Exactly How Many Calories Do You Burn A Day Without Exercise?

Yes, you burn calories every single day, even when you are not doing planned exercise. Your body constantly uses energy to stay alive and function. This includes things like breathing, pumping blood, keeping your organs working, growing new cells, and maintaining body temperature. The exact number of calories you burn without exercise is different for everyone, but it makes up the largest part of your total daily energy use.

How Many Calories Do You Burn A Day Without Exercise
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Discovering Your Body’s Resting Energy Needs

Even when you are just sitting or sleeping, your body is working hard. It needs energy to keep your heart beating, your lungs breathing, your brain active, and all your other basic functions going. This basic energy need is often called your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) or Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR).

What BMR and RMR Mean

Think of BMR and RMR as the number of calories your body uses just to stay alive.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): This is the lowest amount of energy your body needs to keep working while you are completely at rest. This means you are not digesting food, you are in a comfortable temperature, and you are mentally and physically relaxed. Measuring true BMR needs special conditions, like being in a dark room after a night’s sleep and a period without food.
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): This is the number of calories your body burns while at rest. It’s very similar to BMR and is often used instead because it’s easier to measure. It’s measured after a period of rest but doesn’t require the strict conditions of BMR testing. RMR is usually slightly higher than BMR (around 10-20%). For most people, RMR and BMR numbers are quite close and used almost interchangeably in general talks.

So, when people talk about calories burned at rest, they are usually referring to your BMR or RMR. This is the biggest part of the calories you burn each day without hitting the gym.

Looking at Your Total Daily Energy Use

Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is the total number of calories your body uses in a 24-hour period. This number includes everything your body does that uses energy.

TDEE can be broken down into a few main parts:

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) or Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): As we talked about, this is the energy for basic life functions at rest.
Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): This is the energy your body uses to digest, absorb, and store the food you eat.
Activity Energy Expenditure: This is the energy you use doing physical things. This part is often split into two:
- Planned Exercise: Things like running, swimming, lifting weights, or going to a fitness class.
- Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): This is the energy used for all your other physical movements throughout the day that are not planned exercise.

When we talk about how many calories you burn a day without exercise, we are mostly talking about the sum of your BMR/RMR, TEF, and NEAT. Planned exercise is the part we are leaving out in this discussion.

Grasping Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)

While your BMR/RMR covers the energy your body uses at complete rest, NEAT covers the energy used for everything else you do that isn’t formal exercise. It’s a very important part of your daily calorie burn, especially if you don’t exercise regularly.

What Counts as NEAT?

NEAT includes a huge range of daily movements:

Walking around your house
Standing up
Sitting down
Fidgeting (tapping your foot, moving your hands)
Walking to your car or bus stop
Taking the stairs
Doing chores around the house (cleaning, cooking, gardening)
Shopping
Working (walking around an office, typing, using tools)
Playing with pets or children
Even just changing your posture

Think about your day. Every time you move in a way that isn’t a workout, you are using NEAT.

Why NEAT Matters

NEAT can vary a lot from person to person. Someone with a very active job (like a construction worker or server) will have much higher NEAT than someone with a desk job. Even small things, like choosing to stand instead of sit, or walking to a coworker’s desk instead of sending an email, add up.

For some people, the difference in NEAT between a very sedentary day and a slightly more active day can be hundreds of calories. This is why increasing your NEAT can be a simple way to burn more daily calories burned sedentary activities don’t cover.

Figuring Out Your Metabolism Rate

Your Metabolism rate is simply how fast your body uses energy. Your BMR/RMR is the main part of your metabolism rate when you are at rest. Many things influence this rate.

