I have no idea why but apparently picking what macronutrient amounts you should eat confuses the shit out of people while this is always something that was pretty obvious to me after I sat down and applied some thought into it.
This article is primarily about how you should plan out which amounts of macronutrients you need to eat and I'll touch on maintenance calories as well- because a website that gives a rough figure is bullshit, everyone's particular metabolic needs are different and hilariously most people have no clue how to work out their maintenance calories and unequivocally fuck things up- usually by eating far too many carbs and weirdly too little protein
The roles of each macronutrient
Carbohydrate
I'll touch on carbohydrate first, the role of carbohydrate in your diet is to refill glycogen stores and to provide Calories. That's pretty much it. It's benefits are that it can give very available energy when you need it (around the training window usually). It's downsides are they get stored if you don't burn them off, make you resistant to insulin when eaten in excess and they get converted into fat if your glycogen stores are full.
Protein
The role of protein, like carbs, is to provide calories. The amino acids are also used for cell repair. You need enough of it to build muscle and repair cells, this is about 2g for every kilogram you weigh if you're training. That's all you need for building muscle, it's advantages and disadvantages are it's thermic effect (your body can't process it for energy efficiently so a lot is "wasted") and its very satiating (it keeps you full).
Fats
Fats act as a calorie buffer. That is their role within a nutritional plan. They do PLENTY of other things as well but for the sake of this blog post- this is their role. They are fairly satiating but they can also trigger massive amounts of overeating! Peanuts for example are a real killer for me. It's REALLY easy to accidentally blow out 1000 Calories with peanuts. However I never noticed my body weight increase that much when I added them in as a way to gain weight for some reason. They are a weird combination of protein, fat and fibre and I'm not sure how much of the calories are actually processed for energy.
Finding out your maintenance calories
Finding your maintenance calories is actually really simple when you put some thought into it. Logically when dieting you'll want your maintenance as high as possible, so you can drop calories into a deficit while still eating a large amount of food. So the key to finding your true maintenance calories is finding which macro nutrient ratios allow you to push your calories the highest, without increase in fat. I have to bold that, because apparently something as simple as gaining water or glycogen will completely blow people's minds and they think they are getting fatter.
That's the first step right there- finding out how many carbohydrates you can eat without gaining or losing glycogen. In your diet, I'd put protein at 1g/lb initially to keep things simple. It's best to track how many calories you're eating before you try this also- otherwise you're just guessing and that will take forever to get right. I'd start at 1g/lb in carbohydrate as well and get the rest of your calories from fats. Keep sodium and water the same as usual and there won't be much change in water. Monitor your weight for a week and see if it goes up and down. Tinker with the number of carbs each week based on the scale and when a week goes by without a change- you have the number of carbohydrate you can eat without gaining or losing glycogen. Congratulations. You should also keep your training roughly the same volume as well, because a higher volume will burn more glycogen and skew your results and yes- you will need to eat more carbs to maintain glycogen if you train with a higher volume.
Now that is sorted, increase fats each week. I'd recommend doing this with some sort of unsalted nut like almonds. If you eat chicken as your main source of protein and you increase fats with gammon- the salt and creatine packed cured pork will increase your body weight! That's not the point here. You'll find that you can probably put your fats really quite high before you start to gain weight.
After you've done that, there is one last little trick. Protein has a great thermic effect in the body and the chances are you can push protein quite high without gaining weight as well. Add calories from protein each week but also lower the fats. For instance if you're eating 2000 Calories a day from 150g of protein & carbs and 90g of fats, you could try 2200 Calories of 150/330/80 carbs/protein/fats and you may be surprised to see that your body weight does not increase further.
All this talk on how to eat as much as possible without gaining weight, how do I gain weight?
Find the glycogen maintenance carbs, add 30-50g of carbs on top of that, keep protein on the lower side (protein is very satiating and you really don't need more than 1g/lb) and push fats to add calories. Increase your volume and workload in the gym periodically and raise carbs at the same time.
After finding how much food I can eat without gaining weight, how do I then alter it to lose fat?
Good question, especially as for many there will be a big swing in calories to their "true" maintenance. Start by decreasing total calories by 20%. Remove these calories from fats initially. Over the weeks you may find you can diet successfully on this amount of fats while increasing protein further to increase calories. If you stall, you can reduce the calories back down to the initial level and start carb cycling and fat loss will randomly unstall. I have no idea why this happens but with many of my clients rotating macronutrients from day to day gives better fat loss than just the same thing each day.
Following on from that, how can I manipulate macronutrients further to give fat loss?
I recommend picking just one of these methods and sticking with it. Whenever you stall you can add another method or rotate around methods while staying at roughly the same calories and still get fat loss.
