In order to build your perfect diet plan, you must first decide what your goals are. Are you looking to just lose weight? Are you looking to gain more muscle? Your final goal will influence your eating plan and how many macros you will require each day. Once you have your goals in mind, this chapter will show you how to calculate the proper amount of calories and macronutrients that you should be eating each day. With your macronutrient amounts calculated, you can then create your eating plan, including what times you should eat and what your meals should consist of. Proper planning is key to success on the macronutrient diet, so let’s get started.
Whether your goal is to lose weight or build some muscle, you’ll need to adjust your current calorie intake. Remember that losing fat requires a caloric deficit, or eating less than you burn in a day. The opposite is true for building muscle—you need to eat more than you need and give your body the extra food it needs to grow.
In general, you can be a bit more aggressive when trying to lose fat than when trying to gain muscle. While it is possible to lose weight too quickly, it’s much more preferable to lose weight fast and adjust to slow it down. You’ll just look better faster.
With muscle building, you should take a slow, controlled approach. Start with only small increases, see how your body responds, and increase again as needed. A common mistake is for people to start eating everything in sight when they want to build muscle and then end up gaining more body fat than they intended. When building muscle, the goal is to build actual muscle—not simply make the scale move up by gaining fat as well.
As you assemble your meal plan, consider your primary goal. Is it body composition and the number on the scale or performing your best during your workouts or athletic activities?
For pure body composition, meal timing doesn’t matter at all. As long as your numbers add up at the end of the day, you’ll be just fine. If you are trying to lose weight without exercising and focus only on your nutrition, you can set up your meal plan however you’d like without worrying about meal timing.
If you’re an active person and want to perform your best and recover from your exercise, meal timing comes into play a bit more. As discussed in Chapter 3, carbohydrates play a large role in both fueling your exercise and helping you recover. It makes sense then to place a significant portion of your carbohydrates before and after intense physical activity, as this will give you the most benefit from them. This is especially important if you’re dieting, and your carbohydrates are getting lower and lower.
For high-intensity activities such as working out, running, or playing a sport, use carbs to fuel your workouts for maximum benefit. You should try to consume at least 30–40 percent of them an hour before your workout and 30–40 percent immediately after. Any remaining carbohydrates can be spread around the day however you prefer.
It’s time to get into the actual numbers. You’ll start by figuring out your maintenance calorie intake, which is roughly how many calories your body uses every day. To lose fat, you’ll eat fewer calories than your maintenance levels, and to build muscle, you’ll eat above maintenance.
There are many ways to do this, and none will ever be 100 percent accurate. So, to figure out your fat loss calories, which you’ll need to track and adjust as you go, you’ll need a bit of trial and error in the beginning. Keep in mind that so many factors affect your caloric output—activity levels, genetics, body composition, nutrition, and many more. The math you’re about to do will be a best guess, so don’t expect to get your calories perfect on the first try. There will also be a walk-through at the end of this section using a fictional character, so you can follow along with your own numbers.
There are plenty of complicated, long calculations out there, but you can keep it simple. If you’re a man, multiply your body weight by 14. If you’re a woman, multiply your body weight by 12. This will give you a rough guess at your total calories needed to maintain your body weight.
Now that you’ve come up with a number for your calories, the next step is to consume calories according to this number as closely as you can for seven to ten days. Check your body weight on day one and day ten to compare.
If you lose weight, you’ve found a caloric deficit. If fat loss is your goal, this is perfect. If you lost more than two and a half pounds, however, that’s too fast, and you’re undereating. You’ll want to bump food up a bit.
If you gained weight, you’re eating above maintenance. Lower your food intake by a few hundred calories and try again. You want to start with a 15 percent decrease in calories, eat that number for a few days, and then check your weight again, repeating until you find your maintenance level.
If your weight stayed the same, you found your maintenance intake. To lose fat, take about 500 calories away from your total carbs and fats. If you want to add muscle, add about 300 calories primarily to carbs with some going to fat.
Now that you have your total calories, it’s time to split those calories up into their respective macros. Remember, protein and carbohydrates each have four calories per gram, while fat has nine calories per gram. If you want to plan to include alcohol, it has seven calories per gram but zero nutritional value, so you’ll have to lower your remaining calories and simply eat less carbs and fat.
• Protein: Set your protein at 1 gram per pound of lean body weight. Write that number down.
