Calories vs. Grams RE: Macros

Diet and Nutrition
1

I have an issue I’ve never understood relating to calories vs grams of protein. I’m 6’0 165 and I figure I need about 3500 calories in order to grow. If I break that out to a 40/30/30 ratio, it means that 1400 of my calories need to come from protein. Now, if I figure 4 calories per gram of protein, that means I need to be taking in 350g of protein every day.

But isn’t the rule of thumb to take in 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight? That would mean 165-247.5 grams per day. Which is way less than 350g based on caloric needs.

What gives? What am I missing? Am I being dumb?

2

You’re missing the fact that you don’t need 3500 cals. That’s way too high. I mean, 17-18x BW for cals is the top end of the spectrum; 3500 cals @ 165 is more than 20x BW. I hate to direct you to that “other” site b/c so much of it is garbage, but here is a very helpful link to determine your BMR and estimate caloric needs:

Or, use this one, which lays out the Harris-Benedict formula, to calculate it yourself:

Hope that helps.

3

Top of the spectrum for who? I’m eating roughly 19-20x bodyweight and losing fat. Throwing out general formulas as the end all be all can be naive.

OP,
If it was up to me you’d be eating about 300 grams of protein a day, carbs and fat as needed to gain weight while staying roughly at a leanness you can be happy with. This would likely entail a lot more food than you are currently eating. “rules of thumb” don’t always pan out in the real world. There isn’t really any scientific study on hard training weight lifters trying to gain significant size, find out what works and go with that.

4

[quote]jdav1 wrote:
I have an issue I’ve never understood relating to calories vs grams of protein. I’m 6’0 165 and I figure I need about 3500 calories in order to grow. If I break that out to a 40/30/30 ratio, it means that 1400 of my calories need to come from protein. Now, if I figure 4 calories per gram of protein, that means I need to be taking in 350g of protein every day.

But isn’t the rule of thumb to take in 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight? That would mean 165-247.5 grams per day. Which is way less than 350g based on caloric needs.

What gives? What am I missing? Am I being dumb?[/quote]

To my understanding the 1-1.5g of protein is the MINIMUM. I’m a little over 165 myself and I take in 300g on an average day on a low-carb bulking plan.

5

[quote]Scott M wrote:
Top of the spectrum for who? I’m eating roughly 19-20x bodyweight and losing fat. Throwing out general formulas as the end all be all can be naive. [/quote]

For the general populace. If you are eating 19-20x BW and LOSING FAT (meaning you are in a caloric deficit) then you must be either:

A) extremely muscular;
B) extremely physically active (in addition to gym time); or
C) both of the above.

Or maybe D, you are wrong about how much you eat. In any event, the OP is 6’0" 165 lbs, so we can throw out A and C. So unless he spends his days training for the Tour De France he doesn’t need 3500 cals.

6

[quote]doubleh wrote:
Scott M wrote:
Top of the spectrum for who? I’m eating roughly 19-20x bodyweight and losing fat. Throwing out general formulas as the end all be all can be naive.

For the general populace. If you are eating 19-20x BW and LOSING FAT (meaning you are in a caloric deficit) then you must be either:

A) extremely muscular;
B) extremely physically active (in addition to gym time); or
C) both of the above.

Or maybe D, you are wrong about how much you eat. In any event, the OP is 6’0" 165 lbs, so we can throw out A and C. So unless he spends his days training for the Tour De France he doesn’t need 3500 cals.

[/quote]

I would say I’m moderately musuclar, and fairly active, and I know how to count :slight_smile: I’m not in a calorie deficit, I just have figured out how much cardio I need to do and how to eat to lose fat while I still move up in muscular size.

But maybe he DOES need 3500 calories, we can’t say over the internet with no background on him what he needs. He needs whatever it takes for him to progress in a way that makes him happy. If that’s 2800 calories a day so be it, if he needs 4000 calories then that’s his metabolism/genetics fault.

7

DoubleH…all I’m gonna say is Scott definitely knows what he’s talking about and you are a bit ill-informed.

8

DoubleH, caloric formulas are vastly overrated. We’re all too different. The best formula is to experiment with caloric intakes and taking notes of what amount best helps you gain/shed weight at 1-2 lbs/week.

The “3500 calories is too much comment”, well, I weight as much as the OP and I’m taking in 4200. I think 3500 is a perfectly good place for him to start, regardless of how he came to get that number

9

[quote]Scott M wrote:
doubleh wrote:
Scott M wrote:
Top of the spectrum for who? I’m eating roughly 19-20x bodyweight and losing fat. Throwing out general formulas as the end all be all can be naive.

For the general populace. If you are eating 19-20x BW and LOSING FAT (meaning you are in a caloric deficit) then you must be either:

A) extremely muscular;
B) extremely physically active (in addition to gym time); or
C) both of the above.

