Calorie Intake To Lose Weight And Gain Muscle

Despite the claims of various misinformed people, diet cults, pseudoscientific nutjobs and the countless “experts” willing to say whatever is needed to make money selling you bullshit, calories are the most important part of your diet.

Whether you want to lose weight, gain muscle or simply maintain your current weight, how many calories you eat a day is always going to be the key determining factor.

The reason why your calorie intake is the most important part of your diet comes down to a very simple and scientifically proven concept best summed up as “calories in vs calories out.”

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When you consume more calories than you burn (i.e. “calories in” is greater than “calories out”), you have what’s known as a caloric surplus.

. They can’t just disappear into thin air. Rather, your body will be forced to store them somewhere in itself for potential later use.

Now, in some very specific cases when a person is properly training/eating for the purpose of gaining muscle (more about that later), the ideal outcome is for most of those surplus calories to be stored in the form of muscle. However, in all other cases – meaning the

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This is, after all, the one and only way that fat is EVER gained. So, if you or any other human on the planet has ever gained a single pound of fat, this is always what caused it. You consumed more calories than you burned (aka a surplus) and the excess was stored in the form of body fat.

When your body burns more calories than you consume (i.e. “calories out” is greater than “calories in”), you have what’s known as a caloric deficit.

This means that you didn’t consume enough calories to support the energy needs of your body. Rather, your body needed some number of calories to burn in order to do all of the stuff we mentioned earlier, and you consumed some degree less than this.

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When this happens, your body is forced to find some alternative fuel source to burn for energy instead. After all, new energy cannot just be created out of thin air. It has to come from

As it turns out, there are 2 fuel sources available within your body where leftover energy has been stored in preparation for this very scenario: fat cells and muscle tissue.

Of cases,  a caloric deficit will primarily result in fat being lost. Yes, even when people screw up various aspects of their diet and workout and therefore end up losing muscle along with fat (something you want to minimize as much as possible), fat will almost always continue to make up the majority of what’s being lost.

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This is, after all, the one and only way that fat is EVER lost. So, if you or any other human on the planet has ever lost a single pound of fat, this is always what caused it. You consumed fewer calories than your body needed to burn (aka a deficit), which lead to stored body fat being burned for energy instead.

When you consume the same number of calories that you burn (i.e. “calories in” is equal to “calories out”), you’re at what’s known as a maintenance.

Since there is no surplus that needs to be stored anywhere, and no deficit that warrants burning off a backup fuel source, what happens is that you don’t lose or gain

How Many Calories Should I Eat?

“I don’t want to maintain my current state bro, I want to improve it! Let’s skip this section and get to the good stuff.”

. This “maintenance” scenario is the one that’s going to help you figure out exactly how many calories you should eat a day to lose weight or gain muscle.

And that brings us to a very obvious question: what the hell is this “maintenance” amount that you need to be below or above?

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It’s basically a much fancier term for your maintenance level, as it represents the TOTAL amount of calories your body burns each day doing EVERYTHING.

And all of this stuff varies from one person to the next. Hell, even when people are the same gender, height, weight and age, and they’re doing the same amount of exercise, you can still see

For this reason, it’s virtually impossible to tell you exactly what your maintenance level/TDEE is. Instead, the best we can really do here is come up with an estimated maintenance level.

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There are dozens of different methods, equations, formulas and calculators to use for this, some of which are more or less complicated than others and often more or less accurate as well. In fact, a method that is super accurate for one person can be extremely inaccurate for another.

For example, a 200lb person would do 200 x 12 and 200 x 18 and get an estimated daily maintenance level of somewhere between 2400-3600 calories.

Those who are female or less active both in terms of their job/overall lifestyle and how much exercise they do should usually stick more toward the lower half of their estimate. Those who are male or more active should usually stick more toward the upper half of their estimate. If you’re unsure, just pick a number somewhere in the middle.

How To Calculate Your Calorie Intake For Weight Loss

Now that you have your estimated maintenance level, it’s time for the step you’ve been waiting for: determining exactly how many calories you should eat a day to lose weight or gain muscle.

Is the sole cause and requirement of fat loss. Which means, if your goal is to lose weight… your #1 focus must be to ensure that you are consistently below your maintenance level so that a deficit exists.

While there are certain rarer cases where something below or above this recommended range might be ideal, this tends to be the sweet spot for the vast majority of the population. This is because it will typically cause a rate of weight loss somewhere between 0.5-2lbs per week. For most people, this is ideal.

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Let’s pretend some example person had a maintenance level of 2500 calories. If they were to then create a deficit of 20%, they’d figure out that 20% of 2500 is 500. They’d then subtract 500 from 2500 and get 2000. In this example, this person would eat 2000 calories a day to lose weight.

At this point, you’re probably wondering what determines whether you should create a 10% deficit, a 25% deficit, something in between (like the 20% used in our example), or something below or above this range altogether?

Simply put, the faster you want to lose, the larger the deficit should be. The slower you want to lose, the smaller the deficit should be.

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But at the same time, the larger your deficit is (and the faster you’re therefore losing), the harder it tends to be because various hormonal and metabolic factors are affected to a larger degree (plus a larger deficit warrants making the biggest changes to your diet and/or workout).

And the smaller your deficit is (and the slower you’re therefore losing), the easier it tends to be because those same hormonal/metabolic factors are affected to a lesser degree (plus a smaller deficit warrants making much smaller diet/workout changes).

In addition, smaller deficits tend to be more ideal for people who don’t have much fat left to lose and/or those who are looking to go from lean to

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. Larger deficits tend to be more ideal for people with a lot of weight to lose, partly because someone with more weight to lose usually

Lose it faster than someone with less to lose, and partly because those hormonal/metabolic issues aren’t as problematic at higher body fat percentages.

What size your deficit should be for getting the best combination of A) realistically fast fat loss, B) minimizing all of those hormonal and metabolic issues (and everything else that makes losing weight so hard) so things are as easy and sustainable for you as possible, and C) maintaining muscle while that fat is lost.

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That’s entirely up to you. Why? Because exercise – specifically the kind being done for the purpose of burning calories/causing weight loss – is

So, using our same example from before, this person could potentially eat 2000 calories a day, or eat 2500 calories a day and then burn 500 through some form of exercise, or eat 2250 and burn 250, or anything similar.

In all 3 cases (and with all else being equal), they end up with the same 500 calorie deficit and will therefore lose the same amount of weight.

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How you should do it. I cover this topic in much more detail here: How Much Cardio To Lose Weight and What Is The Best Way To Lose Weight

Yes, there are some exceptions (most notably fat beginners) where stored body fat can be converted into the extra energy needed to synthesize new muscle tissue. But, for the most part, anyone looking to gain a meaningful amount of muscle at an acceptable rate will need additional calories via their diet to make it happen.

Which means, if your goal is to gain muscle… you’re #1 dietary focus should be to ensure that you are consistently above your maintenance level so that a surplus exists.

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Good. Because there are actually MANY cases where a smaller