22May26 | Nutrition guide for those getting into lifting

The basics

First, there is no special “bodybuilding diet”. The two most important nutritional factors that will determine your success in altering your body composition (building muscle or losing fat) are:

Your daily total calorie intake
Your daily protein intake

You can follow any diet you want, as long as you hit your protein and calorie targets.

When it comes to calories, any type of body you want to achieve is only possible through either a caloric-deficit, a caloric-surplus, or recomposition through maintenance:

Maintenance is eating just the number of calories your body burns daily
A caloric-deficit (weight loss) is eating less than your maintenance calories
A caloric surplus (weight gain) is eating more than your maintenance calories

You can easily calculate your maintenance calories with any online tool like this – this will give you the baseline number to which you can compare the number of calories you want to eat daily depending on your goal.

The typical challenge for those on caloric-deficit is eating a satiating volume of food with less calories, while for caloric-surplus it is less volume of food with more calories.

Few important notes here:

I prefer to use the terms “weight loss/weight gain” over “fat loss/muscle gain” because any weight change is really composed of the two. Ultimately there are some tweaks you can incorporate into your program to decrease muscle loss if you want to lose fat or mitigate fat gain if you want to gain muscle, but you have to understand it’s inevitable.
Don’t stress over fast weight change during the first few weeks, if you’re just starting, you’ll get some time to adapt & build momentum. Just embrace it, and also know that as a beginner you are capable of seeing faster results than say after a year or more.
As far as “weight change” go, the actual food that makes up your calories is less important than the number of calories. This can be counter-intuitive, but if all what you eat everyday for a month is one meal from mcdonald’s, you’ll 100% lose weight (linked is an interesting case study of a professor who lost 27 pounds on a diet consisting entirely of protein shakes, Twinkies, Oreos, and Doritos – you could do the exact same thing if you want, not that you should though). So while theoretically you could eat junk food as the majority of your meals and get away with it as long as it fits your macros, your body won’t perform as well in everyday life.
And this is why smart nutritionists always focus on their clients’ relationship with food, where they don’t have to get rid of their cravings, but also keep it moderate in terms of food quantity. And this is also why so-called gymbros bulk on pizza & burger (big calories, low volume). BUT what you eat play a huge role in your overall health, performance in the gym, mental sharpness & body composition, which are MUCH more important factors than weight gain or weight loss.

Tracking your calories

Generally you can keep a food diary where you record quantities of food you eat & then by end of day -or may be every 2-3 days- you’ll go through the numbers & calculate your average daily calories for the week.

In this cheatsheet you can find everything you’ll need about tracking your food, including calories for most foods we have in our diet, units, conversions, etc.

Food Tracking

www.craft.me

Here are some important few tips when tracking your calories:

Download either MyFitnessPal or Cronometer, these are by far the most complete calorie-tracking apps out there. I personally prefer Cronometer for easier usability. Both have a web version if you want to access them from your computer.
Get a small food scale (lots of inexpensive options in the market), a measuring cup & any other handy tools you might find fun to use.
To know how many grams of protein you need per day, multiply your weight in kg * 1.8, so if you weigh 75 → you need 75 * 1.8 which is 135gm of protein
For your pre-workout meal, ingest a meal with sufficient protein (~20-40g) and carbs (~40g+ carbs) within 2 hours before your workout.
Fats take longer to digest and may need to be limited in a pre-workout meal.
Most veggies are generally very low in calories and don’t necessarily need to be measured/weighed – I usually just estimate ~100 calories of my daily calorie intake coming from veggies depending on how much I have eaten that day. Fruits on the other hand are generally higher in calories and should definitely be tracked (for example, one medium-sized banana is 105 calories, one avocado is 250).
When tracking food like meat, chicken, fish, pasta and rice – make sure that you consider whether you’re measuring them cooked or uncooked. In above apps, it gives you the option to enter them as cooked or uncooked. It makes a big difference calorie-wise and protein-wise! For example: 100 gm of uncooked white rice have 370cals while 100 gm of cooked white rice have 130cals.
Whenever you eat out, do your best to estimate the calories within the dish you have by either entering manually all the ingredients that are in it and estimating the portions, or finding a similar food item on the app. Also, many restaurants nowadays have their calories listed publicly online or on MyFitnessPal itself, so it should be relatively easy to find in most cases.
Beware of “hidden calories” in form of oils, dressings, sugar, etc. For example a chicken cesar salad can easily be around 500 calories. Another smart option when you know you’ll be going out later is to “save calories” for that meal. Sticking to lower calorie food options earlier on in the day (e.g. mostly protein + veggies) is a great way to save up calories for your higher calorie meal later on. (Don’t bother about this if you’re a bulking gymbro)
Whatever your goal is, the more eating out you do, generally the less accurate your calorie tracking will be, which can slow down your progress in the long run. So do so in moderation, not just for better control over food quality, but also for tracking accuracy. With that said, if you’re eating a well-balanced diet that you personally enjoy, you’re probably not going to get many cravings to cheat anyways.
It’s okay to miss a few days, you don’t have to calculate every day, 5-6 days per week can be enough if you do it every week for 3-4 months.

