Estimate how many calories your body burns digesting a meal from its protein, carbohydrate, and fat content using dietary-induced thermogenesis rates.
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Health & Nutrition
The thermic effect of food (TEF), also called dietary-induced thermogenesis, is the energy your body uses to digest, absorb, and metabolise the macronutrients in a meal. It typically accounts for 8–15% of total daily energy expenditure and varies significantly by macronutrient type.
Protein has the highest thermic effect at roughly 20–30% of the calories it provides — your body spends a quarter of each protein calorie just processing it. Carbohydrates cost 5–10% and fat costs just 0–3%. This is why high-protein diets modestly increase calorie expenditure compared with higher-fat or lower-protein diets of equal total calories.
TEF rarely changes total daily expenditure by more than 100–200 kcal, so it is a secondary factor compared with exercise. However, it does mean that the "net" calories absorbed from a high-protein meal are somewhat lower than the label calories suggest. The estimates used here (protein 25%, carbs 8%, fat 3%) are conservative central values from the published range.
Frequently asked questions
Total daily TEF depends on total macronutrient intake, not meal frequency. Spreading the same food over 3 or 6 meals produces roughly the same total TEF.
Individual variation exists. Insulin resistance, metabolic rate, gut microbiome composition, and meal size all influence TEF. The rates used here are population averages and individual results will vary.
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