What the best way was to find your recommended macronutrient intake?

Hi Samuel

This totally depends upon your goals, your body size and your personal metabolic rate. If you are tall, trying to gain weight and have a fast metabolism, then you may need over 5000 calories per day. If you are small, trying to lose fat and have a slow metabolism, you may only need 1,000 calories. Then you have to factor in your activity levels.

There are several ways of doing this and several equations and software programs etc but most traditional ones will still steer you towards 15% protein and less than a gram of protein intake per kilo of your body weight. This is starting to change (even weight watchers now accept that protein calories are less likely to be stored as fat compared to carbs and fat).

Unfortunately, none of these programs will accurately give you your optimum calorie and macronutrient intake because they all operate using certain assumptions.

The best way to approach these things is to start with your present diet and make adjustments as such...
1. If your protein intake is less than 2 grams per kilo of body weight, then raise it to this level.
2. For maintenance, an average sized man who trains fairly hard 3-4 times per week needs about 2500 to 3000 calories to maintain weight and support muscle growth.
3. Their macronutrients should be about 25-30% protein, 50-55% carbs and 20-25% fat.
4. Then you make adjustments on a weekly basis to keep your body weight/fat levels moving in the desired direction. You do this by cutting primarily carbs. So if you are trying to gain, then the carb percentage will go up and the fat and protein will go down because you'll be increasing carb intake. If you're cutting, your carb % will go down and protein and fat ratios will go up. Although many bodybuilders, fitness models, etc will further increase protein and often cut some fat along with carbs in the dieting process.

Here's a typical starting point for an average, active 80kg man who wants to mostly maintain and keep his fat levels low...

80kg Man

2g/kg Protein 160g 640 calories 24%
4g/kg Carbs 320g 1,280 calories 48%
1g/kg Fat 80g 720 calories 27%
Total = 2,640 Calories

For further details on bulking and cutting see these two brief previous articles:

http://fitnessinventor.com/articles/652-how-to-gain-muscle-it-s-the-calories-stupid

http://fitnessinventor.com/articles/1789-musclediet-six-pack-plan

Great reply Mark...
I think it comes to surprise so many people when you talk about those level of carbs to stay lean. Same as in St Legers post here: http://fitnessinventor.com/articles/1630-how-i-consistently-control-my-body-fat-levels

It is all very individual and trial and error, but the fact that carbs are so important in a lean diet at the right times and in the right proportion helps to stop the 'be scared' of carbs talk.