Setting up a diet - pt 1.

The low down - 

Word Count - 1910.
Time to Read - 6.3 minutes. ​

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Setting up a diet 
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According to survey data from the US 41% of gym-goers attend the gym to lose weight and 38% go to look better (Source - https://www.statista.com/statistics/639169/reasons-behind-gym-exercise-in-us/
) . Whilst exercising is a key component of improving your physique and losing weight, your diet is essential to help maximise both muscle growth and fat loss. 

Diet is a topic for which there is no end of bullshit on the internet. If you don’t get the fundamental parts of a diet sorted, then you will be wasting your time and money. This article will explain what the key components of a diet are, what you should focus on and how to get started with your diet whether you want to build muscle or lose fat. 

TL; DR

• Your weight is controlled by calorie balance. Eating more than you need will cause weight gain, eating less than you need will drive weight loss. 
• Macronutrients are important to track in order to make reaching physique goals easier.
• Setting realistic weight loss or muscle gain targets is essential to establishing long term success. 

Nutritional Importance

There are 5 components to a diet, in order of importance: 

1. Calories. Calories provide the fundamental control on whether weight is gained or lost. If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. If you eat less calories than you burn, then you will lose weight

2. Macros. Macros (Protein, Carbohydrates and Fats), are important in helping you reach physique goals more quickly than if you just focus on calories alone

3. Micronutrients. Micronutrients aren’t massively important in attaining physique goals - however long-term deficiencies will impact your health and ability to train and recover. 

4. Meal timing/frequency. Meal timing and frequency is a topic which generates a lot of discussion and catchy slogans but it doesn’t really matter, if you are hitting your calorie and macro targets. These will be discussed in more detail in a future article.

5. Supplements. Supplements are the smallest part of the puzzle - I wrote about supplements in a previous article (link here). For now, all we need to know is that supplements, supplement your diet and help you reach your calorie and macro targets. 

This article is primarily going to focus on the first two points; calories and macros with micronutrients, meal timing and frequency discussed in a subsequent article. 

Setting up your diet

When setting up a diet - whether your goal is muscle gain, fat loss or to maximise sports performance - the most important thing is calorie balance. There are 3 main components to a diet:

1. Choosing appropriate fat loss or muscle gain targets based your current levels of body fat or training experience

2. Calculating your target energy intake

3. Calculating your macronutrient breakdown 

Most people want to lose fat or gain muscle, or ideally do both simultaneously. Your ability to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time decreases with body fat percentage and training experience. The less time you’ve been training and the higher body fat percentage you have, the easier it will be to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. However, if you are a complete beginner to training, you may be better focused on just trying to gain muscle - your ‘noob gains’ will be much greater and training will be easier. 

When we are deciding about whether to lose or gain weight it is important to establish what our goals are. Should we try to gain muscle and add weight (bulk)  or try to lose body fat (cut)? 

The first question to ask yourself is what your training goals are. Are you a powerlifter or strongman competitor who just wants to maximise the amount of weight you can lift? Are you a powerlifter looking to move up or down a weight class? Or are you a bodybuilder or fitness enthusiast who is looking to maximise your physique? 

Generally, if your body fat percentage is above 15% for a male athlete or above 25% for a female athlete, you can cut your body-fat levels down to 8-10% without losing much strength. For the powerlifters out there, if you are near the bottom of your current weight class and carrying higher levels of body fat, cutting to reach the weight class below may allow you to become highly competitive. 

For example, if you weigh 85kg and have 20% body fat and compete in the 90kg weight class, you could easily lose 5-8% body-fat and move down to the 82.5kg weight class without losing any strength. This will make you relatively stronger and more competitive in the lower weight class. If you are already fairly lean, below 8-12% body fat levels, deciding to bulk may be more appropriate. 

Once you have decided whether to bulk or cut, the next step is to calculate how many calories you should eat. Thankfully, there is a helpful tool available to do this (http://dannyleeonline.co.uk/macro-calculator.html). 