Factors Affecting Calorie Burn Without Exercise

The number of daily calories burned sedentary or just at rest is not the same for everyone. Many things play a role:

Age: As you get older, your BMR tends to slow down. This is partly because people often lose muscle mass as they age.
Sex: Men usually have a higher BMR than women. This is generally because men tend to have more muscle mass and are typically larger than women.
Weight: People who weigh more generally burn more calories at rest. This is because a larger body requires more energy to keep its functions going.
Height: Taller people often have higher BMRs than shorter people of the same weight and sex.
Body Composition: This is a very important factor. Muscle tissue burns more calories at rest than fat tissue. Someone with more muscle mass will have a higher BMR than someone of the same weight who has more body fat.
Genetics: Your genes play a role in determining your natural metabolism rate. Some people are naturally able to burn more calories at rest than others.
Hormones: Hormones, like thyroid hormones, greatly affect your metabolism. If you have an overactive thyroid (hyperthyroidism), your BMR can be much higher. An underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism) can lower it.
Environmental Temperature: If you are in a very cold or very hot environment, your body has to use more energy to maintain its core temperature. This slightly increases your calorie burn.
Health Status: Being sick, having a fever, or recovering from an injury or surgery can increase your BMR as your body works to heal itself.
Nutrition: Severe calorie restriction over a long time can slow down your metabolism as your body tries to save energy. The Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) also varies slightly depending on what you eat (protein burns more calories during digestion than fats or carbs).

Estimating Calories Burned at Rest (BMR/RMR)

Since measuring BMR or RMR perfectly requires special equipment (like indirect calorimetry), most people use formulas to estimate it. Keep in mind these are just estimates!

Two common formulas are the Mifflin-St Jeor equation and the revised Harris-Benedict equation.

Mifflin-St Jeor Equation:

For Men: BMR = (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) – (5 × age in years) + 5
For Women: BMR = (10 × weight in kg) + (6.25 × height in cm) – (5 × age in years) – 161

Revised Harris-Benedict Equation:

For Men: BMR = (13.397 × weight in kg) + (4.799 × height in cm) – (5.677 × age in years) + 88.362
For Women: BMR = (9.247 × weight in kg) + (3.098 × height in cm) – (4.330 × age in years) + 447.593

Let’s do a simple example using Mifflin-St Jeor:

Imagine a 35-year-old woman who is 165 cm tall (about 5’5″) and weighs 60 kg (about 132 lbs).

Weight part: 10 * 60 = 600
Height part: 6.25 * 165 = 1031.25
Age part: 5 * 35 = 175
Formula: 600 + 1031.25 – 175 – 161 = 1295.25

So, her estimated BMR is about 1295 calories per day. This is roughly the minimum number of calories burned at rest just for her body to function if she were lying still all day.

Important: These formulas give you an estimate of your BMR. They don’t account for your specific muscle-to-fat ratio, which is a big factor. Someone with more muscle will burn more calories at rest than these formulas might suggest.

Using BMR to Estimate TDEE (Including Non-Exercise Calories)

Once you have an estimated BMR, you can estimate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) by adding in your activity level (including NEAT). This is where the “without exercise” part gets tricky to put a single number on, as NEAT varies so much.

Commonly, TDEE calculators use an activity multiplier based on how active you are overall, including both NEAT and planned exercise. But we want to look at non-exercise calories specifically.

A simpler way to think about daily calories burned sedentary is to take your BMR and add a factor for minimal activity (NEAT).

Sedentary: If you do very little or no exercise and have a job where you sit most of the day with minimal walking around (low NEAT), you might multiply your BMR by a factor like 1.2. This covers your BMR, a low level of NEAT, and the Thermic Effect of Food.

Example (using the woman from above with BMR ~1295):

Estimated TDEE (sedentary): 1295 * 1.2 = ~1554 calories per day.

This ~1554 calories is a rough estimate of her total daily energy expenditure if she is mostly inactive, meaning her planned exercise is zero, and her NEAT is very low (like sitting most of the day). It includes her BMR, the small amount of NEAT from moving around the house slightly, and the calories used to digest food.

Average Daily Calorie Burn Without Exercise

It’s hard to give one average number because of all the factors we discussed. However, we can look at typical ranges for BMR and add in average NEAT for different activity levels.