Or maybe D, you are wrong about how much you eat. In any event, the OP is 6’0" 165 lbs, so we can throw out A and C. So unless he spends his days training for the Tour De France he doesn’t need 3500 cals.

I would say I’m moderately musuclar, and fairly active, and I know how to count :slight_smile: I’m not in a calorie deficit, I just have figured out how much cardio I need to do and how to eat to lose fat while I still move up in muscular size.

But maybe he DOES need 3500 calories, we can’t say over the internet with no background on him what he needs. He needs whatever it takes for him to progress in a way that makes him happy. If that’s 2800 calories a day so be it, if he needs 4000 calories then that’s his metabolism/genetics fault. [/quote]

??? You said

and then

This is impossible unless you are a newbie who just started lifting, or you have your diet nailed to such precision as to be awe-inspiring (through calorie waving). You cannot lose fat without a caloric deficit, and you certainly cannot put on much muscular size - but you are doing both? Come on man, cut the BS.

Anywho, his intial issue was with grams of protein needed vs total caloric intake. I said he doesn’t need 3500 cals a day and I stick to it, UNLESS as I said he’s running marathons every week or has the metabolism of a greyhound. Sure, he could eat 20+ x BW and gain, but he’d gain lots of fat too. The cals have to go somewhere.

I’m trying to give him useful numbers he can use. True, we can’t say for sure exactly what he needs, but we can come up with some fairly accurate ballpark numbers, or better yet steer him to where he can, which I did. Saying he should eat “whatever it takes for him to progress” is not very helpful.

10

[quote]GetSwole wrote:
DoubleH…all I’m gonna say is Scott definitely knows what he’s talking about and you are a bit ill-informed. [/quote]

Indeed. Then please inform me where I am wrong.

11

[quote]BF Bullpup wrote:
DoubleH, caloric formulas are vastly overrated. We’re all too different. The best formula is to experiment with caloric intakes and taking notes of what amount best helps you gain/shed weight at 1-2 lbs/week.

The “3500 calories is too much comment”, well, I weight as much as the OP and I’m taking in 4200. I think 3500 is a perfectly good place for him to start, regardless of how he came to get that number[/quote]

The formulas aren’t end-all be-alls, but they are a good place to start. I am working under the assumption his metabolism isn’t of the genetically gifted variety. If you are really his weight and height and your taking in 4200, you are either extremely active or gaining fat too.

Look, BMR varies from person to person, and it can vary widely, true. But the rest of your calories burned is based on activity. Agreed?

12

I really resisted jumping in here to this point, but Scott must be busy. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to say that the losing fat while gaining thing is a long term plan. I also know he does a lot of cardio and I have a feeling his moderately active classification is referring to non training activities. I’m not him and he can clean this up if I’m wrong.

Also, I’m your exact height and weight (doubleH), don’t have a BF or BMR for you and don’t care, but I am not fat and can even see my abs through some fat. I eat easily 20X bodyweight, over 5 grand a day, actually had to increase that in the last couple months, and I haven’t gotten any fatter in 2 years.

13

[quote]doubleh wrote:

??? You said

I’m eating roughly 19-20x bodyweight and losing fat.

and then

I’m not in a calorie deficit, I just have figured out how much cardio I need to do and how to eat to lose fat while I still move up in muscular size.

This is impossible unless you are a newbie who just started lifting, or you have your diet nailed to such precision as to be awe-inspiring (through calorie waving). You cannot lose fat without a caloric deficit, and you certainly cannot put on much muscular size - but you are doing both? Come on man, cut the BS.

Anywho, his intial issue was with grams of protein needed vs total caloric intake. I said he doesn’t need 3500 cals a day and I stick to it, UNLESS as I said he’s running marathons every week or has the metabolism of a greyhound. Sure, he could eat 20+ x BW and gain, but he’d gain lots of fat too. The cals have to go somewhere.

I’m trying to give him useful numbers he can use. True, we can’t say for sure exactly what he needs, but we can come up with some fairly accurate ballpark numbers, or better yet steer him to where he can, which I did. Saying he should eat “whatever it takes for him to progress” is not very helpful.

[/quote]

I’m not going to continue talking about myself, that won’t help the OP, but I will say that I am growing larger(the scale and the mirror shows it) and I am losing fat(my belt and the mirror again tells me) , impossible is not a good word to use in a realm like this.

My issue with your advice was perhaps 3500(which I don’t consider all that much) would be a good set point for him to make adjustments from. Eat 3500 for a month, measure the waist step on the scale take pictures etc and evaluate from there. If his waist grew more than he liked then maybe scale back the food, carbs, or increase/start cardio. If he wasn’t growing bump something up, calories, PWO carbs, less cardio etc.

