Create Your Own Nutrition Plan

For more information buy or download the following ebooks: (Clicking on the link will lead you to a free download page).

The Truth About Building Muscle
Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

Hello everyone, today I am going to teach you how to create your own personalized diet plan, personalized for your goals, in order to get the best results in the least amount of time!
To start off, for the best approximation of your calorie intake you will need a good aproximation of your body-fat percentage and you will need to know your weight and activity level.
You will need to use the following formula to calculate your basal metabolic rate. This is not the calories you use in a day, but in conjunction with the activity level it will give you a very good estimation.


Katch-McArdle:Considered the most accurate formula for those who are relatively lean. Use ONLY if you have a good estimate of your bodyfat %.BMR = 370 + (21.6 x LBM)Where LBM = [total weight (kg) x (100 - bodyfat %)]/100


If you dont have a good estimation on your body fat percentage then you should use one of the formulas bellow instead.
 Harris-Benedict formula: Very inaccurate. It was derived from studies on LEAN, YOUNG, ACTIVE males MANY YEARS AGO (1919). Notorious for OVERESTIMATING requirements, especially in the overweight. IF YOU CAN AVOID IT, DON'T USE IT!
MEN: BMR = 66 + [13.7 x weight (kg)] + [5 x height (cm)] - [6.76 x age (years)]
WOMEN: BMR = 655 + [9.6 x weight (kg)] + [1.8 x height (cm)] - [4.7 x age (years)]

Mifflin-St Jeor: Developed in the 1990s and more realistic in todays settings. It still doesn't take into consideration the differences as a consequence of high BF%. Thus, once again, it OVERESTIMATES NEEDS, ESPECIALLY IN THE OVERWEIGHT.
MEN: BMR = [9.99 x weight (kg)] + [6.25 x height (cm)] - [4.92 x age (years)] + 5
WOMEN: BMR = [9.99 x weight (kg)] + [6.25 x height (cm)] - [4.92 x age (years)] -161

After you determine your BMR you will need to multiply it by your activity level. You can determine your activity level bellow.

1.2 = Sedentary (Desk job, and Little Formal Exercise)
1.3-1.4 = Lightly Active (Light daily activity AND light exercise 1-3 days a week)
1.5-1.6 = Moderately Active (Moderately daily Activity & Moderate exercise 3-5 days a week)
1.7-1.8 = Very Active (Physically demanding lifestyle & Hard exercise 6-7 days a week)
1.9-2.2 = Extremely Active (Athlete in ENDURANCE training or VERY HARD physical job)

Now that you know your maintenence calories (the calories which you need to eat in order to maintain the current weight, this is the value you calculated before) you can calculate the calories you need to consume to reach your goals. If your goal is to lose weight, then you should subtract 500 calories from your maintenence, if your goal is to gain weight then you should add 500 calories to your maintenece.
In terms of macro-nutrients things are a little easier to calculate. I will talk about each of the macro-nutrients bellow.

Protein: Believe it or not - Protein intake is a bit of a controversial issue. In this, the general recommendations given in the 'bodybuilding' area are nearly double the 'standard' recommendations given in the Sports Nutrition Arena.
The GENERAL sports nutrition guideline based on clinical trials suggest that in the face of ADEQUATE calories and CARBS the following protein intakes are sufficient:
STRENGTH training -> 1.2 to 1.6g per KG bodyweight (about .6 / pound)
ENDURANCE training -> 1.4 to 1.8g per KG bodyweight (about .8 / pound)
ADOLESCENT in training -> 1.8 to 2.2g per KG bodyweight (about 1g / pound)
BUT researchers acknowledge that protein becomes MORE important in the context of LOWER calorie intakes, or LOWER carb intakes.
Recent evidence also suggests that protein intakes of 3g/kg help with physiological and psychological stressors associated with high volume or intense training.

It is important to note that ADEQUATE v's OPTIMAL is not discussed. And one also needs to consider thermogenics/ satiety/ and personal preference.

General 'bodybuilding' guidelines for protein would be as follows:
- Moderate bodyfat = 1-1.33g per pound TOTAL weight [or ~ 1.25g/pound lean mass if bodyfat known]
- Very Low bodyfat or Very Low Calorie = 1.25 - 1.75g per TOTAL weight [or ~ 1.35 - 2g/pound of lean mass]
- Very HIGH bodyfat, Inactive, = 0.8 to 1g per TOTAL weight [or ~ 1 x LEAN mass]
Anecdotally, most find these HIGHER protein intake better for satiety, partitioning, and blood sugar control. So UNLESS you are specifically guided to use the GENERAL sports nutrition guidelines, I would suggest the BODYBUILDING values.