Typical BMR: For adult women, BMR often falls between 1200 and 1600 calories per day. For adult men, it’s often between 1500 and 2000 calories per day. Remember, this is just the resting part.
NEAT Variation:
- Very Sedentary (desk job, little moving): NEAT might add only a few hundred calories (e.g., 200-400 kcal).
- Low Active (some standing, light chores): NEAT might add 400-800 kcal.
- Moderately Active (more standing, walking around, active job): NEAT could add 800-1500+ kcal.

Putting it Together (Without Planned Exercise)

If we consider someone who does no planned exercise:

Their total non-exercise calorie burn is roughly: BMR/RMR + TEF + NEAT.
TEF is usually about 10% of your total calories eaten, but it’s also related to how many calories you burn overall. We can estimate it as a small percentage of BMR or TDEE.
For simplicity, let’s combine TEF with BMR and NEAT based on activity level.

Here are some rough estimates for average daily calorie burn without planned exercise, based on activity level (mostly NEAT):

Activity Level (Mostly NEAT)	Example	Estimated Total Daily Calorie Burn (No Planned Exercise)	Notes
Sedentary	Desk job, little walking, mostly sitting	1500 – 2200 calories per day	Includes BMR/RMR, low NEAT, TEF
Lightly Active	Desk job but stands often, light chores	1800 – 2500 calories per day	Includes BMR/RMR, moderate NEAT, TEF
Moderately Active	Active job (teacher, nurse), walks a lot	2200 – 3000+ calories per day	Includes BMR/RMR, high NEAT, TEF

Important Caveats:

These numbers are just rough average daily calorie burn estimates.
They include BMR/RMR, the calories used for digestion (TEF), and the calories used for all non-exercise movement (NEAT).
Someone with higher muscle mass, a higher weight, or who is younger will likely be on the higher end of these ranges.
Someone with lower muscle mass, lower weight, or who is older will likely be on the lower end.
Someone with a truly sedentary lifestyle (very low NEAT) will burn significantly fewer calories than someone with a physically demanding job, even if neither does formal exercise.

Looking at Calories Burned Sleeping

People often wonder how many calories burned sleeping. Yes, you absolutely burn calories while you sleep! Your body is still performing all its vital functions: breathing, circulating blood, repairing cells, brain activity, and maintaining temperature.

How Many Calories Do You Burn While Sleeping?

The rate at which you burn calories while sleeping is very close to your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). It might be slightly lower because your body is fully relaxed and your brain activity is different than when you’re awake and resting, but it’s a good estimate.

On average, an adult burns about 0.4 to 0.5 calories per pound of body weight per hour while sleeping.
Another way to estimate: Multiply your BMR by the fraction of the day you spend sleeping. If your BMR is 1500 calories and you sleep for 8 hours (which is 8/24 or 1/3 of the day), you burn roughly 1500 * (8/24) = 500 calories while sleeping.

So, while sleeping is a very low-calorie activity compared to even light movement, it still contributes a significant number of calories burned at rest over a typical night.

Breaking Down Daily Calories Burned Sedentary

A sedentary lifestyle means you spend most of your day sitting or lying down. Your physical activity, including NEAT, is very low.

Components of Sedentary Calorie Burn

For someone with a daily calories burned sedentary pattern:

BMR/RMR: This is the largest part, keeping your body functioning at rest.
TEF: The calories used for digestion, which depends on how much you eat.
Very Low NEAT: Only includes minimal movements like getting out of bed, walking to the kitchen, going to the bathroom, typing, sitting down and standing up occasionally.

Someone who is truly sedentary might have a TDEE (without planned exercise) that is only their BMR multiplied by a factor of 1.2 to 1.4. The low multiplier reflects their low NEAT and TEF based on likely lower food intake compared to an active person.