• Fat: Now set your fat anywhere between .25–.45 grams per pound (lower if you prefer higher carbs, and vice versa).
• Carbs: Your remaining calories, after protein and fat, will go to carbs. On training days, set your carbs at 1.25–1.5 grams per pound of body weight, depending on how you ended up setting your fat (higher or lower). On rest days, set your carbs at .5 grams per pound and increase fat by .10 grams per pound.
While protein should stay the same, your fat and carbs can fluctuate based on your personal preference. If you enjoy fatty foods, keep your fat at .45 grams per pound or even higher. This will lower your carbohydrate intake but give you room for foods you enjoy. If you love carbs, keep your fat on the lowest end, .25 grams per pound, and you can enjoy pasta to your heart’s content.
Let’s take a 200-pound male with a measured 15 percent body fat and calculate his macros using the previous numbers. Reading the process can seem overwhelming, but following an example will show you how simple it really is.
First and foremost, let’s calculate lean body mass. This will be used to determine protein intake. The reason you calculate for lean mass rather than total body weight is to feed your body based on its needs. Since body fat is not active tissue, it doesn’t need any nutrition to sustain itself. The rest of your lean mass, consisting of your muscular system, internal organs, bones, and anything that’s not fat, does in fact need proper nutrition to function, so that’s what you should be concerned with regarding your protein needs.
For total calories, use 14 times total body weight for men, so for the sample calculations, total maintenance calories will be 2,800.
For fat loss, it’s best to start with a 500-calorie per day deficit. Therefore, our fictional man’s total calorie intake goals will be 2,300 calories per day.
For the rest of the calculations, use the following conversion chart.
• 1 gram protein = 4 calories
• 1 gram carbohydrate = 4 calories
• 1 gram fat = 9 calories
1. Total body weight × body fat percentage = pounds of fat
2. Total body weight − pounds of fat = lean body mass
Remember, the sample person weighs 200 pounds at 15 percent body fat.
1. 200 × .15 (15 percent) = 30 pounds of fat
2. 200 pounds − 30 pounds = 170 pounds lean body mass
Protein should be set at 1 gram per pound of lean body weight. At 170 pounds of lean body mass, this means protein will be set at 170 grams every day.
Protein calories are 170 × 4, or 680.
Fat should be set at .25–.45 grams per pound of body weight. Since the man weighs 200 pounds and prefers higher-fat meals, he’ll use .45 grams: 200 pounds × .45 grams means fat will be set at 90 grams per day.
Fat calories are 90 × 9, or 810.
To calculate carbohydrates, take your protein and fat calories and subtract them from your total calories for the day. The remaining calories are used for carbohydrates.
Total calories − protein calories − fat calories = carbohydrate calories.
2,300 − 680 − 810 = 810 carbohydrate calories.
Now that you have 810 carbohydrate calories, simply divide this number by 4 to figure out how many grams of carbohydrates are to be consumed each day:
810 ÷ 4 = 203 grams of carbohydrates every day.
Therefore, the final goal numbers for each day are 2,300 calories, coming from 170 grams of protein, 90 grams of fat, and 203 grams of carbohydrates.
Use these calculations to figure out your individual daily needs for total calories and total macros and use those numbers to plan your days and meal plans.
Remember, these numbers are just a best guess and will have to be adjusted as you go. Once you get in the habit of accurately consuming these numbers, which takes practice, it’s very easy to adjust your diet when progress stalls. Our fictional man could simply go from eating 203 carbs each day to eating 170 carbs each day, for example. Rather than overhauling your entire diet every few weeks and trying something new, you can simply adjust your ratios whenever progress stops.
There’s a famous quote about planning that states:
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
When it comes to dietary adherence, this is 100 percent true. If you aren’t planning your nutrition ahead of time, there’s no way you can have any shot at consistently hitting your macros. Rather than take a reactive approach to your diet and adjust as you go, be proactive and plan your days ahead of time. This way, before the day even starts, you’ll see exactly what your macro intake will look like, and you can plan ahead to fill any gaps, or adjust as needed.
If you prefer a more rigid schedule, try planning out two or three perfect days that hit your macros dead-on, and then just follow those meal plans. When coming up with your plans, make sure at least 80 percent of your food is unprocessed, whole foods and make sure it’s realistic.
