Part 5.1: Setting up your nutrition plan
The most simple way to set up your nutrition plan is to establish your bassline maintenance intake. This is how many calories you consume per day, that parallels with how many calories you burn per day. Now this is going to fluctuate every day, but all we need is a starting point.
To determine your maintenance calories, we can use this very simple and effective formula.
Setting Baseline Intake:
- Maintenance Calories = 33 calories per kg of Bodyweight
- Upper Limit – 44 calories
- Lower Limit – 22 calories
Taking 33 calories and multiplying it by your bodyweight in kg, will give you a number roughly equalled to your maintenance calories. It is important to keep in mind that this won’t be 100% accurate. However, the goal is to use this number to help workout your protein, carbohydrate and fat intake. Then to follow this as consistently as possible for roughly 2-3 weeks, based on the results in 2-3 weeks you will know whether you’re at a maintenance, or if you are at a surplus or deficit, from there you simply adjust your calories based on your goals you are wanting to achieve.
For example, if in 2-3 weeks’ time you’re following 33 calories per kg, and you put on weight, then you know those calories are a surplus. Or if you were to lose weight then you can presume those calories are a deficit.
What we also have is two different limits. The upper limit (44 calories) and the lower limit (22 calories). These are simply just guidelines – there are definitely individual circumstances and differences that may have you eating above or below these limits.
Setting Macronutrients:
- Protein = 1.8 – 3.3g per kg of Bodyweight
- Fat = .7 – 1.4g per kg of Bodyweight
- Carbohydrate = Total Calories – Calories from Protein & Fat
Protein
Looking at setting up your macronutrients, (proteins, carbs, fat) again using a simple formula. Majority of the sports nutrition literature points towards protein intake being optimised at around 1.8 – 3.3g per kg. This isn’t an issue if you sit a little bit higher or lower of these numbers based on your personal preference, as for how high of protein you personally should have, ultimately comes down to your goals. It has been shown that a higher protein diet will increase the thermic affect of food over the other 2 macronutrients. This may be a worthwhile strategy when trying to create a caloric deficit.
Other things to consider with protein intake, is that you might be going through a hard training cycle. You want to make sure there is an adequate supply of protein towards the upper limit, just to make sure you don’t lose any muscle tissue. You may also be at a very high carbohydrate intake, if you are at high carbs, they generally tend to be protein sparring. Therefor you can afford to go lower with your protein to allow for more carbs which will fuel performance and recovery.
Fat
The guideline here is 0.7 – 1.4g per kg. Typically, anything below 0.7g is hard to get enough nutrients and vitamins from your fat source. Where you land in this range will depend on your own personal preference and your preference of food. Therefor if you like to use oil in cooking or eat more fatty meats, then you will want to sit more towards the 1.4g per kg, or perhaps you may find more fat in your diet gives you indigestion, if this is the case you want to sit at the lower spectrum instead.
Carbohydrates
Now this is very simple. All you have to do is work out what is left over with your calories and fill the rest in with carbohydrates. How you do that is by taking the total calories in a day and subtract the calories you get from protein and fat. Then simply divide by 4, because there are 4 calories per gram of carbohydrates. This will give you the number of grams of carbohydrates you’ll need per day.
EXAMPLE PERSON:
- Maintenance at 60kg (multiply by 33) = 1980 total calories
- Protein (2.2g per kg) = 150g Protein
- Fat (1g per kg) = 60g Fat
- Carbohydrates = Total calories (1980) – Calories from Protein (600) & Fat (540) divided by 4 = 285g
Keep in mind this is going to be a little bit inaccurate, but it’s a starting point. This example person would follow this plan for 2-3 weeks and track their results. Based on the results they would make more changes to suit their goals.
When it comes to putting this formula into a meal plan its going to be open to personal variation, so you would want to look back through the different nutritional pillars (Part 4: Personal Variables) when it comes to designing your meal plan. Then you will want to consider how many meals you want to have per day. Generally speaking, it doesn’t make a huge difference how many meals you want to have, a good starting point is to space your calories, protein, carbs and fats evenly across however many meals you want in a day, 3-4 meals generally is a very good start point.
