubly labelled water. The National Academies’ energy DRI bands PAL as sedentary 1.0 to 1.39, low active 1.4 to 1.59, active 1.6 to 1.89 and very active 1.9 to 2.5 — and when you lay the popular ladder over those bands, every rung except the first and the last sits one band lower than its name claims: 1.375 called lightly active is inside the sedentary band, 1.55 called moderately active is only low active, and 1.725 called very active is merely active. The rows below give the figure at every rung so that you can see what choosing one costs, and the note under the answer names the band your choice actually lands in.

Custom activity figure (PAL)Only used when the selector above says Custom, and locked otherwise so that the figure you can see is always the figure the page used. The floor is 1.00 because a total expenditure below the basal rate is not something a living body does; the ceiling is 2.5, which is the top of the National Academies’ very active band. If you have a measured PAL from a doubly-labelled-water study, this is the box for it, and it is the only figure on this page that would be a measurement of you rather than a convention.

2,202kcal/dayExample

a 40-year-old man, 70 kg, 175 cm, at 1.375 on the activity ladder

One regression, one convention, and one exact conversion

BMR = 9.99 W + 6.25 H − 4.92 A + 166 S − 161 · TDEE = BMR × PAL · PAL = TEE / BMR, which is what the multiplier is pretending to be · error band = BMR × 0.9 to BMR × 1.1, then × PAL · kJ = kcal × 4.184

W: body weight in kilograms. Coefficient 9.99 kcal/day per kg
H: height in CENTIMETRES. Coefficient 6.25 kcal/day per cm, so metres instead of centimetres costs about 1,080 kcal/day on the basal rate at average height, and more once a multiplier is applied
A: age in years. Coefficient −4.92 kcal/day per year, linear and unbounded; the fit covered ages 19 to 78
S: sex: 1 for male, 0 for female. Because the 1990 paper also prints 166 − 161 = +5 for men and −161 for women, the one-line and two-line versions of the equation are the same equation
PAL: physical activity level — total energy expenditure divided by basal metabolic rate. This is a measurable quantity: doubly labelled water measures total expenditure, calorimetry measures the basal rate, and the ratio is the PAL. The ladder on this page is a guess at it from a description of a lifestyle, which is a different and much weaker thing
0.9 to 1.1: the ±10 per cent band the equation’s published accuracy is stated against: about 87 per cent of adults with a body mass index below 30, and 75 per cent of those at or above it, fall inside it. It is a band around the BASAL rate; multiplying it by PAL widens it in proportion, which is why a high rung makes the uncertainty bigger in absolute terms as well as the answer
round to 3 dp: the multiplier is rounded to three decimal places before it is used, and the band it falls in is decided on that rounded figure, so what you can see is what chose the answer. Three places rather than two, because two destroys the ladder: 1.375 × 100 = 137.5 and a half rounds up, so 1.375 would become 1.38 and the headline would move by 8 kcal/day for an average adult. The effective band boundaries are therefore 1.3995, 1.5995 and 1.8995, and on the three-decimal grid the rounded and unrounded figures never disagree about which band a value is in
4.184: the exact number of kilojoules in a thermochemical kilocalorie, which is the kilocalorie used for food energy. A definition, not a measurement, so the kcal and kJ rows here cannot disagree