The first good method and a personal favourite of mine is the feast/famine days. As simple as it sounds you pick one day (this will be a Friday or a Saturday for most people for social reasons) where you have a 1-4h cheat window in which you eat whatever you like. The time frame depends on how lean you are. Now, I've seen some fat people do some pretty fucked up things with food I have to specify here- if you're fat you have no business cheating. So I'd change these cheats for you to simply a controlled refeed as such. If you have the self control then by all means have a pizza with some fries and a slice of cake for dessert. You also have the option of just going crazy but keeping it paleo- a personal favourite of mine. I have no desire for sweet things personally so this suits me well. If you can undo a weeks worth of hard dieting eating granola and rice then congratulations I guess because that's a fucking huge effort and some serious eating. I've managed 300g of granola with 2 cups of medium grain rice (dry weight) before for 3000 Calories in an hour and that was pretty much constant eating. You simply can't undo the diet doing this and you give yourself a chance to feel full so that's great. Potato is another good option. A kilo of potato is 800 Calories give or take and that is really a lot of potato.
After this cheat window you eat lean meats such as egg whites, chicken breast, white fish, kangaroo or protein shakes. I'd keep the fat content under 3g/100g. You can basically eat as much as you like as you'll already be stuffed from your cheat. Then the next day, you'll eat 1g/lb in protein and get it from the lean meat list above only. You can eat salad and I'd limit carbs to something like an onion and a tomato but no more than two pieces. Broccoli, cabbage, mushrooms, cauliflower and kale can essentially be eaten in unlimited quantities. This method of feast than famine really kicks up the fat loss and keeps you training very hard. I like to do conditioning work on the starve day by the way- it's the only day I feel up to it because I'm not lethargic from dieting and don't have a full stomach from eating.
The next method is waving your macronutrients. I covered this a bit above but continuing on from that I find that you can make pretty radical waves in macros for further fat loss. This is made easier by most people liking a one day on, one off or two on, one off approach to training. On training days you can try high carb, medium protein and low fats and on rest days you can try low carb, moderate/high protein and high fats. Carb cycling like this works great for fat loss as your leptin and ghrelin levels are constantly changing. I'm sure I have a citation for that somewhere but I read a lot and can't be bothered to dig it out. I think it's from either Wiley or Faigen though. Feel free to look it up and post it in the comments if you find it.
Furthering on from waving macros, you can wave calories. I recommend taking your maintenance and increasing/decreasing it by 10% and alternating between the two. Again, I recommend adding or removing the calories from fats. You can also throw in a middle day at maintenance if you wish as well going low/medium/high/low. I really liked low/medium/low/high/medium/cheat/ultra-low. This shifts the week into half low, half high. You can also do a daily rotation if you wish and also swap between rotations. Again, changing things around like this often gives extra fat loss and lower calories is sometimes not needed.
Eventually you will hit a point where you will need to lower calories.
I had to just put that as a heading. When this happens lower calories, keep the diet simple again and then start tinkering with shit again after a few weeks. Pick the same macro ratios of your maintenance calories, just with lower fats. I'd lower carbs a little as well as you won't be able to hold as much glycogen now you're dieted down.
Optimal macros for weight gain
This really depends on the situation. I listed a basic rule above at the top of the blog post. If you've ever had to diet down before- your bulking days are over, son. You're going to have to be very careful so that you don't get fat again. Protein should be on the lower side so that you don't get full if that is an issue for you. You'll want no more than 0.5g/lb in carbohydrate a day on your rest days and between 1.5-2g per pound on training days. There is really no need for more than 2.5g/lb unless you're a marathon runner or some other glycogen dependant sport. The rest of the calories should come from fats. This will ensure you stay resistant to insulin. I also recommend massively increasing your volume during this time as well as your training frequency, as this will keep protein synthesis high, lipogenesis low and allow you to utilise much higher carbohydrate intake.
Some people though just need to put away the food. There is no optimal macronutrient ratio for these people they just need to find a way to cram as much food in as possible. I recommend 3-4 meals a day for this and lots of milk and cereal. Olive oil adds heaps of calories and should be added to any liquid meals. A tablespoon is something stupid like 120 Calories. I used to put coco pops and milk in a shaker and drink that 5 or 6 times a day. Dairy is generally great for these people especially the fatter cheeses. They can be added as a condiment (so can bacon) and add a great amount of calories without really trying.
Further Reading
If my horribly uncited ramblings are not enough and you'd like to read further into this, I'd recommend the following books:
Natural Hormonal Enhancement: Rob Faigin
Better Than Steroids: Warren Willey
Issuance of Insanity 3 - Nutritional Psycho: Jamie Lewis
The Renaissance Diet: Mike Israetel
