What I Eat to Build Muscle and Lose Body Fat
Tags: Weight Loss, Diet, Nutrition, Fitness, Self Improvement

Calorie and Macro Calculations

For my current weight of 133 lbs, a height of 5’5", and my classification as “active,” I need to eat on average ~2,000 calories, plus calories during exercise burned per day to maintain my current weight.

If you want to take a quick second to calculate yours and circle back, you can use this quick and dirty calorie intake calculator.

I use Myfitnesspal to track my calorie, macros, and weight loss progress. My goal for weight loss goal is to lose 1 lb per week, which will then automatically adjust my intake calories to 1,600 + calories burned during exercise.

The recommended weekly weight loss goal should be set to ~0.5–1 lb (10–20% off your maintenance calories). However, it really depends on your current weight, gender, and a myriad of other factors that I won’t get into in this post. Generally speaking, though, this is a good starting point for most.

If I wanted to be really aggressive, I’d set my goal to lose 1.5- 2 lbs per week. However, it is not recommended to go in a deficit greater than +20% of your maintenance calories, as you risk losing muscle mass you’ve worked so hard at building. I haven’t done this in a long time, but perhaps for the sake of experimentation, I might test this out again and share the results with you at some point. But not right now. I enjoy eating too much.

The math behind these calculations is quite simple. Your body needs a certain number of calories to just perform its basic functions and sustain your current weight. As mentioned above, these are your maintenance calories. In order to lose 1 lb of body weight, you need to be in a deficit of ~3,500 calories. Myfitnesspal (the most common) and other calorie-tracking apps are great for setting weight loss goals by calculating and tracking your calorie intake.

On my surplus days, I’ll usually eat 2,500 calories + calories burned during exercise, which will usually put my grand total to ~3,000–3,500 calories, depending on how much exercise I did on that given day. I recommend you incorporate a refeed day at least once every two weeks. A rough guide you can utilize based on body fat % is outlined in the chart below:

Source: Refeed Day: What It Is and How to Do It

Pro physique coach Paul Revelia also recommends taking diet breaks after long periods of eating in a deficit; bringing calories back to maintenance, focusing on recovery, and taking it easy on the cardio.

In regard to cheat days, I’ll typically indulge in a BIG one once a month. I’m no Stephanie Buttermore and haven’t attempted to pound back 10,000 calories in a single cheat day, but a guesstimate of my calorie intake is probably in the ballpark of 4,000–5,000 caloriess.

How often should I recalculate my maintenance/deficit calories?

When I started my calorie counting journey, one of the biggest questions I had was: when do I need to recalculate my maintenance calories while continuing to lose weight? I was so confused. Should I adjust it for every 1 lb lost, 5 lbs, or 10 lbs lost? I started at 140 lbs and wanted to get down to ~130 lbs.

As my weight goes down, doesn’t mean that I also need to adjust my maintenance calories? The adverse is also true — if I’m trying to put on weight, how often should I recalculate my intake calories as my weight increases?

When researching the answer, it appeared to be overly complicated. However, several resources provided a “rule of thumb” that I found useful. If you’re starting to see plateaus in weight loss or weight gain while consistently training and eating within your designated macros and calorie goals, it might be time to recalculate. In When Should I Recalculate My Calorie Intake And Adjust My Diet?, Jay suggests:

Don’t recalculate or adjust any aspect of your diet until progress has consistently stopped altogether or maybe just slowed down to a significant (and unacceptable) degree. Basically, don’t do anything until there’s an actual need to do so.

Jay recommends re-calculating if you see a stall in progress between 2–4 weeks. When working on a body recomp strategy, there will be some stalls in progress along the way, so it’s important to wait at least two weeks before making any substantial changes to your calorie intake.

Myfitnesspal will re-calculate your calorie goal for every 10 pounds you lose and record from your starting weight. If you want to force a change, adjust your original weight 10 lbs up from your current weight.

A warning with calorie formulas

It’s important to point out that calorie counting formulas are really just a guesstimate. Unfortunately, you can’t input your lean muscle mass, body fat %, or resting metabolism, so it’s difficult to determine the exact formula.

What’s even more difficult is tracking the output, aka the calories burned from exercise. I personally don’t add my strength training sessions since it’s too difficult to determine the calories burned and I want to remain conservative. I do, however, input my cardio sessions (running + the stationary bike). This is far from perfect, but keeping my output recordings consistent has worked for me. It’s worth mentioning that some devices do track this (ie. Fitbit) — I don’t own one, but if you do, then you could add your calories burned based on your fitness activity tracker.

Not only are the calculations flawed, but the actual calculations on the food labels are also flawed… YESH. So why even bother tracking? Well, simply put, because it does work. For the general population, the basic calorie counting apps that are premised on weight can do the trick. Even the mere fact of understanding portions, calorie output and input can help you make better decisions as to what and how much you’re putting in your body. This awareness alone can really help move the needle in losing body fat.

Macro calculations

A great analogy I recently read is to look at training like cooking and nutrition like baking. Romaniello writes that nutrition is a bit of a science. You need to figure out the macro splits that support your goals and the timing of nutrition.

Not only do you need the exact right ingredients, you need the exact amounts of them. And you have to add them in precisely the right order. If you mess up one single piece of that, everything pretty much collapses. Like a soufflé, to stay with the metaphor.

Based on research, to build muscle and lose fat, it’s recommended to first focus on getting your daily protein intake and then split up the fats and carbs from there.

There are a ton of different formulas out there, but to keep it simple, I use the 2g of protein per kilogram of body weight, which I learned from Mike Thurston.

So for my current weight of 60 kg x 2g/kg, that’s ~120g of protein per day.

I focus on a diet that’s high in protein, high in carbs, and lower in fat. The macro split I generally follow is 30% protein /50% carbs/ 20% fat. However, I mostly just worry about getting my daily protein intake in first. My carbs and fat then naturally fall into the above split for the most part.

After years of experimentation and for the amount of cardio I do, I operate better off a higher carb, lower-fat diet. However, lots of individuals operate in the opposite fashion. Again, this is totally dependent on the individual and there is no right answer. Experiment yourself and see what works.