Worked example

a 40-year-old man, 70 kg, 175 cm, at 1.375 on the activity ladder
The equation first, term by term: 9.99 × 70 = 699.3, plus 6.25 × 175 = 1,093.75, minus 4.92 × 40 = 196.8, plus 166 for male, minus 161. That is 699.3 + 1,093.75 − 196.8 + 166 − 161 = 1,601.25 kcal/day basal. The clinical energy requirement page prints 1,601.25 for the same person, and a test in this project’s suite fails if the two pages ever stop agreeing on that figure — a reader moving between them must not find two different numbers.
Now the multiplier: 1,601.25 × 1.375 = 2,201.72 kcal/day, which the headline rounds to 2,202. The multiplier added 600 kcal a day, which is 37 per cent of the basal rate, from a figure with no published derivation.
So look at the whole ladder, because that is the honest output. The same man gets 1,922 kcal/day at 1.20, 2,202 at 1.375, 2,482 at 1.55, 2,762 at 1.725 and 3,042 at 1.90. The spread from bottom rung to top is 1,121 kcal/day — 70 per cent of his basal rate. No other choice on this page moves the answer by anything like that much.
Then the error band, which most calculators do not print at all. Mifflin-St Jeor lands within 10 per cent of a measured resting metabolic rate in about 87 per cent of adults whose body mass index is below 30. Ten per cent of 1,601.25 is 160 kcal/day on the basal rate, and at 1.375 that becomes 1,982 to 2,422 kcal/day — a band 440 kcal wide, for a man of entirely ordinary build, before anybody has decided anything. And roughly one adult in eight falls outside even that band.
Put the two together and the arithmetic says something worth saying plainly: the uncertainty in this figure is comparable to the size of any sensible change you might make on the back of it. A 440 kcal band and a 1,121 kcal ladder spread, against a deficit of perhaps 300 to 500 kcal/day, mean that the number is a starting point to be corrected against what actually happens to your weight over a few weeks, not a budget to be hit.
Two things this page deliberately does not do. It does not compare five equations — Mifflin-St Jeor, the 1919 Harris-Benedict, the Roza and Shizgal 1984 revision, Schofield and Henry — because the energy requirement page does exactly that and prints the spread between them, which for this man is 93 kcal/day. And it carries no stress or injury factors at all: those multiply a basal rate for illness, injury or burns, they belong to a clinician rather than to a reader, and they are on that same page with the provenance table they need.

The popular ladder against the published PAL bands

The multipliers in the second column are the ladder that circulates on calculator sites; no primary source for them could be found in preparing this page. The bands in the third column are the physical activity level categories in the National Academies’ energy DRI, which are derived from measured total energy expenditure. Laying one over the other is the most useful thing this page does: three of the six rungs sit a whole band below the activity level their label claims, so a reader who honestly describes themselves as moderately active and picks 1.55 is being given a figure the published categories call low active. The last column is the arithmetic consequence — 1,601 to 3,042 kcal/day for one unchanged man, a spread of 1,121 kcal/day, or 70 per cent of his basal rate.
Rung, as the ladder labels it	Multiplier	Band it actually falls in	kcal/day for a 70 kg, 175 cm, 40-year-old man
Basal rate only	1.00	below the lowest band — this is the denominator, not a PAL	1,601
Sedentary	1.20	Sedentary (1.0–1.39)	1,922
Lightly active	1.375	Sedentary (1.0–1.39) — one band below the name	2,202
Moderately active	1.55	Low active (1.4–1.59) — one band below the name	2,482
Very active	1.725	Active (1.6–1.89) — one band below the name	2,762
Extra active	1.90	Very active (1.9–2.5), at its very bottom	3,042

