Males 25% & Over, Females 32% & Over: Weekly Energy Intake
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Why Base It On Body Fat Percentage?
The calculator on this page allows you to find an estimate of the energy intake over the course of a full week period that will allow you to lose fat at close to an optimal rate. You'll be utilizing this intake over the course of both weeks of the program. I've set up this calculator to give you a highly targeted starting point that will all but assure your success, so long as you comply.
However, that's all that this value is: an estimated starting point. While it will provide results in the short term, finding your true optimal intake takes a few weeks of monitoring how your body responds to a specific intake & more intricate calculations/adjustments. As such, you can't expect to use this value for longer than this 14-day period & expect to see continued success. If only it was that easy...
Back on track: Energy intake is only half of the equation. The other half is, of course, energy expenditure. You're doing both throughout the course of each & every day, and the result of these two sides of the equation is what's known as your "Energy Balance."
If you take in more than you expend, you are in energy surplus. If you expend more than you intake, you are in energy deficit. It's possible to lose weight in a surplus & gain weight in a deficit, but a surplus or a deficit is highly correlated with your ability to gain & lose weight, respectively. I will note that as beginners, you are much more prone to gaining muscle while losing fat (a.k.a. the Holy Grail), even in a deficit like we've set up here. You're welcome.
The intake side of the equation is pretty straight forward: food. You would also definitely include liquid calories in that side of the equation as well, but those don't have any place in this program (outside of a protein shake on training days).
The expenditure side is more complex. Not only does your body require a certain amount of energy just to operate properly (known as your Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR), a number of factors dictate how much energy you will expend on any given day, including:
- Exercise (obviously)
- Non-Excercise Activity Thermogenesis (a.k.a. NEAT. This encompases your daily activity outside of the gym, as well as things like fidgeting or gesturing with your hands while talking. Those small things can really add up over time.)
- Thermic Effect of Food (a.k.a. TEF. Your body burns energy to process & utilize the food you eat).
All of these factors are directly tied with your body composition. When you improve your body composition by losing fat & gaining lean mass, you burn more energy during exercise, you burn more energy by just existing in the first place, & you burn more energy processing your food.
In short, the leaner you are & the more muscle mass you carry, the higher your metabolism will be. The higher your metabolism, the higher your energy intake needs to be simply to maintain your current body composition. Being lean & gaining muscle allows you to eat more while at the same time making it easier to stay lean in the first place. It's really a win-win.
This is why I've divided each gender into two categories: a lower bodyfat category, & a higher bodyfat category. This allows people that start at a lower body fat percentage to eat more calories from the get go. The higher your percentage, the more mass you can afford to lose, which calls for a slightly more aggressive energy deficit.
When you apply a deficit, your body has to improvise to make up the gap between your level of intake & the level of energy you need to remain weight stable. To do this, your body breaks down its own tissue to aid the cause. If you structure your diet & training in a fashion that encourages you to maintain/gain lean mass, like we are, your body will preferentially break down your own stored energy (I.E. body fat) to help close that gap. As a result, you will preferentially lose body fat, & it is highly likely that a good deal of the energy that was created from your body fat being broken down will help in the process of building new lean mass. Think robbing Peter to pay Paul, except Peter is a jackass & totally deserves it.
However, if you simply crash diet on 500 calories a day for months on end and do hours of cardio to "increase your calorie burn," your body spares no expense. Muscle, fat & even organ tissue are all up for grabs, which is why prolonged crash-dieting is a whole new world of unhealthy. You may lose weight on the scale, but as soon as you stop restricting calories this aggressively & stop the cardio, you're left with a BIG problem: your metabolism is in the drain because you lost so much lean mass. When you go back to eating "like normal," you're prone to regain all of the weight you lost & then some, because you are actually less lean, relatively speaking, than when you started your crash diet.
I illustrated this extreme example to prove a point: when you want to improve body composition, there is a "sweet spot" for your energy balance. Too little of an intake will put your lean mass at risk; too much of an intake won't result in any change. Accordingly, I've prescribed the energy deficit that has been shown by the research to provide this "sweet spot" for either category of body fat you may fall in; low or high.