Using our example woman with a BMR of 1295:

Estimated daily burn (sedentary): 1295 * 1.2 = ~1554 calories.
Estimated daily burn (lightly active NEAT): 1295 * 1.35 = ~1748 calories.
Estimated daily burn (moderately active NEAT): 1295 * 1.5 = ~1943 calories.

These examples show how much NEAT (the non-exercise activity) can change the total number of calories burned in a day, even without planned workouts. A moderately active person burns significantly more calories throughout the day just from moving around than a sedentary person with the same BMR.

Summarizing How Calories Are Burned Without Exercise

To recap, your body burns calories all the time to power its essential functions. This makes up the bulk of your daily energy use for most people.

The calories burned without exercise are primarily made up of three parts:

Your Resting Metabolism (BMR/RMR): The energy needed for basic life support. This is the biggest piece of the pie.
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): The energy used for all your daily movements that aren’t formal exercise. This part can vary a lot and has a big impact on your total daily burn.
Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): The energy used to process the food you eat. This is the smallest part.

Your age, sex, weight, height, body makeup (muscle vs. fat), genetics, and even the temperature around you all influence your metabolism rate and how many calories burned at rest. The amount of moving you do throughout the day (your NEAT) is the biggest difference between someone with low daily calories burned sedentary and someone who burns more calories just by being more active in their daily life.

While formulas can give you an estimate of your BMR and rough ideas of average daily calorie burn, the exact number is unique to you on any given day.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Many Calories Do You Burn A Day While Doing Nothing?

You burn calories all day long, even when you are doing “nothing” like sitting or sleeping. This is your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) or Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), which is the energy your body needs to keep vital functions going. For most adults, this is typically between 1200 and 2000 calories per day, but it varies greatly based on individual factors like age, sex, weight, and muscle mass.

Is BMR the Same as Calories Burned at Rest?

Yes, BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) and RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) are both terms for the calories your body burns while at rest to maintain basic life functions. RMR is slightly easier to measure and is often used in place of BMR; the numbers are very similar. So, when people talk about calories burned at rest, they usually mean their BMR or RMR.

Does Having More Muscle Burn More Calories at Rest?

Yes, absolutely. Muscle tissue is more active metabolically than fat tissue. This means that even when you are resting, your muscles use more calories to maintain themselves than fat does. Someone with more muscle mass will generally have a higher BMR and metabolism rate than someone with the same weight but more body fat. This is one of the key factors affecting calorie burn.

How Much Does NEAT Add to Daily Calorie Burn?

NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) can add a significant amount to your total daily calorie burn, even without planned exercise. For someone who is very sedentary, NEAT might add only a few hundred calories. But for someone with an active job or who makes an effort to move more throughout the day (standing, walking, fidgeting), NEAT can add anywhere from 500 to over 1000 calories or more. It’s a major reason why daily calories burned sedentary are much lower than someone with higher daily movement.

How Many Calories Burned Sleeping?

You burn calories while you sleep to keep your body working. This rate is close to your BMR. A common estimate is about 0.4 to 0.5 calories per pound of body weight per hour. For an average adult, this can mean burning anywhere from 400 to 800 calories or more during a typical 7-9 hour sleep period. This is a direct example of calories burned at rest.

Can You Increase Your Daily Calorie Burn Without Exercising More?

Yes, you can increase your total daily energy expenditure without adding planned exercise primarily by increasing your NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis). Simple changes like standing more instead of sitting, taking the stairs, parking further away, walking during breaks, or doing chores can significantly increase the calories burned at rest and throughout the day, compared to a daily calories burned sedentary pattern. Building muscle mass over time will also increase your BMR, meaning you burn more calories even while completely at rest.

How Do Metabolism Rate and BMR Relate?

Your Metabolism rate is the speed at which your body uses energy. Your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) or RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) is the core part of your metabolism rate when you are at rest. So, your BMR is a number that shows your basic metabolism rate at rest. Other parts of your metabolism include the energy used for digestion (TEF) and physical activity (including NEAT and planned exercise).