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BMR vs TDEE, in one worked example

The viewer leaves able to explain the difference, and knowing that the activity multiplier is where the error lives.

There are no videos here yet, and this page does not pretend otherwise. TempoLife has published no explainer videos, so nothing on this surface is watchable and there is no player anywhere on it. What is published is the script library: the full storyboard for each explainer, ready to shoot.

The hook

“Two numbers, one of them nearly useless on its own.”

First four seconds. It states the surprise outright rather than promising one, because a promise is a reason to scroll and a surprise is a reason to stay.

Why this topic is worth 85 seconds

The framing that lands with viewers is “the cost of existing” for BMR and “the cost of your day” for TDEE. Those two lines survive on mute.

This is also a chance to name where the arithmetic breaks. Two adults with the same height, weight and age can genuinely burn hundreds of calories apart, and the equation cannot tell you which one you are.

These two acronyms are on every fitness app and almost nobody separates them. BMR is what a body costs while doing nothing at all; TDEE is that plus everything else. Getting them the wrong way round leads people to eat at their resting rate, which is a miserable and unnecessary deficit.

The script also does something most explainers avoid: it shows the equation on screen and puts real numbers through it. That takes the whole thing out of the realm of app magic and into arithmetic the viewer could do on paper.

The storyboard

Read it as a script

The voiceover column, in order, is the whole piece:

Two numbers, and one of them is nearly useless on its own.

Your basal metabolic rate is what your body spends lying still doing nothing: heart, lungs, brain, temperature. For most adults it is the largest single line on the bill.

It is estimated, not measured, and the standard estimate is one line of arithmetic: ten times your weight in kilograms, plus six and a quarter times your height in centimetres, minus five times your age, plus or minus a constant.

Put a real person through it and you get a resting figure. That is the floor — the number before you have stood up.

Total daily energy expenditure multiplies that floor by how much you actually move. And here is the honest part: the multiplier is a guess. Between sedentary and moderately active there is a gap of several hundred calories a day.

Eat at your TDEE to hold weight. Eating at your BMR is not a plan, it is a deficit you did not choose.

Both calculators are free at tempolife.app.

Every number this script shows

The worked example. A 35-year-old man, 78 kg, 178 cm.

Nothing in the storyboard above quotes a figure directly. The beats refer to numbers and this table supplies them, so a script written months ago cannot go stale against its own data.

Production notes

• The equation beat is the whole video. Give it 18 seconds and do not cut away.
• Substitute the numbers one at a time so the viewer can follow the arithmetic rather than watch a result appear.
• State "estimated, not measured" out loud. It is the single most important qualifier in the script.

Closing card

Both calculators, free, at tempolife.app/calculators

General information, not medical advice. These scripts describe averages across populations; nothing in them is a diagnosis or a treatment recommendation.

Source: Figures computed from the TempoLife food database (USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy) and the 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities · checked 2026-09-02

What the script points at

• BMR calculator
• TDEE calculator
• Glossary: TDEE

Other scripts

All scripts · Listen to the guides