What is solid here and what is not

Four rows of this table are citable and one is not, and the one that is not is the row that moves the answer most. That asymmetry is the whole reason this page prints the ladder rather than hiding it inside a single total: a multiplier offered quietly in a dropdown tells the reader something about the page’s confidence that is not true.
Figure	Where it comes from	How far you can lean on it
The equation: 9.99 / 6.25 / 4.92 / 166 / −161	Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST and colleagues, Am J Clin Nutr 1990;51:241–7. A regression on 498 healthy adults (247 women, 251 men) aged 19 to 78, resting energy expenditure measured by indirect calorimetry, R² = 0.71.	The strongest thing on the page. The coefficients can be checked against the paper, and the equation’s accuracy has been measured against calorimetry rather than asserted.
±10 per cent as the error band	Frankenfield DC, Clin Nutr 2013;32(6):976–82: Mifflin-St Jeor predicted within 10 per cent of measured resting metabolic rate in 87 per cent of adults with a body mass index below 30 and 75 per cent of those at or above it, and was unbiased overall (95 per cent CI −26 to +8 kcal/day). Frankenfield and colleagues’ earlier systematic review, J Am Diet Assoc 2005;105:775–89, found it the most reliable of the equations tested.	A published, measured accuracy, which is rare in this subject. Note what it does NOT say: it is not a confidence interval on your own figure, and roughly one adult in eight — one in four at a body mass index of 30 or more — falls outside it altogether.
1.2 / 1.375 / 1.55 / 1.725 / 1.9	No primary source found. The ladder appears on a very large number of calculator sites, usually attached to Harris-Benedict, and the author of this page could not trace it to a study, a report or a derivation.	Convention, and the page labels it as convention. It is offered because a reader wants a total rather than a basal figure, and because showing every rung at once is more honest than hiding the choice inside one answer.
Sedentary 1.0–1.39, low active 1.4–1.59, active 1.6–1.89, very active 1.9–2.5	Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fibre, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein and Amino Acids, National Academies, 2002/2005, chapter 5. Derived from total energy expenditure measured by doubly labelled water.	A published classification of a measurable ratio, and the right yardstick to hold the ladder against. It is a band for a PAL you have measured or estimated, not a lifestyle questionnaire; the report’s own energy equations use separate physical-activity coefficients rather than these bands.
A measured figure	Indirect calorimetry for the basal rate, doubly labelled water for total expenditure.	Displaces everything on this page. Neither is available to most readers, which is the only reason any of the above exists.

The ladder spread at four body sizes

Computed by this page’s own engine. The ladder spread is 70 per cent of the basal rate in every row, and it has to be: the spread is BMR × (1.90 − 1.20), so it scales with the basal rate exactly. That is worth noticing, because it means the activity choice is never a small correction — it is always the largest single term after the weight. The last column is the error band at one middle rung; widen it in proportion for a higher rung.
Person	Basal rate	At 1.20	At 1.90	Ladder spread	±10 per cent band at 1.375
Man, 70 kg, 175 cm, 40 y	1,601	1,922	3,042	1,121 kcal (70% of basal)	1,982 to 2,422
Woman, 70 kg, 175 cm, 40 y	1,435	1,722	2,727	1,005 kcal (70% of basal)	1,776 to 2,171
Man, 85 kg, 180 cm, 25 y	1,856	2,227	3,527	1,299 kcal (70% of basal)	2,297 to 2,807
Woman, 50 kg, 160 cm, 30 y	1,191	1,429	2,263	834 kcal (70% of basal)	1,474 to 1,801

A basal rate you can check, multiplied by a number nobody can source

This page is two very different calculations stuck together, and it is worth knowing which is which. The first is the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, published in 1990 from indirect calorimetry on 498 healthy adults: five coefficients you can read off the paper, an R² of 0.71, and a measured accuracy — within 10 per cent of a calorimetry figure in about 87 per cent of adults whose body mass index is below 30. That is about as good as this subject gets without putting somebody under a hood. The second is the multiplication by an activity figure, and no primary source for the familiar ladder could be found in preparing this page. It is convention: a set of six numbers that appear on calculator site after calculator site, usually bolted onto Harris-Benedict, with no study, no report and no derivation behind them that could be traced. The page therefore prints the basal rate on its own, prints the figure at every rung of the ladder, and prints the spread between the bottom rung and the top — which for an average adult is over a thousand kilocalories a day.

The spread is the point, and most calculators hide it. For a 70 kg, 175 cm, 40-year-old man the ladder runs from 1,922 kcal/day at its bottom rung to 3,042 at its top. That is a range of 1,121 kcal/day, 70 per cent of his basal rate, and it is produced entirely by which of six descriptions of a lifestyle he picks. Nothing else on this page comes close to moving the answer that much: the choice between Mifflin-St Jeor and the four other common equations is worth about 93 kcal/day for the same man, and the equation’s own published error band is 440 kcal wide at the middle rung. A page that asks you to self-describe as moderately active and then hands you one number has quietly made the biggest decision in the calculation on your behalf and shown you none of it.