To use this tool, firstly weigh yourself and measure your body fat percentage. The two easiest ways to measure your body fat percentage at home are either the calliper method 
(https://www.myprotein.com/thezone/nutrition/how-to-use-skin-fold-calipers-measuring-body-fat-percentage/) or the tape measure method developed by the US Navy (https://rippedbody.com/how-calculate-body-fat-percentage/)
 
Once you have these numbers, it’s possible to calculate your lean body mass (LBM). The next step is to establish your target LBM and target body-fat percentages. For those deciding to cut, you are aiming to maintain LBM and lose body-fat. Broadly, the following fat-loss targets are appropriate:


Body Fat %.                   ->30.     20-30.        15-20.       12-15.   8-12.    <8
Target fat loss/week -   1.1kg.      0.9kg.       0.7kg.    0.5kg.  0.3kg.  0.2kg
(source: https://rippedbody.com/)

So, if we go back to our 85kg powerlifter with 20% body fat who is aiming to lose around 8% body-fat (7kg), they should be aiming to lose 0.7kg a week. This means their initial cut should take ten weeks (7kg / 0.7 kg = 10 weeks), and their target body mass is 77kg. 

What about if we wanted to build more muscle? How much muscle could we expect to gain and how quickly? The first step in assessing how much muscle we could expect to gain is to assess how long you have been training seriously. If you are unsure about where you fit in, ask your coach. 

Training Status -           Beginner.       Intermediate      Advanced
Muscle Gain per month - 0.9-1.2kg.  0.45kg-0.9kg.        0.25kg
(source: https://rippedbody.com/)

There are several strategies around bulking. A dirty bulk (gain weight as quickly as possible), a controlled bulk (maximise muscle gain without gaining unnecessary fat levels) or a lean bulk (maintain maximal leanness while adding muscle). A dirty bulk is usually a bad idea. Your maximal rate of muscle growth is controlled by training experience, not by calories. Eating more calories above an appropriate level just leads to elevated fat gains.  In contrast, the so-called lean bulk or lean gains strategy, aims to build muscle without gaining fat. This can be done, but it will take much longer to build significant muscle mass. The best way, in my view, is to take the middle ground and perform a controlled bulk. This maximises your muscle gain whilst controlling the fat gain. For most people, a ratio of 1:1 muscle : fat gain is realistic. 

So, to use another example, what if we had a beginner to training, who weighs 70kg at 8% body fat. In this case, the lifter should be trying     to gain muscle. As they are a beginner, setting a target of 1kg of muscle a month is a realistic goal. If they aim to gain 1kg of muscle a month, they should expect to gain 1kg of fat per month. Over a 6 month bulk, they should aim to gain 6kg of muscle and 6kg of fat, leaving them at 82kg and 15% body fat. 


Calories 
So what happens now? We’ve established what we weigh, what body fat levels and our goals. The next step is to calculate your calories. The first step is to assess your daily, non-exercise activity level. Fundamentally, if you’re an office worker, set it at taking it easy. If you work in a more physically demanding job, set the activity level to beast mode. 
The second step is to enter how many hours of exercise a week you perform. If you’re training 4 times a week, using 6 hours of exercise as a baseline is typical. Once these have been entered, you’ll be able to calculate your daily calorie targets. 
Going back to our cutting powerlifter - the output is for them to eat 2546 calories a day. Our bulking beginner has a target of 2711 calories a day. Alongside these numbers, there are then the target macros - Protein, Carbs and Fat. What are these numbers and what should you do with them? 
Macros 
Macros or macronutrients refer to a food type required in large amounts in the diet; principally Fat, Protein and Carbohydrates. A common idea is that whilst calorie balance determines weight loss and gain, macronutrients control whether fat is lost or muscle is gained. This isn’t entirely right, but if you get the macro-nutrients correct then it will be much easier to reach your physique goals. 
The three major macronutrients are Protein, Carbohydrates and Fat. Each macronutrient has a certain amount of calories. Protein and carbohydrates both contain 4 calories per gram, with fat containing 9 calories per gram. The calorie target is then made up of a certain amount of protein, fat and carbohydrates per day. 