I just don’t like seeing advice like “No that’s wrong”(paraphrasing obviously) because this isn’t a black and white issue. For all we know we are talking to the textbook example of an ecto who burns calories up at an alarming rate and will need to slam down the food to gain. We need to set people up on a self reliant experimentation type plan instead of throwing out right or wrongs. That’s just my opinion on how this should be treated

Edit: I’m a believer in big time eating and cleaning up the possible fat gains with cardio and food combinations, Berardi does that as well and plug in some numbers to this and you will see the OP might not be totally off
http://www.johnberardi.com/updates/july262002/na_masscalculator.htm

I did 165 15% bodyfat, 60 minutes intense free weight training moderately active, moderate protein, and got about 3900 calories

14

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
I really resisted jumping in here to this point, but Scott must be busy. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to say that the losing fat while gaining thing is a long term plan. I also know he does a lot of cardio and I have a feeling his moderately active classification is referring to non training activities. I’m not him and he can clean this up if I’m wrong.

[/quote]

Ah didn’t notice this before I posted. I was busy, crushing ye old logbook in the gym tonight haha. You are correct it was not a long term plan, and honestly it’s not that complicated. For easiest understanding with a close source Berardi’s “G flux” idea is similar to how this is happening, lots(and I mean LOTS) of food going in, forcing the body to adapt in the gym, bringing down bodyfat with trace to low carbs(except PWO) adequate cardio and green tea consumption.

Am I losing fat or gaining muscle at an optimal rate for both? No obviously not, but I needed to sure up the bodyfat issue for my own personal happiness and the way I train(progressive) and the way I eat(very high protein) is going to put on muscle no matter what in my humble opinion.

IN MY OPINION again, You can’t put down 450 grams of protein a day and add 15-30+ lbs on all your lifts and not grow over an 8 week span, but that’s a whole different argument for another day haha.

15

My roommate in college and still my good buddy was a tall skinny guy. He could eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted and drink all the beer he wanted to. He probably gain about 3 pounds of fat in 5 years, living a very unhealthy lifestyle. He went from totally cut abs, freshman year, to visible but slightly less visible abs, 5th year. He’s not very muscular surprisingly. He just had a crazy fast metabolism.

I’ve been making a conscious effort lately not to, but if I’m running errands or have a lot of stuff to do I can eat breakfast and not even notice being hungry until the evening. I might not have a great workout that night, but I can get through it.

I’d be hanging around the house with my roomate, watching tv or someother mindless activity and see his eyes get glazed over and he just got all droopy. If we were out doing something, he would get real short tempered and pissed off. I lived with him for like two years and after awhile figured out thats when he needed to get some food. You could physically witness the point where he went from being normal to desperately needing some nutrition.

He started to work out but not very seriously. If he ever does though, I want to get my hands on a chart of his weight gain vs caloric intake. I’d guarantee it wouldn’t fit whatever the generic caloric calculator said it be.

16

Original poster here.

Thanks for all the thoughtful comments. My original question was mostly just a math question, but it did reveal an underlying confusion about general nutrition, which some of you have addressed.

I’m 34, 6’0 165 at around 10% bodyfat. I’ve made it to 175 in the past, but 165 seems to be my “natural” weight. If I let things slip, I always slide back and settle in at 165. This seems to happen occasionally due to a nagging shoulder injury that likes to re-assert itself from time to time, a string of deadlines at the office that keeps me from a regular schedule, etc etc.

So what I’m trying to do is get myself “on track” and better organized. I lift 4 days a week with reasonable intensity (not a maniac, but not a slacker), I do cardio 2 days a week (30 minutes or so to keep the ticker ticking) and I don’t drive, so I walk everywhere I go (in San Francisco with serious hills). So, for an office worker, I have a pretty active lifestyle and my metabolism has always been through the roof. But I’m in my mid-30s and i have a feeling the metabolism is gonna change one of these days!

I came up with the 3500 calorie number using a couple of different BMR calculators and then did some calculations per Massive Eating (which gave me over 4000 calories and scared me off as a beginner). So I’m trying to come up with a reasonable diet that I can manage and have some success sticking to.

I just thought 350g of protein sounded high (based on 3500cal), and was trying to come up with a menu to suit it, with some difficulty.

I think, as some have suggested, that the answer is that there is no answer and I should experiment and see what happens. Then adjust. We’ll see.

17

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
I really resisted jumping in here to this point, but Scott must be busy. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to say that the losing fat while gaining thing is a long term plan. I also know he does a lot of cardio and I have a feeling his moderately active classification is referring to non training activities. I’m not him and he can clean this up if I’m wrong.

Also, I’m your exact height and weight (doubleH), don’t have a BF or BMR for you and don’t care, but I am not fat and can even see my abs through some fat. I eat easily 20X bodyweight, over 5 grand a day, actually had to increase that in the last couple months, and I haven’t gotten any fatter in 2 years.

