Diet Plan (Macros)

Why Macros?

Well, they work? That's enough for me really, I proved it during my cut, check out my foundation page where I cut whilst eating meals such as tubs of Ben and Jerry's and other crazy foods such as the meal below:

It's hard to argue with that really. Anyway, it's incredibly simple, you workout what your daily calories are and divide this up into protein, fats and carbs and off you go, forget about the calorie content and just watch those three figures and life's good, no matter what the food, if it fits your macros (IIFYM) you can eat that shit.

How do I work out my macros?

Easy, use this simple formula to calculate your total calories: ALL CREDIT GOES TO ANDY MORGAN FOR PROVIDING THIS INFORMATION.

Step 1 - Work out for total calories

Metric BMR Formula* (*Harris-Benedict)

Women: BMR = 655+ ( 9.6 x weight in kilos )+( 1.8 x height in cm ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66+ ( 13.7 x weight in kilos ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) – ( 6.8 x age in years )

So for instance, if you were me, I would use the following:

BMR = 66 + (13.7 x 64kgs) +  (5 x 170cm) - (6.8 x 20)
          = 66 + 876.8 + 850 - 136
          = 1657cal

Easy! Then all you need to do is use an 'activity multiplier' if you're unsure of what to use, go with a lower figure, for instance, if you work in an office and sit down all day, times your number (1657 in my case) by 1.2. Which gives me 1988

Here are some rough guidelines, always go lower, overestimating will not help you:

Office Job (Accountants wooo!) - 1.2
Standing Job (Lecturer, Shop Assistant etc) - 1.3
Active Job (Builder, Mechanic etc) - 1.4
Very Active (Police, Personal Trainer, Lumberjack) - 1.5
Intense (Armed forces, marathon training) - 1.6

Step 2 - Rest Days and Training Days

Ok, so you're armed with your total calorie figure, have you written it down? No? Well maybe you should.. Ok? Ready? Lets do some maths.

RulesCutting or Slow Bulking

You have to decide whether you want to get bigger or get more defined  If you're skinny and have the body type of a runner, go for slow bulking, even if you're of normal build, I would advise you bulk first as if you cut when you have no muscle you'll just end up looking like a stick.

Rest Days and Training Days

You need to divide up your week into rest days and training days, a 'training day' is ONLY the days you're in the gym lifting weights, please for the love of god don't start the game of "Oh I've been rushing around all day and went for a 15 minute run, that's definitely a training day." - It's not.

Ok, so depending on whether you're cutting or slow bulking you need to adjust your calories for when you're training and when you're resting so that you have the extra energy to build muscle when you train but strip fat when you're resting.

If you're cutting I would suggest going for +10% of your calorie figure on a training day and -30% when you're resting.
If you're bulking, you might go for +40% when you're training and -10% when you're resting.

For example, my figures would look something like this:

Calorie figure (from above): 1988cal
Cutting - Training Day (+10%) - 2187cal
            - Rest Day (-30%) - 1392cal

Bulking (My current plan) - Training Day (+40%) - 2783cal
                                        - Rest Day (-10%) - 1789cal

Step 3 - Turning your calorie figures into Macros.

Calories

1g Carbs = 4cal
1g Protein = 4cal
1g Fat = 9cal

Rule 1

Training days you will limit yourself to 25g of fat. - 225cal
Rest days you will limit yourself to 50g of fat. - 450cal

Rule 2

You will eat 2.5g of Protein per kg of your LEAN bodyweight every day, i.e what you would weigh if you had 0% bodyfat, don't get too hung up on this, just guess. It doesn't matter if you get it a bit wrong.

So for me, this would be about 62kgs, so that's 155g of Protein, which is 620cals.

Rule 3

Fill the gap with carbs!
Start with training days as an example, you saw above that whilst im bulking I am eating 2783cals.
225cals are used up with my fats, so that's 2558cals left.
620cals are used up with my protein so that's 1938cals left.
Divide that 1938cals buy 4 to get your grams of carbs, which is 485g.

So for me, my training day macros would be: P155g C485g F25g

Just repeat for rest days and you're done. FORGET ABOUT YOUR TOTAL CALORIE FIGURE ONCE YOU HAVE DONE THIS. Just hit those marco figures and you're sweet.