And the labels on the ladder are optimistic. The quantity the multiplier is standing in for has a name and a measurement: the physical activity level, or PAL, is total energy expenditure divided by basal metabolic rate, and doubly labelled water measures the first while calorimetry measures the second. The National Academies’ energy report bands PAL as sedentary from 1.0 to 1.39, low active 1.4 to 1.59, active 1.6 to 1.89 and very active 1.9 to 2.5. Lay the popular ladder over those bands and three of its six rungs sit a whole band below the activity level their name claims. The rung called lightly active, 1.375, is inside the sedentary band. The rung called moderately active, 1.55, is only low active. The rung called very active, 1.725, is merely active. Only 1.20 and 1.90 land where their labels suggest. The result note on this page names the band your chosen figure actually falls in, because that is a published category of a measurable ratio and the rung name is not.

What to do with the uncertainty, since it will not go away. Two independent widths sit on this figure: the equation’s own ±10 per cent, which is about 440 kcal/day at a middle rung for an average adult, and the ladder’s 1,121 kcal/day. Both are large compared with any change somebody might make on the strength of the answer. The practical consequence is that the figure is a starting point rather than a budget. The one measurement that settles it is free and it is already happening: weigh yourself consistently over three or four weeks at a steady intake, and the direction and speed of the change tells you more about your own expenditure than any equation can. If your weight is stable, your maintenance intake is whatever you were eating, and that observation beats every number on this page. If you want a PAL that is a measurement rather than a description, the custom box takes one.

What this page deliberately leaves to other pages. It does not compare predictive equations: the energy requirement page computes Mifflin-St Jeor, the 1919 Harris-Benedict, the Roza and Shizgal 1984 revision, Schofield 1985 and Henry 2005 side by side, prints the gap between them, and gives each one’s standard error. It shares this page’s Mifflin-St Jeor arithmetic exactly — the same expression, character for character — and the project’s test suite pins both so that neither can drift from the other. It also carries the clinical stress and injury factors, with a provenance table explaining why they are typed in rather than chosen from a list, and those do not appear here at all: multiplying a reader’s basal rate for illness is a clinician’s decision, not a consumer calculation. Protein by clinical condition, in grams per kilogram per day, is on the protein requirement page; turning a total energy figure into grams of protein, carbohydrate and fat is on the macronutrient split page; and what happens when you subtract a deficit from a figure like this one — including why the page refuses rather than answering when the subtraction would take you below your own basal rate — is on the calorie deficit page. Fluid alongside energy is on the adult fluid requirement page for the clinical case and the daily water intake page for everybody else.

One small thing about the equation that trips up anybody comparing two sites. The 1990 paper prints the regression as fitted, 9.99 W + 6.25 H − 4.92 A + 166 S − 161, and it also prints a rounded sex-specific version, 10 W + 6.25 H − 5 A + 5 for men and −161 for women. Both are Mifflin-St Jeor; they differ by a couple of kilocalories a day; and which one a calculator has implemented is almost never stated. This page uses the regression as fitted, which is the same choice the energy requirement page makes, and that page prints both forms and the difference between them if you want to see it. If your figure here disagrees with another site’s by two or three kcal, that is almost certainly all it is.

Frequently asked questions

Where do the activity multipliers come from?

Nowhere that could be verified, and the page says so rather than presenting them bare. The ladder 1.2, 1.375, 1.55, 1.725 and 1.9 appears on a very large number of calculator sites, almost always attached to the Harris-Benedict equation, and no study, report or derivation for those six figures could be found in preparing this page. What can be sourced is the quantity they are standing in for: the physical activity level, total energy expenditure divided by basal metabolic rate, which doubly labelled water measures directly. The National Academies’ energy report bands it as sedentary 1.0 to 1.39, low active 1.4 to 1.59, active 1.6 to 1.89 and very active 1.9 to 2.5, and the page tells you which band your choice falls in. The honest summary is that the equation is evidence and the multiplier is a guess, so the page shows you every rung instead of picking one.