If you are in the low bodyfat group, you will be eating at roughly a 40% energy deficit across the week. This should encourage a weight loss rate of roughly 1.0% bodyweight/week (now you know how I got my weight loss projections in the intro).
If you are in the higher bodyfat group, you'll be eating at roughly a 50% energy deficit across the week. Since you have more fat to lose in the first place, we can be slightly more aggressive with our deficit, since the majority of weight loss will come from the majority of tissue you're already carrying (body fat). This should encourage a weight loss rate of 1.5% bodyweight/week.
Again, these are all simply projections: we cannot say with certainty that the value that the calculator gives you is exactly 40% below your maintenance level. This requires collecting data over the course of weeks, running a number of calculations & adjusting weekly, which is something I've done personally with great success. Since we only have a two-week window in this program, we won't have enough data to come to any firm conclusions. But if you decide to become a full-time client after this kick-start, we'll have a very good estimate how to change things moving forward. So again, and I can't stress this enough, these are just estimates, and should only be used for this initial two-week period. Progression requires a whole lotta TLC.
One last thing I wanted to mention is something called "Adaptive Thermogenesis." This term suggests that your metabolic rate adapts to your level of intake over time. This is shown in the research: the less you eat, the less you burn, and vice versa. Some people think that when this adaptation occurs, it cannot be reversed, leading to a "damaged metabolism." This research review by my mentor Menno Henselmans blows that entire theory out of the water; there is no such thing as metabolic damage.
It is true that your expenditure is influenced by your intake, but there is no reason to believe that dieting once will have any long-lasting negative effects if you return to the same energy intake. As long as you diet successfully & maintain/gain lean mass (and not do anything like the 500 calorie + cardio crash-diet example I listed above), you can absolutely increase your intake again and expect your metabolism to increase right along with it. If you did it right, you will actually find that it takes you more calories just to stay weight stable. Getting leaner simply helps you stay lean.
I am living proof of this: In my sixth week of preparation for a bodybuilding contest, I ate nearly 450 more calories per day than the week I started, and my scale weight decreased by 7 pounds between those two time points. This is not myth; this is fact.
You can do the same. It starts here.
However, that's all that this value is: an estimated starting point. While it will provide results in the short term, finding your true optimal intake takes a few weeks of monitoring how your body responds to a specific intake & more intricate calculations/adjustments. As such, you can't expect to use this value for longer than this 14-day period & expect to see continued success. If only it was that easy...
Back on track: Energy intake is only half of the equation. The other half is, of course, energy expenditure. You're doing both throughout the course of each & every day, and the result of these two sides of the equation is what's known as your "Energy Balance."
If you take in more than you expend, you are in energy surplus. If you expend more than you intake, you are in energy deficit. It's possible to lose weight in a surplus & gain weight in a deficit, but a surplus or a deficit is highly correlated with your ability to gain & lose weight, respectively. I will note that as beginners, you are much more prone to gaining muscle while losing fat (a.k.a. the Holy Grail), even in a deficit like we've set up here. You're welcome.
The intake side of the equation is pretty straight forward: food. You would also definitely include liquid calories in that side of the equation as well, but those don't have any place in this program (outside of a protein shake on training days).
The expenditure side is more complex. Not only does your body require a certain amount of energy just to operate properly (known as your Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR), a number of factors dictate how much energy you will expend on any given day, including:
- Exercise (obviously)
- Non-Excercise Activity Thermogenesis (a.k.a. NEAT. This encompases your daily activity outside of the gym, as well as things like fidgeting or gesturing with your hands while talking. Those small things can really add up over time.)
- Thermic Effect of Food (a.k.a. TEF. Your body burns energy to process & utilize the food you eat).
All of these factors are directly tied with your body composition. When you improve your body composition by losing fat & gaining lean mass, you burn more energy during exercise, you burn more energy by just existing in the first place, & you burn more energy processing your food.
