DISCLAIMER Most of you already have great diet plans in place, but for those that don’t or are looking for a new one, this is what I use to calculate my caloric intake for bulking and cutting in general or on cycle. Obviously they’re tons of ways and even simpler ways to diet. Like eating everything insite (likely to cause fat gain) or the “I’m going to starve myself for summer” (likely to cause muscle loss and just plain not healthy) I just happen to prefer this method, others may not.
What I use to calculate my caloric intake:
Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE)
This is a tool used to help find out how many calories your body burns in a given day. In order to do this you need to know your body weight, body fat % and Lean Body Mass. I don’t get to crazy and just use calipers to find out my body fat percentage. It’s not the most accurate way but it’s what is most convenient for myself and others. If you want the most accurate method then a bod pod would work best.
To find your LBM take your weight and times it by your body fat percentage. I’ll use a 200lb individual with a body fat percentage of 12% as my example.
200 lbs x .12 = 24lbs. Making their LBM 176lbs
To find your TDEE you take your LBM and x it by 15:
176 lbs X 15 = 2640 (Estimated TDEE)
Now what?
Want to gain weight? Eat in surplus > 2640
Want to cut down? Eat in deficit < 2640
Generally I won’t go further then ±500 cals to start to see how my body responds. It takes some messing around with but once you find what amount suits you it’ll be smooth sailing from there.
This individual would bulk at 3140 cals/day or cut at 2140 cals/day (cals can and will change depending on individual)
Once He decide wether He’s going to cut or bulk He’ll divide his calories into 3 groups (macros) and assign them a calorie number.
Protiens: 4 cals
Carbs: 4 cals
Fats: 9 cals
I don’t see any reason to eat greater than 1.5 lbs of protein per LBM. So for this example the man would eat: 176lbs x 1.5 = 264g of protein. You would then multiply this by 4:
(264 x 4 = 1056)
Since he is bulking he would need to eat another 2084 cals between carbs and fats. Generally I like to stay under 100g of fats per day, so will use 80g as our example: (80 x 9 = 720).
So now we have Proteins (1056 cals) & Fats (720 cals):
1056 + 720 = 1776 cals, this leaves us with 1364 cals for our carbs. Since this is the remaining amount all we need to do is divide this number by 4:
(1364 / 4 = 341g)
On a bulk His Macros would look something like this:
264g Protien (33% of caloric intake)
341g Carbs (43% of caloric intake)
80g Fats (22% of caloric intake)
Obviously this is an estimated number, it’ll take a bit of tweaking to find out what works best for your body. If you want to round numbers, such as carbs (341g) you can round down to 340g to make it simple. Same with protein (264g) round up to 265g. Like I said this isn’t for everyone, if you have a plan and it works then awesome but if you don’t and need a place to start, then here you go.