If you work the night shift at a hospital, your food choices and meal frequency will be different than someone who works from home and has access to a kitchen; there really is no one-size-fits-all approach. Plan ahead, make this process as painless and thought-free as possible, and you’ll be good to go.
There are sample meal plans at the end of this book, but if you want to start from scratch, here are the basic steps.
Start by looking at an average day in your life. How many meals can you eat? When are you the busiest? When do you have the most time to cook?
If you work from home, chances are you’ll have an easier time preparing three to four meals per day. If you’re a busy executive who’s constantly working long days and rushing in and out of meetings, you may find that you need a quick and easy breakfast, a few snacks, and a big dinner.
Regardless of your schedule, figure out what sort of meal plan would be easy for you to follow in terms of timing and write those meals down, times and all.
Now that you have your meal times, and total number of meals, attempt to evenly split your macros across each meal. If your goal is 140 grams of protein per day, and you eat four meals, you’d want to aim for around 35 grams with each meal. This makes hitting your macros much more manageable, rather than trying to get all of your protein at once.
If you’re working out that day, put most of your carbs before and after your workout, otherwise you can spread them around however you’d like. For each meal, write down the total number of macronutrients and calories you’ll need for that meal.
Finally, you have the framework. Time to fill it in. Look at each meal and figure out what foods will give you that meal’s required calories and macros. This is where you can have fun and get really creative.
The recipes in this book include nutrition calculations that will tell you exactly how many macros are in each serving. This makes planning easy, though of course you can use any food you like.
If you don’t want to follow premade recipes, a simple trick is to pick three carbs, three proteins, and two to three high-fat foods to keep around your house at all times. This way, you can mix and match ingredients to plan your meals as needed. Most foods will have the nutritional information right on the package. For produce, nearly all fruits are higher in carbohydrates, while green vegetables will have fewer carbohydrates. For your carbs, you can choose fruit, rice, oats, and potatoes, for example, with your proteins coming from meats, eggs, and maybe protein powder. You can choose different combinations of foods, adding fat as needed through things like cooking oils and butter, or choosing higher-fat cuts of meat, like red meat or fatty fish.
If you’re making a recipe or meal that doesn’t have the calculated macros, simply add up all the ingrdients you’re using, divide by the number of servings the meal provides, and use those numbers as your macronutrient intake for the meal.
By the end of all this planning, you should have a sample meal plan that fits your schedule perfectly, allows you hit your macros, and uses foods of your choosing—not random foods from a magazine meal plan. You can write out the foods you want by hand, or use an app for a food log, like MyFitnessPal or My Macros+. This way you can plan the next day ahead of time and see where any gaps may be that you need to fill. Planning, and sticking to the plan, sets you up for the best possible chance at success as it’s a plan perfectly engineered for your needs, schedule, and preferences.
The road to your dream body won’t be without its share of ups and downs. It’s very normal for your progress to stall, and this should be expected. The human body is incredibly smart and has adapted to survive extreme situations.
While something like trying to lose a bit of belly fat may not seem like the end of the world, your body simply sees a diet as a period of restricted food, and it will act accordingly. Typically, a few weeks of reduced food intake will trigger your body to learn to function at its new calorie level and any weight loss will slow down.
This could be due to several reasons. Most likely, your body’s metabolism has simply adjusted, and because you now weigh less, you don’t need as much food, so weight loss will slow down. In more extreme cases of prolonged, severe caloric restriction, it’s possible that your body will actually fight weight loss because it thinks that it’s not getting enough food, so it wants to hang on to the energy stores it has.
Regardless of the reason, when these situations pop up, it’s important to understand how to adjust your diet so that you can continue to make progress toward your goal. If you want to increase that energy deficit so you continue to burn fat, you can either reduce your food intake or work to burn more calories. If you have the time to add some extra cardio sessions to your weekly schedule, that’s fine, but it’s important to know how to adjust your diet.
For both weight loss and weight gain, it’s rarely a linear process. Over the course of a week, it’s very common for your body weight to fluctuate on a daily basis. Hormonal issues, sodium intake, hydration levels, food that’s still being processed through your digestion and waste system . . . all of these factors can increase or decrease the number you see on your scale.
