First, we need to establish one very important fact:

ALL Calorie formulasno matter who gives them to you, or how great they look on
paper are ultimately a crapshoot.
That is, while such formulas will be generally applicable, anyone who tries to tell you they know
exactly how many calories you need to eat at any time, ever, is either lying or simply doesnt
realize how misinformed they are. Of course, some formulas are better than othersbut even
the best ones should mainly serve as a jumping off point from which you can make changes.
Got it?
Giving you the best jumping off point is my job. Calorie formulas come in all shapes and sizes
for different goals, and covering all of them is a bit beyond our purposes here. Instead, Ill just
focus on one of the more esoteric goals: body re-comping.
For that we need to lose fat and gain muscle at the same timeotherwise known
as recomposition.
Its a difficult task, but not an impossible one. And the only way to do it quickly is to make sure
youve got your diet in check; a diet designed to give you caloric intake high enough to sustain
muscle growth, but low enough to allow for fat loss. And in this post, Im going to show
exactly how to determine how much to eat.
Determining your maintenance calories
Before we do anything else, we need to figure out your maintenance calories, meaning the
energy intake that would be required to stay pretty much the way you are.
I use some formulas that Ive found to be effective as starting points, making some adjustments
for body fat levels.
In the table below, LBM refers to lean body mass, meaning the amount of your body mass that
isnt fat. So if you weigh 150lb and have 10% body fat, then 15 pounds of your bodys mass is
fat, so you have 135lb of LBM.
Energy Needs
Current Body Fat
Caloric Intake
6%-12%
17cal per pound of LBM
12.1%-15%
16cal per pound of LBM
15.1%-19%
15cal per pound of LBM
19.1%-22%
14cal per pound of LBM
22.1% or above
13cal per pound of LBM
The obvious reason for this structure is rate of fat loss.
The more fat you have on your body, the faster you can lose it, and the more of it you can
lose without sacrificing LBM. Therefore, you can consume fewer calories and still have a pretty
decent rate of fat loss without really negatively affecting the metabolic processes responsible for
fat loss and even muscle gain.

Fat people just need to eat less.

(Ground breaking science, I know.)
As an example, lets create an imaginary client that we can work with. Well call him
Pythagoras. Our man Pythagoras is a 2,580 year old male who weighs in at a soft 194.5 and 18%
bodyfatwhich isnt bad for a guy his age.
At 194.5 pounds, P-Thag (as the kids call him) has 35 pounds of fat (194.5 x .18 = 35.01), and
159.5 pounds (194.5 35) of LBM.
Using my above guidelines, Pythagoras maintains at about 2400 calories.
Determining Your Body Recomp Calories
For body recomp, P-Thag will be eating about 500 below maintenance (1900 calories) on
Non-Workout days, and 100 above maintenance on Workout days (2500).
One important thing I stress with all of my clients: for body re-composition, it is most
effective to eat for your desired body.
During the course of his training program, our client can hope to gain about 3-5 pounds of
muscle. So lets shoot for the stars and use 5 as a jumping off point. That means we want to
structure his protein intake around having 164 pounds of LBM.
On Non-Workout days, I recommend 1.35 grams of protein per pound of goal lean body
mass and .5 grams of carbohydrates per pounds of current lean mass. The difference comes
from fat.
That would put our clients protein intake at 222.5g per day. To make math easy, lets jump that
up to 225g, which gives us an even 900 Calories per day coming from protein. We simply divide
the current LBM by 2 and arrive at 80and so Pythagoras will eat that many grams of carbs per
day, for about 320 Calories. The other 680 Calories will be coming from fatabout 75 grams.
All told, the diet looks like this:
NonWorkoutDays
Macronutrient
Amount
Calories
(Grams)
225
900
Protein
82
330
Carbs
75
675
Fat
Total Calories
1905
On Workout days, I recommend about 1.5-1.6 grams of protein per pound of desired LBM
(165 x 1.6 = 264), and 1g carbs per pound of current LBM (159), with the difference coming
from fat.

Heres what that would look like for our example.

Workout Days
Amount
Calories
(Grams)
265
1060
Protein
160
640
Carbs
100
900
Fat
Total Calories:
2600
Macronutrient

Going back to what I had said earlier, no matter how you look at it, all Calorie formulas are sort
of educated guesswork. However, they provide us with a starting point from which we can really
adjust and redirect our efforts. In the vast majority of cases, the above numbers/breakdowns are
the best possible starting point for any short term body recomposition program.