Fats: Generally speaking, although the body can get away with short periods of very low fat, in the long run your body NEEDS fat to maintain general health, satiety, and sanity. Additionally - any form of high intensity training will benefit from a 'fat buffer' in your diet - which acts to control free radical damage and inflammation. General guides:
Average or lean bodyfat: 1 - 2g fat/ kg body weight [between 0.40 - 1g total weight/ pounds]
High bodyfat: 1-2g fat/ LEAN weight [between 0.4 - 1g LEAN weight/ pounds]
IF low calorie dieting - you can decrease further, but as a minimum, I would not suggest LESS than about 0.30g/ pound.
Note 1: Total fat intake is NOT the same as 'essential fats' (essential fats are specific TYPES of fats that are INCLUDED in your total fat intake)...


Carbs: For carbs there are no specific 'requirements' for your body so - but carbs are important for athletes, HIGHLY ACTIVE individuals, or those trying to GAIN MASS. [carbs help with workout intensity, health, & satiety (+ sanity)].
If you are an athlete involved in a good volume of training I would suggest you CALCULATE a requirement for carbs as a PRIORITY - then go back and calculate protein / fat:
Moderately active: 4.5 - 6.5 g/ kg (about 2 - 3g/ pound)
High active: 6.5 - 8.5 g/ kg (about 3 - 4g/ pound)
INTENSE activity: + 8.5g / kg (more than 4g/ pound)

For 'others' - to calculate your carbohydrate intake you calculate the calories left over from fats/ protein:
carb cals = Total cal needs - ([protein grams above x 4] + [fat grams above x 9])
carb grams = (p cals + f cals)/ 4

For more information buy or download the following ebooks: (Clicking on the link will lead you to a free download page).

The Truth About Building Muscle
Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

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Eating Clean

For more information buy or download the following ebooks: (Clicking on the link will lead you to a free download page).

The Truth About Building Muscle
Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle  

As you all know there has been a big debate for quite a long time on what should be considered a "clean" diet. One school of though preaches that a "clean" diet should be the diet where you eat only "healthy" food, healthy food being considered the food which contains a lot of vitamins and minerals, while the other school of thought suggests that a "clean" diet should be the one where you dont gain a lot of fat. So which one is right? Should you only eat food rich in micronutrients? What should you do to gain muscle while limiting your fat gain?
 The debate between what should be considered a "clean" diet is purely dependant on ones opinion, and only exists because people fail to use the correct terminology for each case. A diet rich in micronutrients should be labeled micronutrient rich diet to avoid misconception, and a diet where you develop  your muscle while limiting your fat gain should be called slow bulking diet.
 While it is true that micronutrients are very important for a healthy lifestyle and even for muscular development, to gain weight by simply eating micronutrient rich food is simply impossible. Micronutrient rich food are most of the times low on macronutrients, like protein and fat, and macronutrients are even more important in terms of health and building muscle, so the reality is that you should find a good balance between micronutrient and macronutrient rich food. You should eat enough vegetables and fruits to absorb adequate amounts of micronutrients but you should also eat enough macronutrient rich food to get a decent intake of calories and macronutrients. This means eating food considered "less healthy" is fine as long as you dont exagerate on the amount you eat and as long as you are still eating enough of the "healthier" foods.
Note: I use "healthier" and "less healthier" here just to make it easier to be understood. By now if you have been reading articles in TrainingnNutrition you should know that no food is considered "healthy" or "unhealthy", only your overall diet can be characterized by those labels.
 And finally we have the most asked question, "what should you do to gain muscle while limiting your fat gain?". There are a lot of important factors to answer this question, but to simplify it all, it basicly depends on your diet, your training, your sleep and your genetics.
 Your caloric intake, in relation to your energy expenditure, dictates your weight change. (If you eat more calories than you expend you will gain weight, if you eat less calories than you expend you will lose weight). Training, diet, sleep and genetics are the most important factors on how much of that weight will be muscle. So to limit your fat gain you should not get too much calories, 500 calories above maintenece is recomended, while training adequately (read our training articles), having a good diet (read our other diet articles to create your personalized diet) and having at least 8 hours of sleep per day.