Which rung should I pick?

The page will not choose for you, and the comparison table is the reason. Three of the six rungs sit a whole band below the activity level their label claims, so self-describing honestly and picking the matching rung tends to overestimate. If you want a defensible approach: pick the rung one step lower than the label you would have chosen, read the figure, and then check it against reality by weighing yourself consistently for three or four weeks at a steady intake. Your own weight trend is a measurement of your expenditure; the ladder is not. If you have a PAL from a doubly-labelled-water study, use the custom box, which is the only input on this page that could be a measurement of you.

Why does this page show a range as well as a number?

Because the equation has a published accuracy and most calculators do not print it. Mifflin-St Jeor lands within 10 per cent of a measured resting metabolic rate in about 87 per cent of adults whose body mass index is below 30 and about 75 per cent of those at or above it. Ten per cent of an average adult basal rate is around 160 kcal/day, which becomes about 440 kcal/day of width once a mid-ladder multiplier is applied. That band is comparable in size to any deficit or surplus somebody might plan from the figure, which is exactly why hiding it is misleading. And note what the band is not: it is not a confidence interval on your own number, and roughly one adult in eight falls outside it entirely.

How does this differ from the energy requirement calculator?

That page is written for a clinician with a patient. It computes five published equations — Mifflin-St Jeor, the 1919 Harris-Benedict, the Roza and Shizgal 1984 revision, Schofield 1985 and Henry 2005 — prints all five side by side with the spread between them, and applies activity AND stress or injury factors as separately sourced steps with a provenance table. This page is written for the person whose body it is. It uses one equation, carries no stress factors at all, and spends its effort on the activity ladder instead, because that is the part a reader actually has to choose. The two share the Mifflin-St Jeor arithmetic exactly and the test suite fails if they ever disagree on it, so you can move between them without finding two different basal figures.

Is BMR the same as RMR, and does it matter?

They are near neighbours rather than the same thing. Basal metabolic rate is measured after an overnight fast, at rest, in a thermoneutral room, usually on waking; resting metabolic rate is measured under less strict conditions and comes out a few per cent higher. Mifflin-St Jeor was fitted on RESTING energy expenditure, so strictly the figure this page prints is an RMR estimate even though the field is universally labelled BMR. The difference is usually put at a few per cent, which is inside the ±10 per cent band already shown, so it does not change what you do with the number — but it is the reason you should not treat a figure from this page and a figure from a BMR equation as two measurements of one quantity.

Why does it refuse an age under 18, or an activity figure below 1.00?

Different reasons, both about refusing to produce a plausible wrong answer. The equation was fitted on adults aged 19 to 78; applying it to a child would give a number that looks fine and means nothing, and children have their own equations with their own age bands. An activity figure below 1.00 would mean a total daily expenditure below the basal rate, which is not something a living body does — it is an input error, so the page says so rather than answering it. The ceiling of 2.5 on the custom box is the top of the published very active band; above that the page is being asked about an activity level the measurement literature does not contain for a whole week of ordinary life.

The answer changed by two kilocalories when I tried another site. Why?

Almost certainly because the two sites implemented different printings of the same 1990 paper. The paper gives the regression as fitted — 9.99 for weight, 6.25 for height, 4.92 for age — and also a rounded sex-specific form using 10, 6.25 and 5. Both are Mifflin-St Jeor and they differ by a couple of kilocalories a day for an average adult. This page uses the regression as fitted. The energy requirement page prints both forms and the difference between them, which is the quickest way to settle an argument of this kind. A disagreement of more than about ten kilocalories is a different problem and usually means one site has a unit or a coefficient wrong.