[/quote]

Well Mr. Trib I know your secret from the AD thread. I too use the AD (was once a long-time lurker) and had tremendous success bulking with it last year. I’m using it to cut right now (holiday season overindulgence and all).

When I bulked, I rarely hit 4800-5k cals outside of a carb-up, and I went from 238-240ish to 255ish in 5 months. I still put on a bit of fat (but only a bit - love the AD), so my question is: if I was averaging less than what you eat EVERY DAY at a higher BW, how are you not putting on fat? The answer is either: A) you are more active (probably; I work behind a desk, but I do cardio 3x week and lift very hard), or B) you were much leaner than me to start (not too probable; from your description, it sounds like our BF levels are fairly close).

Anyway, comparing your calorie needs to the OP is not a fair comparison. You, by virtue of having more LBM, by default have a higher BMR. So if you are active and have a great metabolism, maybe you can get away with 20x for a while. But I can’t see you eating that amount consistently and not putting on fat, as you said, AD be damned.

Look, maybe the OP is a metabolism freak, maybe not. But I feel 3500 is likely too high given what info we have to work with, and I think giving him an idea of where to begin to look is better than saying “just experiment around with cals”. He could have figured that out on his own.

18

[quote]Scott M wrote:

I’m not going to continue talking about myself, that won’t help the OP, but I will say that I am growing larger(the scale and the mirror shows it) and I am losing fat(my belt and the mirror again tells me) , impossible is not a good word to use in a realm like this.

My issue with your advice was perhaps 3500(which I don’t consider all that much) would be a good set point for him to make adjustments from. Eat 3500 for a month, measure the waist step on the scale take pictures etc and evaluate from there. If his waist grew more than he liked then maybe scale back the food, carbs, or increase/start cardio. If he wasn’t growing bump something up, calories, PWO carbs, less cardio etc.

I just don’t like seeing advice like “No that’s wrong”(paraphrasing obviously) because this isn’t a black and white issue. For all we know we are talking to the textbook example of an ecto who burns calories up at an alarming rate and will need to slam down the food to gain. We need to set people up on a self reliant experimentation type plan instead of throwing out right or wrongs. That’s just my opinion on how this should be treated

Edit: I’m a believer in big time eating and cleaning up the possible fat gains with cardio and food combinations, Berardi does that as well and plug in some numbers to this and you will see the OP might not be totally off
http://www.johnberardi.com/updates/july262002/na_masscalculator.htm

I did 165 15% bodyfat, 60 minutes intense free weight training moderately active, moderate protein, and got about 3900 calories[/quote]

I will agree that we just don’t know - maybe he does burn cals at a ridiculous rate. But I post under the assumption he is not the exception to the rule. I will also concede that perhaps saying 3500 is “way too high” like I did was a bit much, but I stand by the advice: I’d be surprised if he needed 3500 cals to grow outside of him being extremely physically active.

I ran your numbers in Berardi’s calc too - but I think that’s a bit off point. Isn’t Massive Eating about eating for the classic hardgainer? I think running numbers based on gaining weight at any cost are sort of off topic for what the OP was looking for.

Re: your own results - hey, if it’s working, by all means. I just think perhaps something was lost in translation, because, well, gaining weight (as in muscle, LBM) and losing fat AT THE SAME TIME is unsustainable over any extended period of time, and some might even argue impossible altogether. I hope you see what I’m getting at here.

19

[quote]Scott M wrote:

IN MY OPINION again, You can’t put down 450 grams of protein a day and add 15-30+ lbs on all your lifts and not grow over an 8 week span, but that’s a whole different argument for another day haha.[/quote]

Agree completely. It’s the whole “losing fat at the same time” thing I disagree with. I don’t think it’s impossible, as I’ve seen others say in other threads, but it’s certainly not sustainable.

Unless you know something I don’t (that doesn’t include AASs)… then you better tell me what the secret is. :slight_smile:

20

[quote]jdav1 wrote:
Original poster here.

So, for an office worker, I have a pretty active lifestyle and my metabolism has always been through the roof. But I’m in my mid-30s and i have a feeling the metabolism is gonna change one of these days!

I think, as some have suggested, that the answer is that there is no answer and I should experiment and see what happens. Then adjust. We’ll see.

[/quote]

More info, sweet. So it appears maybe you may be the exception to the rule, and you do need huge caloric excess to make any progress. If so, eat away. But I still think 3500 as a starting point is a bit high. My final word on this since my fingers are tired from typing:

Track your diet for 2 (or more) weeks and find out how many cals you eat a week on average. Then, add 500 per day (on average) and run it for a while, maybe 6 weeks, then re-evaluate. As I’ve been saying, I’d rather give you my opinion and have it be a little more substantive than “just experiment for a while”. You could do that on your own and still not have a good idea what to do. Good luck.