For more information buy or download the following ebooks: (Clicking on the link will lead you to a free download page).

The Truth About Building Muscle
Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle

READMORE

Training Frequency

How many times per week should I train?
How should my training slpit look like?
Should I relly on full body workouts or should I do some kind of split?
If you have any of the above questions, then this article is for you!

So lets start, the training frequency is a very debated topic, we have lots of different opinions so it is really hard to make your own mind about this topic, but the general idea is that you should workout 3-5 times a week for maximum musclular hypertrophy and strenght gains. Reason is that training for more than 5 times might lead you to overtrain and eventualy stagnate or even lose muscle/strenght, and working out less than 3 times per week will lead you to not develop at your maximum rate.

The best training split is very dependant on your weightlifting level and goals. If you are a newbie the worst mystake you can make is to follow a experienced weightlifter's plan, not only the plan will be for someone more advanced than you but the goals might also be different, imagine if his tricep is not as developed as he wants compared to the rest of his body and his training enfasis his tricep, if you follow it you will end up over developing your triceps compared to the rest of the body.
For a begginer you should follow a full body routine, reason is that you wont be advanced enough to really fatigue your nervous system, due to low weight training, so if you follow a full body routine you will be training each body part 2-3 times a week and still having enough rest, this will give you the best results in the least ammount of time. Eventually when your gains start to decrease you might want to evolve your training into something else, I suggest a upper/lower split, and eventually when that too starts to give you less gains you should go into a more complex split.
Note: Remeber that your main goal in your training is progressing your lifts as much as possible, while still maintaining good form. You should be increasing reps/weight every single workout, specially as a newbie, as you are new to weightlifting and your body isn't accostomed to it, so you will progress much faster.

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Meal Timing

The following diet protocols are recomended by us, if you click the hyperlinks you will be able to download the free download links for the books.

Leangains Approach Ebook

The Warrior Diet Ebook

 The most widespread idea is that meal timing is really important, that you should eat every few hours to avoid a catabolic state or to avoid a starvation mode, said to be something you should avoid when you are losing weight. But is this really true? Is there really a starvation mode that the body goes through when you are losing wight and not eating every few hours? And most important, is meal timing really that important to the body composition?

 To answer all this questions lets start out by talking about by talking about glycogen, even if you skip your meals for a decent number of hours, 16 for example, you wont really lose any muscle, you might lose some muscle glycogen or water weight and it might give you the impression of muscle loss but in reality that doesn't happen. Your body has glycogen stores which will prevent your muscle to be "consumed" in turn for energy, for muscle loss to happen your glycogen stores need to be depleted. So you dont have to eat every few hours to avoid a catabolic state. 

Note: I am not saying muscle loss can't happen, it happens quite a lot, most times during periods of low calorie intake (cutting), during prolonged periods of low calorie intake muscle loss is actually very likely to happen due to you glycogen stores ending up being depleted for long periods of time.

Regarding starvation mode, there is no scientific evidence that such a state really exists. There is no doubt that being on a very big caloric deficit for a prolonged period of time has a very harsh effect on your body, for example your hormone production, but to say that during long periods of high caloric deficit will actually make you gain/maintain weight is completely wrong. The weight you lose/gain is only dependant on your caloric needs and caloric intake, if your caloric intake is lower than your caloric needs you can't possibly gain weight.

And finally the last question, "is meal timing really that important to the body composition?", and the answer is no, meal timing has minimal effect on body composition. Altough getting most of your nutrients and calories in one meal is different that getting your nutrients and calories throughout the day, the effects on body composition is not that different. You might think that the more you divide your meals the better absortion rate you will have, but the truth is that bigger meals contribute to higher insulin response and thus highering the rate of absortion of nutrients.

To conclude, there is no definite answer yet to the question of what is the optimal meal timing, but the truth is that it shouldn't really matter, as long as you reach the nutrient and caloric goals everyday it should be good enough to reach your objectives. The best diet is the diet which fits your lifestyle and reaches the caloric and nutrient goals.

The following diet protocols are recomended by us, if you click the hyperlinks you will be able to download the free download links for the books.

Leangains Approach Ebook

The Warrior Diet Ebook

READMORE