Bodybuilding Diet 101 : Calculate your calories and macros to bulk, shred or maintain
Knowing your personal calories and macro matters : Our how to guide you already know that nutrition is key when it comes to reaching your physique goals. Whether you're bulking, cutting or wanting to maintain weight, you need to know your personal calorie intake. Where do you start?
To gaining quality mass on a bulk, or to lose body fat (but maintain muscle mass) on a cut, it's crucial that you get the diet side of things bang on. Here's our basic 101 on how to calculate calories and macro split to gain quality muscle, lose body fat, or maintain weight whilst protecting optimal body composition.
To maintain your body composition: multiply your body mass (in pounds/lbs) by 14 to get your kcals/day
To gain quality muscle mass: start by adding 500 calories per day to your maintenance calories, and monitor fat gain
To shred and cut: multiply your body mass (in pounds/lbs) by 12, or subtract 300-500 calories per day from your maintenance levels
Let's use Dave as an example. Dave has been training for about 3 years now and wants to calculate his caloric intake so he can first of all go on a quality mass bulk phase, before cutting down later in the year (he wants to do his first bodybuilding show). Dave weighs 200lbs. So, his starting point for maintenance would be 2800 kcals/day. To bulk up without adding too much fat, he'd look to eat around 3300 kcals/day. Then, when it's time to diet down for his bodybuilding competition, he'd want to slowly drop calories to 3000 kcals, then 2800 kcals, before dropping to a low of 2400 calories per day.
How do you split your macros? Macro split really is a matter of opinion, body type, taste and lifestyle. Some will go high carb, low fat. Others will favour a more paleo approach of higher fat, and pretty low carb. Some will carb backload (eating all their carbs in the evenings) and others will prioritise carbohydrates around training, to fuel their sessions and then boost recovery.
Why not start with a balanced approach and make changes as you learn more about how your body responds?
Of course, protein is crucial to building new muscle mass and to protecting your muscle when you diet down, so you need to make sure you're getting enough protein in. Start with 0.8g protein (the macro, not the food weight) per pound (lb) body weight. So - for Dave at 200lbs - that would be a minimum of 160g protein per day in his macro split. At his maintenance calories of 2800 kcals/day, that 160g protein equates to 640 calories (protein has 4 calories per gram). This leaves him 2160 calories to split between carbohydrates (4 calories per gram) and dietary fats (9 calories per gram) as he chooses.
How's your Bodybuilding Diet? Are you bulking, cutting or maintaining your body composition? How do you choose to spread your macros out across your caloric intake? Let us know in the comments below!
If you're struggling to hit your splits - consider supplementing with high quality bodybuilding supplements to cover all your bases whether it be protein, carbs or fats. Check out our online bodybuilding supplements store for a complete range to help you hit your goals.
