Knowing how many calories to eat is great. How do I get from that to the food? Let’s start figuring that out!

Welcome back to a Nourishing Pursuit.

Last time I went over a method to calculate your maintenance calories. From that, you can determine how many calories needed to gain or lose weight.

To recap, you select a period of time. Several weeks is a good minimum. Average your daily calories for that time. Calculate the change in your weight and divide it by the length of the period. This gives you the daily average change in weight. Multiply this by 3500 and subtract the total from your daily calories. This will be the number of calories you’d need to eat to keep your weight stable.

You can then add or subtract calories based on your goal. If you want to gain weight, you would add calories. You’d subtract them to lose weight. The amount of change depends on your goal. Multiply how much you want your weight to change by 500 to get the amount of the change. I don’t recommend trying to gain more than more than .5% of your bodyweight per week or lose more than 1%.

Knowing how many calories to eat is a good start but you need to do some more work to create a diet plan. We need to get from calories to food. For me this involves three steps. First I go from total calories to total macronutrients or macros. From total macros I determine how to spread them across the day. Lastly I take a specific meal’s macros and work out the food to fit them.

I’ll be covering the first step in this video. The remaining steps will be topics for the future.

There are three main macros: protein, carbohydrates, and fats. You can think of them this way. Proteins are the building blocks of the body. Carbohydrates are the primary energy source. Fats are the primary energy storage. This is an oversimplification but one that can get us started. (Proteins can be broken down for energy. Carbohydrates can be stored as glycogen, a quick source of energy. Fats are used in the construction of cell membranes.) Each macro contributes a certain amount towards your calories. Protein and carbohydrates each provide 4 calories per gram. Fats provide 9 calories per gram.

Let’s look at how much of each macro we need. I will use my current massing phase for this example. The process would be the same for maintenance phases. Cutting or weight loss phases are a little different. There is a bit about those at the end of this segment.

The fitness community has arrived at a standard recommendation for protein consumption. You should eat between .8 and 1 grams of protein per pound of your bodyweight. I weigh 187 pounds so I would want consume between 150 and 187 grams of protein each day. If I were eating only boneless, skinless chicken breast this would be around 1.4 pounds.

The recommendation for fats is a bit different. It gives a minimum amount you can eat rather than a target. In general you should eat no less than .3 grams per pound of bodyweight of fats. This is 56g in my case, or the equivalent of 5 tablespoons of butter. Consuming much lower than this for too long can lead to health issues. You can eat more than .3g per pound. Keep in mind that fat has twice the calories of either of the other macros. Consuming too much could put you well over your target calories.

Carbohydrates will fill out the rest of your calories. In my current massing phase, I can eat 3010 calories per day. Approximately 750 of those will come from protein. (187g of protein times 4 calories per gram.) Around 500 calories will come from fat (56 times 9). This leaves me with 1760 calories, or 440 grams of carbohydrates (1760 divided by 4). To give an idea of how much this is, 440g of carbohydrates equals over 4.5 pounds of baked potatoes. Or 7.5 pounds of apples. Or 14 pounds of broccoli.

These values are not set in stone. You can eat more protein. There is no need to go overboard with it. There is little evidence that more than 1g per pound increase muscle growth or retention. Also, protein is generally the most expensive macro.  Going over isn’t anything to worry about though.

In most circumstances you can swap calories between fats and carbohydrates without issue. Don’t go below the .3g of fat per pound noted above. Higher fat can make the diet more palatable. When you are in a weight gain phase, eating very high levels of fat  could lead to more fat storage. (Not something you want to make easier.) Leaning more towards carbs can fuel more intense workouts. The exact breakdown depends on your situation and goals.

Unless you are a competitive physique athlete there is no need to hit these numbers exactly. As long as you are in the ballpark and you daily calories are within 100 calories of your target you should be fine.

A note on cutting phases. When you are in a phase where you want to lose weight, you will lower your fat intake to the minimum. Protein will keep the same target and you will lean towards the higher end. Carbohydrates are where you will make most of the adjustments. Reduce carbohydrates by the amount needed to achieve the required deficit your goal. Going below about 50 grams of carbohydrates may not be sustainable for a long time. (Unless you are going for a ketogenic/Atkins induction phase type diet. That is beyond the scope of this video.)

In future videos I will discuss how to distribute these macros throughout the day and the process I use to create a meal from them.

Stay tuned for this week’s training summary.

Weekly Training Summary

This week I started a new training program. I have been doing my own full body program. The new program is the Renaissance Periodization Male Physique Template with Chest and Back focus. There is a link to it in the description. This program comes in a variety of frequencies. I chose the 5 day version as that fits best for my schedule.

My previous program did not have a “leg day.” The volume for legs was roughly equal but spread out over all 5 days. The new program puts more of the volume in fewer days. Other Male Physique Template versions have two leg days while this one has a single leg day with extra leg volume on 2 other days.

Sometimes you have to get creative. My Marcy Home Gym Cage system didn’t come with an attachment to hold down your legs when using the overhead pulley. I found a 1 inch by 2 inch piece of wood that was long enough to fit between the uprights. I put my squat pad on that to protect my legs. By setting the safety bars to the right height I could place my makeshift attachment over my legs. It works like a charm. Just as good as anything at the gym.

I avoided squats for quite some time do to a nagging ache in my left thigh. With the new program, I’ve added 2 squat sessions a week. So far they seem to be going well. I am not feeling any pain to speak of. And my form is improving even after the first 2 sessions.

The new program has a training volume similar to that of my previous program but with a different distribution. For example, in the previous system, I would do 2 sets of chest exercises each of the 5 days. The new program has 6 sets of chest on 2 days and 1 set on a third.

In my old system, I never had any great muscle soreness, or DOMS, the next day. With this program I definitely have DOMS. In most cases they disappear after a day.

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