Amped Training

Putting a Diet Together

This, much like training, is not rocket science. It's a simple matter of doing a little math, based on your body weight and your goals, then matching the numbers to your food choices.

You'll hear a lot of numbers thrown around for how to calculate your calorie requirements. They'll all take into account your body mass, your activity level, and make some attempt to extrapolate this based on research to give you an idea of how much you need to be eating in terms of calories.

I'm going to go on a tangent here for a second, because this is important. It relates to the idea of accuracy vs. precision. An accurate measurement represents reality. A precise measurement is one performed to a high degree of detail. Accurate and precise are not the same thing.

When we estimate both energy needs and the energy content of food, the key word to remember is “estimate”. You're never going to know with any kind of accuracy how many calories you expend. There's simply no practical way to measure the energy that the human body expends in total. The same applies to food. The calorie values we assign to food are based on averages, not to be considered accurate measurements.

What this means ultimately is that both energy intake and energy content of food are, at best, educated guesses. They're not hard and fast numbers.

This is the point I'm trying to make: at best, you've got an estimate, and in the best case scenario, you've got a margin of error of 200-300 calories. Best case.

The implications of this are pretty simple, though. It means that obsessing over your food is fairly pointless. What you should do is establish a baseline, both of your energy requirements and of your food intake. Then you can use this as a starting point to make adjustments until you get where you want to be.

Now with that out of the way, it shouldn't surprise you that I'm going to take a straightforward approach to estimating your caloric needs. You can use more complex formulas if you want, but simplicity is elegance.

The best rule of thumb I've seen so far is to estimate your maintenance needs at around 15 times body weight. If you've got a faster metabolism, use 16. Slower, use 14. This came from a paper I don't have right off hand, but was a pretty rough estimate based on a moderate activity level.

For weight loss, the high-end number is around 12 calories per pound. Notice I said “high end”. This means that you will likely have to go lower than this to see losses. Depending on how lean you are and how you're body responds, numbers of 7-8 calories per pound aren't out of the question. Start at 12 and go from there.

This gives you an idea of your overall needs. Now you have to figure out your amounts of protein, carbs, and fat. Fortunately this is pretty easy.

You'll sometimes see percentages applied to macronutrients. I think this is pretty pointless. A percentage doesn't tell you anything about absolute amounts. Go by absolute numerical values.

For protein, a value of 1 to 1.5g per pound is about right. The lower your calories, the higher the protein requirement. But only to a point. Going much above 1.5g/lb is pretty pointless, since it will be converted to glucose anyway (via gluconeogenesis in the liver). You might as well be eating carbs at that point.

Carb intake will vary. For a “normal” diet, 2g/lb is about right. However, for someone concerned with weight loss, I'd strongly consider limiting carb intakes to no more than 100-150g per day, and even then only on days with high/intense activity levels. Again this is an individual issue, but most people tend to do better in terms of weight loss and body composition with lower carb intakes.Doesn't necessarily mean low-carb or no-carb, just carb controlled.

There are a lot of carb-cycling diets out there that make use of this principle. Some of them are pretty good. However, some of them seem fairly arbitrary in how they determine intakes. Personally I like approaches that have some logic to them that makes sense to me. I'm not going to say they don't work; some folks swear by them, and I've not had enough experience with them to say they will or won't.

I do use the approach, but in a more conservative and rigid manner. For those looking to improve body composition and lose weight, the approach is normally applied with three weight training days which are used as higher carb days. Two of these have 100-150g of carbs. The third is a refeed day with a variable, but high, carb intake. Non-weight training days are prescribed as protein-fasting or ketogenic days, with little to no carb intake, mostly protein, and a few essential fats. On all days except the refeed, calories are kept under maintenance level.

Total activity level is determined by calorie intake. The lower the calories, the less activity you can support. Anecdotally, most will do better with a little higher calories and a little more activity, although this isn't always practical for a variety of reasons. Your mileage may vary.