It’s best to weigh yourself only once per week at the most. Pick a day and time that you know will be consistent. Some people prefer Monday weigh-ins, although you may be a bit heavier if you ate foods over the weekend that aren’t normally part of your diet. Others prefer midweek or Friday weigh-ins, as this lets your body settle into a normal routine, allowing for a more accurate reading.
Regardless of how often you weigh yourself, dietary changes should only be implemented when your weight has plateaued for ten to fourteen days at a minimum. Don’t assume that simply because you gained a pound seemingly overnight that you need to immediately lower your calories. Look at the overall trend of your body’s weight and only adjust once it’s stopped trending in the right direction for about two weeks.
Start by adjusting your carbohydrates first. As these are the only nonessential macronutrient, most adjustments should come from carbohydrates. Whether your goal is fat loss or muscle gain, the simplest method is to set protein and fat at optimal levels for health and performance and then simply manipulate your carbohydrate intake up or down, based on your goal.
Start with a 10 percent total calorie adjustment. If you’ve been dieting at 2,000 calories and you’ve been stuck for two weeks, adjust your calories down to 1,800. This may not be aggressive enough, but it’s always better to go slowly and take your time rather than slash your food intake too low, too quickly.
Remember, a gram of carbohydrate has 4 calories. With some simple math you can figure out how many carbs you need to remove. From the previous example, a 200-calorie decrease would mean taking away 50 carbs from the diet.
If your carbs are already very low, you can take calories from protein and fat, but this should be avoided. At a bare minimum, you should be aiming for about .6 grams of protein per pound of body weight, and .2 grams of fat per pound. Ideally those numbers would be a bit higher, but as long as you never dip below those minimums, you should feel okay.
If you reach the point where your proteins and fats are at their minimum, and your carbohydrate intake is already very low, you may need to start adding more exercise. This situation is rare and is usually only seen when people attempt to take their bodies from lean and healthy to very lean with dangerously low levels of body fat, but it can occur. Most people will be able to reach their goal weight without such drastic measures, assuming there are no other major health issues.
The biggest factor that affects the macronutrient ratio you choose is exercise. While exercise is not necessary for weight loss, it’s very beneficial and will make the process significantly easier. Exercise is important for overall health and longevity as it improves many health markers beyond the number on the scale.
Here’s the thing: exercise uses energy. Physically intense activities, like going for a run or taking a boot camp class, are going to put a much higher energy demand on your body compared to sitting at a desk or laying in bed. As such, it’s important to adequately fuel your body.
As discussed earlier, carbohydrates are the best fuel source for exercise. High-intensity activities are fueled primarily by glucose, stored in the body as glycogen. Providing the body with adequate glucose by eating enough carbs is much more efficient than waiting for your body to convert fat and protein to glucose.
Fast-digesting carbohydrates give you both the fuel you need to perform and the materials you need to recover and rebuild. Placing carbohydrates before and after your workouts is the easiest way to make sure you can work hard and recover as fast as possible.
When planning your meals, be sure to put carbs before and after workouts on your exercise days. Aim for at least 30–50 grams of carbohydrates before and after. If your total carbs are getting low, try to keep as many as you can centered around that workout, as that’s when you’ll be the most efficient at using them.
Time to learn how to eat any food you can think of and still make progress. The beauty of the macronutrient diet lies in the freedom to choose what you enjoy, but it must be done correctly. The biggest mistake you can make is seeing a food you love, eating as much of it as you want, and then trying to clean up the mess later (i.e., planning the rest of the day around your indulgence).
Not only can an unplanned indulgence send you way over your daily or even weekly calories, but this is the most common cause of dietary guilt. If you’ve been tracking your macros consistently and suddenly you get thrown way off track by a cheat meal, it can make you feel like a failure, and it’ll be hard to get back on track. This is dangerous for long-term success.
The trick to eating foods you enjoy is planning ahead. If you know that tomorrow night is pizza night, open up tomorrow’s food log, plug in however much pizza you want to eat, and adjust the rest of your day accordingly. Being proactive about this will allow you to go through your day stress-free, knowing you’ll hit your targets even with that added pizza, and you can enjoy your treat without feeling bad.
This works for anything, not just pizza. Plan it ahead of time and adjust your day to fit that treat in. It takes moderation, but it can be done. Once you get comfortable with planning small treats and indulgences into your diet, you’ll soon realize that the macronutrient diet doesn’t require you to give up any of your favorite foods or drinks; you just have to make room for them.