In short, the leaner you are & the more muscle mass you carry, the higher your metabolism will be. The higher your metabolism, the higher your energy intake needs to be simply to maintain your current body composition. Being lean & gaining muscle allows you to eat more while at the same time making it easier to stay lean in the first place. It's really a win-win.
This is why I've divided each gender into two categories: a lower bodyfat category, & a higher bodyfat category. This allows people that start at a lower body fat percentage to eat more calories from the get go. The higher your percentage, the more mass you can afford to lose, which calls for a slightly more aggressive energy deficit.
When you apply a deficit, your body has to improvise to make up the gap between your level of intake & the level of energy you need to remain weight stable. To do this, your body breaks down its own tissue to aid the cause. If you structure your diet & training in a fashion that encourages you to maintain/gain lean mass, like we are, your body will preferentially break down your own stored energy (I.E. body fat) to help close that gap. As a result, you will preferentially lose body fat, & it is highly likely that a good deal of the energy that was created from your body fat being broken down will help in the process of building new lean mass. Think robbing Peter to pay Paul, except Peter is a jackass & totally deserves it.
However, if you simply crash diet on 500 calories a day for months on end and do hours of cardio to "increase your calorie burn," your body spares no expense. Muscle, fat & even organ tissue are all up for grabs, which is why prolonged crash-dieting is a whole new world of unhealthy. You may lose weight on the scale, but as soon as you stop restricting calories this aggressively & stop the cardio, you're left with a BIG problem: your metabolism is in the drain because you lost so much lean mass. When you go back to eating "like normal," you're prone to regain all of the weight you lost & then some, because you are actually less lean, relatively speaking, than when you started your crash diet.
I illustrated this extreme example to prove a point: when you want to improve body composition, there is a "sweet spot" for your energy balance. Too little of an intake will put your lean mass at risk; too much of an intake won't result in any change. Accordingly, I've prescribed the energy deficit that has been shown by the research to provide this "sweet spot" for either category of body fat you may fall in; low or high.
If you are in the low bodyfat group, you will be eating at roughly a 40% energy deficit across the week. This should encourage a weight loss rate of roughly 1.0% bodyweight/week (now you know how I got my weight loss projections in the intro).
If you are in the higher bodyfat group, you'll be eating at roughly a 50% energy deficit across the week. Since you have more fat to lose in the first place, we can be slightly more aggressive with our deficit, since the majority of weight loss will come from the majority of tissue you're already carrying (body fat). This should encourage a weight loss rate of 1.5% bodyweight/week.
Again, these are all simply projections: we cannot say with certainty that the value that the calculator gives you is exactly 40% below your maintenance level. This requires collecting data over the course of weeks, running a number of calculations & adjusting weekly, which is something I've done personally with great success. Since we only have a two-week window in this program, we won't have enough data to come to any firm conclusions. But if you decide to become a full-time client after this kick-start, we'll have a very good estimate how to change things moving forward. So again, and I can't stress this enough, these are just estimates, and should only be used for this initial two-week period. Progression requires a whole lotta TLC.
One last thing I wanted to mention is something called "Adaptive Thermogenesis." This term suggests that your metabolic rate adapts to your level of intake over time. This is shown in the research: the less you eat, the less you burn, and vice versa. Some people think that when this adaptation occurs, it cannot be reversed, leading to a "damaged metabolism." This research review by my mentor Menno Henselmans blows that entire theory out of the water; there is no such thing as metabolic damage.
It is true that your expenditure is influenced by your intake, but there is no reason to believe that dieting once will have any long-lasting negative effects if you return to the same energy intake. As long as you diet successfully & maintain/gain lean mass (and not do anything like the 500 calorie + cardio crash-diet example I listed above), you can absolutely increase your intake again and expect your metabolism to increase right along with it. If you did it right, you will actually find that it takes you more calories just to stay weight stable. Getting leaner simply helps you stay lean.
I am living proof of this: In my sixth week of preparation for a bodybuilding contest, I ate nearly 450 more calories per day than the week I started, and my scale weight decreased by 7 pounds between those two time points. This is not myth; this is fact.
You can do the same. It starts here.