This should be around 12 calories per pound of body weight.
BMR x 1.2 to 1.35 = Lightly Active Day
On days where you do 30 to 45 minutes of vigorous exercise or other physical activity (or about 60 to 90 minutes of light activity), eat 120 to 135 percent of your BMR.
This should be around 13 calories per pound of body weight.
BMR x 1.4 to 1.55 = Moderately Active Day
On days where you do 45 to 60 minutes of vigorous exercise (or about 90 to 120 minutes of light activity), eat 140 to 155 percent of your BMR.
This should be around 15 calories per pound of body weight.
BMR x 1.6 to 1.75 = Very Active Day
On days where you do 60 to 90 minutes of vigorous exercise (or about 120 to 180 minutes of light activity), eat 160 to 175 percent of your BMR.
This should be around 17 calories per pound of body weight.
BMR x 1.8 to 1.95 = Extra Active Day
On days where you do 90-plus minutes of vigorous exercise (or 180-plus minutes of light activity), eat 180 to 195 percent of your BMR.
This should start around 19 calories per pound of body weight and go as high as 24-plus depending on how active you are.
How to Calculate Your Maintenance Macros
Here’s how to turn your maintenance calories into macros:
Thirty percent of your calories should come from protein.
Forty-five percent of your calories should come from carbohydrate.
Twenty-five percent of your calories should come from dietary fat.
Which means all you have to do to figure out your macros is the following:
Multiply your target daily calorie intake by 0.3 and divide the result by 4 to figure out your target daily protein intake.
Multiply your target daily calorie intake by 0.45 and divide the result by 4 to figure out your target daily carbohydrate intake.
Multiply your target daily calorie intake by 0.25 and divide the result by 9 to figure out your target daily fat intake.
For most people, this comes out to around 1 gram of protein, 1.6 grams of carbohydrate, and 0.4 grams of dietary fat per pound of body weight per day.
And again, if you want to skip most of the math, you can just use those macro guidelines when starting a maintenance phase and move on to the next step in the process (meal planning).
Let’s see how this works out for me. If I were maintaining, my target daily calorie intake would be 2,800 calories, so:
2,800 x 0.3 = 840 and 840 / 4 = 210 (grams of protein per day)
2,800 x 0.45 = 1,260 and 1,260 / 4 = 315 (grams of carbohydrate per day)
2,800 x 0.25 = 700 and 700 / 9 = 78 (grams of dietary fat per day)
Or with the shortcut:
195 (pounds) x 1 = 195 (grams of protein per day)
195 x 1.6 = 312 (grams of carbohydrate per day)
195 x 0.4 = 78 (grams of dietary fat per day)
“Do I Really Need to Eat That Much Protein?”
You’ve probably heard a lot of conflicting advice on protein intake.
Some people, bodybuilders in particular, recommend sky-high amounts, upward of 2 grams per pound of body weight per day. Others advocate a much lower intake, claiming that anything above 0.8 grams per pound of body weight per day is unnecessary.
Well, a significant amount of research has been done on the protein needs of people who are physically active, and a fantastic summary of the literature was coauthored by my friend Dr. Eric Helms.20 Here’s an excerpt from the paper:
The collective agreement among reviewers is that a protein intake of 1.2-2.2 g/kg is sufficient to allow adaptation to training for athletes whom are at or above their energy needs.
In other words, when you’re maintaining or lean bulking, a protein intake of 1.2 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day—0.55 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day—is adequate.
As you’ve just learned, I prefer the upper end of this range because the downsides of not eating enough protein (less muscle growth, less satiety, and less bone density, to name a few) are far greater than the downsides of eating a little more protein than you need (fewer calories for carbs and fat, mostly).
And what about protein intake when you’re cutting? Also from that paper:
In a review by Phillips and Van Loon, it is suggested that a protein intake of 1.8-2.7 g/kg for athletes training in hypocaloric conditions may be optimal.
That is, when athletes are restricting their calories for fat loss, they should eat more protein than when they’re not in a calorie deficit—in the range of 1.8 to 2.7 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, or 0.8 to 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day.
“Can I Really Eat That Many Carbs and Lose Fat?”
If you’re having trouble shaking this out of your mind despite everything we’ve covered so far, I understand.
According to most people, including so-called diet experts, carbs and fat loss go together like Chinese food and chocolate pudding or cocaine and waffles (Talladega Nights, anyone?).
I could cite even more weight loss research showing that carbohydrate intake has no impact on fat loss, like a study conducted by scientists from Harvard University that found the following:
Reduced-calorie diets result in clinically meaningful weight loss regardless of which macronutrients they emphasize.21
Or maybe an extensive review of 19 weight loss trials conducted by scientists from several universities, including Stellenbosch University, the University of Cape Town, and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which concluded:
Trials show weight loss in the short-term irrespective of whether the diet is low CHO [carbohydrate] or balanced. There is probably little or no difference in weight loss and changes in cardiovascular risk factors up to two years of follow-up when overweight and obese adults, with or without type 2 diabetes, are randomised to low CHO diets and isoenergetic balanced [calorically equal] weight loss diets.22
But I don’t think reviewing another litany of studies is really necessary.
Instead, I’m just going to ask you to suspend your disbelief for the next four weeks, because that’s all it’s going to take for you to see noticeable changes with Bigger Leaner Stronger.
You will lose fat on a high-carb diet, easily and rapidly. Full stop.
