INTELLIGENT TRAINING

Today I’ll show you an easy way to figure out (roughly) how many calories you need to eat in each day based on your body type, activity level, and goals (lose weight, maintain weight, or gain weight).  I’ll also show you how many calories of each macronutrient (fat, carbs, protein) you’ll need to eat to optimize your goals.  Happy calculating!

Step 1-  Determine Your Body Type

Ectomorph- Naturally skinny, skinny limbs, fast metabolism, higher carbohydrate tolerance.

Endomorph- Naturally thick and husky, broader limbs, slow metabolism, low carbohydrate tolerance.

Mesomorph- Naturally muscular and athletic, moderate metabolism, moderate carbohydrate tolerance.

Here’s a general view of what these types could look like:

Step 2- Determine Your Closest Activity Level

Sedentary- Minimal exercise

Moderately Active- Exercises 1 hour 3-4x/week

Very Active- Exercises 1 hour 5-7x/week

Step 3- Use The Magic Multipliers

Using the multipliers below find your specific multiplier numbers.  Use your two numbers and multiply them by your weight in pounds.  Let’s make up an example.  Joe is a  mesomorphic sedentary person who weighs 150 pounds and wants to lose weight, will use the 10-12 multiplier.  They will need to eat between 1500 (150x10) and 1800 (150x12) calories/day.

Weight Loss- 10-12 (sedentary), 12-14 (moderately active), 14-16 (very active)

Weight Maintenance- 12-14 (sedentary), 14-16 (moderately active), 16-18 (very active)

Weight Gain- 16-18 (sedentary), 18-20 (moderately active), 20-22 (very active)

Step 4- Determine your Macronutrient Estimates

Using the guidelines below, multiply your recommended calories by your percentage estimates. For example, we already know our mesomorphic friend Joe needs to eat 1500-1800 calories/day.  Let’s take an average of 1500 and 1800 for the sake of this example—1650. This means he will need to eat 30% protein, 40% carbs, and 30% fat.  To figure out how many calories of each macronutrient, we multiply 1650 by 0.3, 0.4, and 0.3.   Joe will need to eat 495 calories from protein, 660 calories from carbs, and 495 calories from fat. 

Ectomorph- 25% protein, 55% carbs, 20% fat

Endomorph- 35% protein, 25% carbs, 40% fat

Mesomorph- 30% protein, 40% carbs, 30% fat

Step 5- Get the Grams

To make these #’s a little more manageable, we’ll break down the calories into grams.    We will simply divide our calorie #’s by the respective calorie/gram.

Protein-4 cal/gram

Fat-9 cal/gram

Carbs- 4 cal/gram

Joe will need to eat 123 grams of protein, 165 grams of carbs and 55 grams of fat to lose weight.