Most of our caloric burn is a 'gimmie.' We don't have to work at all for it.
The biggest gimmie is our Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) - what we burn doing nothing. We're not actually doing nothing -- we're heating up a heavy organism to a very warm temperature, we're respirating, and we have a brain powered up that is always on even when we're sleeping. The BMR is the majority of humanity's caloric burn, 60 to 75 percent.
Add to this the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) - the caloric cost of eating and digesting. We all eat, so we all burn by the task of eating and digesting. It isn't an effort, but it burns calories to do 'fork lifts' and '12-ounce curls.' It also costs calories to convert food into energy, and to eliminate waste from our body when digestion is over. TEF is 5-10 percent of our calorie spend.
Both BMR and TEF are involuntary. One more thing is, at least partly, in the 'involuntary' category in humans, and that's Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT). NEAT can be anywhere from 20% of BMR in a chairbound person to 120% of BMR in a agricultural worker with a physically busy off-duty life.
NEAT is the reason that your skinny friend who eats a lot but doesn't exercise is skinny. People who burn a lot and don't exercise move a lot. They are the "can't sit still" or "ants in the pants" kind of person. Even when relaxing on a Saturday, they're cleaning something. They spend their hours on their feet, shopping or volunteering. Now they don't look like they're expending any major effort; indeed, to them, it's effort free. But those muscles are expanding and contracting, the body is in motion, things are being lifted and put down, and the motion is lasting for a long time.
People who burn little and don't exercise also move little. Maybe they sit and view a lot of screens for hours. You look at someone like this and know they're not moving much because they are very still. They're alive, but they move very little.
NEAT also includes the occupational moving -- whether you're a motionless desk slave, moving between offices all the time, in repair or construction, or a mix of these. It is a daily, mentally effortless task but motions of muscles spend calories.
Some interpret this and think that they had better get busy walking the dog, mowing the lawn, gardening, and shopping so that they "improve their NEAT." Or, I propose, the other way might work too and only permit an hour or two LESS per day of the time you normally spend resting in front of media and then see what you naturally do with your 1-2 hours of newly-freed time. If you look at screens for 5 hours a day, try to cut it to 4. Do something that isn't sitting with that hour.
So, to summarize, we know about BMR, TEF, NEAT and NEAT is the second biggest spender of our calories, behind BMR. These acronym things come together to create our TEE (Total Energy Expenditure) which is where we do some averaging and can figure out our TDEE (Total Daily Expenditure Estimation).
Note: The last category we didn't cover is EAT which is Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. This is playing tennis, working out in the gym, walking for exercise, and so on. It is a relatively small portion of our calorie spend, but because it takes mental effort and is intentional motion, so our optimistic brains overvalue it in the calorie picture. It's much smaller than most think, accounting for 10-15 percent of the calories we spend in a week (and that only applies to those people with an exercise habit at all).
♂55 5'11/179㎝ SW:298℔/135㎏ CW:183℔/83㎏ [Maintaining 3¾y], [1Y recap] ⚖MFP+🚶🏋+TOPS
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