“Shouldn’t I Be Eating More Dietary Fat?”
Dietary fat is the macronutrient du jour.
No matter what you want to fix with your body or do in the gym, eating more fat can purportedly help. Fat loss, vitality, libido, muscle and strength gain—it can all be yours if you follow this “one weird diet trick.”
This makes for a powerful marketing message because it’s simple, counterintuitive, and provides logical cover for what many people want to do anyway (eat deliciously fatty foods).
Hence the thriving industry of high-fat diets, cookbooks, food products, and supplements.
As you now know, the biggest hook used to sell people on high-fat dieting—faster fat loss—is scientifically bankrupt. And when it does work, it’s only due to a significant reduction in calorie intake resulting in a larger calorie deficit, not metabolic voodoo.
Another hook is hormones. Specifically, some people claim that a high-fat diet optimizes your hormone profile, which in turn enhances every aspect of your health and well-being.
For men, the focus is usually on testosterone and its effects on body composition, and for women, reproductive hormones and their effects on fertility and menstruation.
While it’s true that eating too little fat impairs hormone production and increasing intake can improve it, the effects are far less dramatic than you might think.
Furthermore, the physiological differences between a moderate-fat diet, such as one that provides 20
percent of daily calories from fat, and a high-fat diet, such as one that provides twice that, are downright negligible.
For example, a study conducted by scientists at the National Cancer Institute involved the analysis of the hormone levels of 43 men who followed two diets that provided different amounts of dietary fat.23
The researchers split the men into two groups:
Group one got 19 percent of their calories from fat.
Group two got 41 percent of their calories from fat.
After five and a half months, the scientists found that the men in the high-fat group had just 13 percent higher testosterone levels than those in the low-fat group—far too little of a difference to impact strength and muscle gain.
So, while some people might consider my dietary recommendations “low-fat,” and too low at that, just know that they only appear low in the context of the current high-fat craze.
What’s more, science clearly shows that my macronutrient guidelines not only provide adequate fat for general health and performance but also leave enough room for adequate amounts of protein and carbohydrate.
•••
Are you getting excited yet?
I am because you’ve just taken a major stride toward a bigger, leaner, and stronger you and cleared one of the largest hurdles—one that trips up millions of people every year and prevents them from ever achieving the results they really desire.
Soon, after a few more leaps and bounds, you’ll be officially off to the races, so let’s keep going! Pre- and postworkout nutrition is next!
Key Takeaways
It’s possible to lose weight without watching your calories, but it’s unlikely to work well over the long term for most people.
There are just three simple steps to figuring out how many calories you should eat every day: calculate your basal metabolic rate, calculate your total daily energy expenditure, and calculate your target daily calorie intake.
Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the amount of energy your body would burn if you were to lie motionless for a day, without food. It’s the minimum amount of energy it costs to stay alive for 24 hours.
The Mifflin-St. Jeor equation for men is:BMR = 10 x weight (in kilograms) + 6.25 x height (in centimeters) – 5 x age (in years) + 5
Your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) is the total number of calories you burn every 24 hours.
Food costs energy to digest, process, and absorb, and different types of foods cost more energy than others.
Protein costs the most energy to use and store, followed by carbohydrate and then dietary fat.
Don’t use any of the data from activity trackers and exercise machines to inform your calorie intake because it’s probably going to lead you astray.
Mathematical models are the ticket for calculating your total daily energy expenditure.
Use my slightly modified activity multipliers when calculating your TDEE.
The first step in working out how many calories you should eat is determining what you want to do with your body composition.If you want to lose fat, you need to eat fewer calories than you’re burning.
If you want to maintain your current weight and body composition, you need to eat more or less how many calories you’re burning.
If you want to gain muscle as quickly as possible, you need to eat slightly more calories than you’re burning.
When cutting, eat about 75 percent of your average TDEE. For most men, this comes out to 10 to 12 calories per pound of body weight per day.
When cutting, forty percent of your calories should come from protein, forty percent should come from carbohydrate, and twenty percent should come from dietary fat.For most people, this comes out to around 1.1 grams of protein and carbohydrate per pound of body weight per day, and 0.25 grams of dietary fat per pound of body weight per day.
When lean bulking, eat about 110 percent of your average TDEE. For most men, this comes out to 16 to 18 calories per pound of body weight per day.
When lean bulking, 25 percent of your calories should come from protein, 55 percent should come from carbohydrate, and 20 percent should come from dietary fat.For most people, this comes out to around 1 gram of protein, 2.2 grams of carbohydrate, and 0.35 grams of dietary fat per pound of body weight per day.
Use your lean bulking phases to add muscle and your cutting phases to strip away fat, and along the way, assess your physique to see how far you still have to go to look the way you want to look.
When maintaining, either eat the same amount of calories every day (for most men, this comes out to around 14 to 16 calories per pound of body weight per day) or eat more on the days that you’re more active and less on the days that you’re less active.
When maintaining, 30 percent of your calories should come from protein, 45 percent should come from carbohydrate, and 25 percent should come from dietary fat.For most people, this comes out to around 1 gram of protein, 1.6 grams of carbohydrate, and 0.4 grams of dietary fat per pound of body weight per day.
The physiological differences between a moderate-fat diet, such as one that provides 20 percent of daily calories from fat, and a high-fat diet, such as one that provides twice that, are downright negligible.
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