Protein 
Protein is essential for strength and physique athletes. Primarily, protein is essential for muscle repair and growth, thereby helping us recover from training. When we are trying lose weight, eating enough protein is essential to maintain as much lean muscle mass as possible. When we are trying to gain muscle mass, protein is important to help us to build as much muscle as possible. 
The amount of protein that you consume is dependent on your lean body mass and your diet goals. If you’re cutting, protein intake should be slightly higher than if you’re bulking, with a range of 2.3-3.1g/kg of LBM when cutting and 1.6-2.2g/kg of LMB when bulking. Using the Danny Lee Macro calculator*, we are given 5 options for the protein multiplier (0.8-0.9-1.0-1.1-1.2). If you are cutting, select a value of 1.0-1.2 for the protein multiplier, and a value for 0.8-1.0 if you’re bulking. 
The reason that protein is boosted in a calorie deficit is two fold; firstly higher levels of protein in the diet when you are in a calorie deficit helps preserve muscle mass. Secondly, protein is a high satiety macronutrient - it helps you feel fuller. When you are in a calorie deficit, eating a higher proportion of your diet from protein will help you feel fuller, making it easy to stick to the diet. 
Fat
Dietary fat is an essential macronutrient - it has a key role in maintaining normal hormonal function, especially testosterone. It should never be completely removed from your diet as this will have adverse health effects over the long term. 
Fat is the most calorie intensive of the macronutrients, with 9 calories per gram. During a cut, the easiest way to reduce calories is therefore to reduce fat consumption. As fat is over twice as calorie rich as carbohydrates, reducing fat intake can cause a big drop in calories. There is a minimum value that you shouldn’t go below - broadly below 0.9g/kg LBM. During a bulk, fat should make up around 20-30% of the total calorie intake. 
Using our trusty macro calculator, we have a range of values for the fat multiplier (0.4-0.5-0.6). If you are trying to cut, select the minimum value, 0.4. If you are trying to bulk, select 0.5 or 0.6, to see which value results in a fat intake between the 20-30% range. 
Carbohydrate
The final piece of the macronutrient puzzle are carbohydrates. When setting up a diet and setting your macronutrient targets, carbohydrates make up the remaining calorie amounts once your protein and fat goals have been set. Whilst carbohydrates are technically just the ‘rest’ of your diet, they are still important. Carbohydrates have important roles to play in feeling your workouts, replenishing muscle glycogen and play a role in hormone regulation. 

Putting it all together 
Let's go back to our two examples. 
Our 85kg powerlifter who is trying to cut has calculated they have 20% body fat, giving them a LBM of 68kg. They want to cut down to 12% body fat, giving them a target weight of 77kg. They have a relatively sedentary job and do 6 hours of training a week. 
This gives them a calorie target of ~2546 cal/day. They are cutting, so they select a protein multiplier of 1.1 and a fat multiplier of 0.4, giving them final macro targets of 186g Protein, 296g Carbohydrates and 67g Fat. 

The second example is our 70kg beginner who wants to pack on some muscle. 
They have a calculated body fat of 8%, giving them 64.4kg LBM. They are aiming to gain a kilo of muscle per month over the next six months, giving them a target LBM of 70.4kg, and a body fat percentage of 15%.  They have an active job and also do 6 hours of training a week, giving them a calorie target of 3073 calories per day. As they are bulking, they are choose a protein multiplier of 0.9 and a fat multiplier of 0.5, giving them final macro targets of 162g Protein, 402g Carbohydrates and 90g Fat. 

Summary 
In this guide we have outlined the key components of setting up a diet, what the components of a diet are and how to calculate your calorie and macronutrient targets. This should serve as the basis for your diet. In the next article we will discuss in more detail how you can use different strategies to hit your calorie and macronutrient targets, as well as discuss the importance of micronutrients.
*
The Macro calculator is available to clients in the website's 'Client Portal'.

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This article was written by James Kennedy, if you'd like to get in touch with him directly you can email him via - jlk@dannyleeonline.co.uk