Related calculators

References

Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, Hill LA, Scott BJ, Daugherty SA, Koh YO. A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. Am J Clin Nutr 1990;51(2):241–7. The one equation implemented on this page: REE = 9.99 × weight(kg) + 6.25 × height(cm) − 4.92 × age(y) + 166 × sex(male 1, female 0) − 161, R² = 0.71, from 498 healthy subjects (247 female, 251 male) aged 19–78 measured by indirect calorimetry. The same paper also prints a rounded sex-specific form (10 / 6.25 / 5, +5 for men and −161 for women); this page uses the regression as fitted. The expression used here is character-for-character identical to the one on the health plugin’s energy requirement page, and a golden test case on each record pins both to 1,601.25 kcal/day for a 70 kg, 175 cm, 40-year-old man so that neither can drift from the other.
Frankenfield DC. Bias and accuracy of resting metabolic rate equations in non-obese and obese adults. Clin Nutr 2013;32(6):976–82. Source of the accuracy figures this page states and of its ±10 per cent error band: Mifflin-St Jeor predicted resting metabolic rate within 10 per cent of measured in 87 per cent of non-obese and 75 per cent of obese adults, and was unbiased overall, 95 per cent confidence interval −26 to +8 kcal/day. The other equations tested (Harris-Benedict, Müller, Vander Weg, and the WHO and Oxford forms) tended to overestimate.
Frankenfield D, Roth-Yousey L, Compher C. Comparison of predictive equations for resting metabolic rate in healthy nonobese and obese adults: a systematic review. J Am Diet Assoc 2005;105(5):775–89. The systematic review behind the general preference for Mifflin-St Jeor in healthy adults; it concluded that the equation predicted resting metabolic rate within 10 per cent of measured in more non-obese and obese individuals than any other equation tested. Cited for that conclusion rather than for any coefficient.
Institute of Medicine (now the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine). Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids, 2002/2005, chapter 5. Source of the physical activity level bands used on this page as the yardstick for the popular ladder: sedentary PAL 1.0–1.39, low active 1.4–1.59, active 1.6–1.89, very active 1.9–2.5, derived from total energy expenditure measured by doubly labelled water. Note that the report’s own Estimated Energy Requirement equations apply separate physical-activity COEFFICIENTS rather than multiplying a basal rate by these bands, so the bands are used here to classify a ratio and not as a method.
Activity multipliers 1.2 / 1.375 / 1.55 / 1.725 / 1.9. PROVENANCE NOTE, recorded because it is part of what this page had to establish and because the figures are the single largest term in its arithmetic after body weight: no primary source for this ladder could be found. It circulates very widely on calculator sites, usually attached to the Harris-Benedict equation, and the author of this page could not trace it to a study, an expert report or a published derivation. It is offered here as convention, labelled as convention, with every rung computed at once and with each rung mapped onto the published PAL bands above so that the mismatch between the rung names and the measured categories is visible. If a primary source exists, this page should be corrected to cite it.
Thermochemical kilocalorie: 1 kcal is 4.184 kJ exactly, by definition, and this is the kilocalorie used for food energy. The international steam-table calorie (4.1868 J) and the 15 °C calorie (about 4.1855 J) are different definitions and are not used here. A defined conversion factor is nobody’s intellectual property, so the kcal and kJ rows on this page can never disagree.
Licensing position taken for this page, recorded deliberately. The Mifflin-St Jeor equation is a method and is reproduced with attribution, which is normal scholarly use. The PAL bands are from a National Academies consensus report; four figures and their labels are cited, not the report’s text, and the National Academies route was chosen over the FAO/WHO/UNU lifestyle categories because this site carries advertising and WHO material is licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO, whose NonCommercial term rules it out. No NICE text, criteria or table is used anywhere on this page. No criteria list is reproduced.

CalcEngines health calculators are for education and for checking arithmetic that has already been decided elsewhere. They are not medical advice, they do not decide what to give, and they do not replace the judgement of a doctor, nurse, midwife or dietitian who knows the person in front of them. Every figure depends on the values you enter and on the assumptions stated on the page — check it against the prescription, the product label and your local policy before acting on it.