What's the difference between active and total calories?

Active calories are the ones you burn moving and exercising. Total calories add your resting burn, what your body spends keeping you alive. Your TDEE is the total. So if your calorie target came from your TDEE, don’t add your active calories on top of it, because that movement is already counted.

The Apple Watch’s red Move ring shows active calories only. A 600 on the ring can look like a whole day’s burn, when your total that day is far bigger. Other times a big total looks like it all came from the gym. Both mix up the two numbers.

The simple version

Resting calories are the rent. Active calories are what you spend going out. Total is the whole month’s bill.

How Apple defines them

• Resting energy is what your body burns to keep its normal resting state: breathing, moving blood around, and growing and maintaining cells.
• Active energy is what you burn through physical activity and exercise, with the resting part left out.
• Total is the two together. Apple splits a workout’s total into its active and resting parts.

What to do

• If you compare a watch number with your TDEE, use the total.
• Better, take your daily steps from the watch and get your range from them on the calories from your steps calculator. Watch calories are a rough guess: across 56 studies, the Apple Watch’s were off by about 28% on average.