Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
The energy your body burns at complete rest — the floor of your daily calorie expenditure.
BMR is the cost of simply being alive: heart beating, brain thinking, cells housekeeping. It typically accounts for 60–70% of daily burn and scales mostly with body size and lean mass — which is why two people of equal weight can differ if one carries more muscle, and why BMR falls as weight is lost.
Calculators (Mifflin-St Jeor is the common formula) estimate it from height, weight, age, and sex; add activity and you get TDEE, the number diet math is built on. The planning takeaway: a deficit is defined against a moving target, so the intake that melted the first ten kilograms merely maintains after the next ten — recalibration isn't failure, it's arithmetic.
This glossary entry is general information, not medical advice, and is written to be consistent with FDA prescribing information and primary trial publications as of its last review. Always consult a licensed healthcare provider for personal medical decisions.
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