Optimizing your food intake

This section is not a requirement for building muscle, but a health suggestion.

A good approach I find effective is the 80/20 rule: 80% of your diet should comprise of healthy, whole foods whereas the remaining 20% can be foods that you personally enjoy and aren’t necessarily considered “healthy”.

Critical to note that 80% here is not in terms of volume, but in terms of number of calories. Meaning if your diet is 3000 calories per day, an 80/20 is 2400/600.

For optimizing your nutrition, a good baseline is:

Try to eat a variety of fruits and veggies throughout the week as opposed to the same things everyday
Stick to lean meats - for example chicken breast, tuna, lean beef as opposed to chicken thighs, fatty types of meat, etc
Mind your refined carbs intake. These are foods like: white bread, pasta, pastries, pizza, white bread, white flour, sweet desserts, and many breakfast cereals – these are rapidly digested so they cause insulin spikes & they contain minimal fibres and nutrients, largely because they are processed
Stick to whole complex carbs: oats, sweet potato, multigrain/whole-wheat bread, whole-wheat pasta – these are foods full of fibers (understanding carbs: link, link)
Try to incorporate 1-2 servings of fish per week
Try to eat a serving of fruit or veggies with every meal
Try to drink 2 cups of water (or a healthy alternative) at every meal
The most important meals of the day are: breakfast & pre-workout – because they set the tone for your performance
Don’t consume more than 6 tsp of honey + sugar (combined) per day
Don’t consume more than 33gm of saturated fat per day
Don’t consume more than 200 calories within 1 hour before any workout
Adding milk to your coffee may block its benefits & absorption in the bloodstream – the good side of this is that you can lessen the effect of caffeine by doing so, if you’re taking your coffee in the evening for example

On another note, there is a category of foods called Superfood.

Superfoods are basically called so because they offer higher nutritional value compared to other foods. While this list is non-comprehensive, these are foods that can radically help your body if you can just find a way to fit them in on a daily basis for like 6 months:

Chia Seeds
Flax Seeds
Berries (any type)
Turmeric & Ginger
Sweet potatoes
Avocados
Spinach

You can read entire articles about each of these because they are massively underrated. For example we see people obsess over fish oil & omega supplements, while 1 tablespoon of chia seeds has more than your needed daily intake of omega-3. So imagine taking it everyday for years.

Quick notes on supplements

Supplements really amount to 5-10% of your results so they are by no means necessary in order to reach your goals, and most of the times they demand extra treatment to fit them in your diet properly (extra water, possible sleep disturbance & trips to the bathroom, their timings, etc). So I wouldn’t advise someone who’s just starting to obsess over supplements. Unless you’ve been training for 5-6 months consistently (3-5 workouts per week).
But a multivitamin is something I believe everyone should take though, even if you’re not training (For example since most of us nowadays are working desk jobs, we don’t get to have enough sunlight & it’s widely believed that ~70% of people generally have vitamin D deficiency). But multivitamins are not a viable alternative to your daily fruit/veggie intake. A poor diet with a multivitamin is not the same as a varied diet rich in fruits and vegetables.
I don’t take pre-workouts and I don’t believe you should take them. This is because of the insane amount of caffeine most of them contain. I like to keep my caffeine tolerance under control so I only take a cup of single -may be double- espresso before hitting the gym & that’s it.
Some supplements are well-researched, if you need to look into supplements, just research Whey, Creatine, Citrulline & Multivitamins to determine if they are for you – these are like the basics of supplementation, forget about the rest.
A “Weight Gainer” is a marketing hoax. Their calories come from sugar. You can do your own everyday weight gainer using oats + milk + bananas + peanut butter.
https://healthline.com/ & https://www.usa-homegym.com/ are good places to start your research
If you’re supplementing with calcium, you should keep in mind that calcium & iron inhibit each others’ absorption, leaving us with little of either as absorbable – so be on the lookout for foods that contain iron (spinach, raisins, green peas, beans & lentils).
You should pay extreme attention to your water intake if you’re taking any powder, because you may think you’re drinking enough but you’re not – you optimally need 3-4 liters per day.

Those on a BULK

Think of smoothies as calorie bombs. If you pack a smoothie with yogurt or olive oil, protein powder, raw instant oats, nut butters, avocados, you can reach 800–1000 calories and still likely have an appetite for solid food. I personally do a 1500-calorie shake in the morning, refrigerate it, then drink it throughout the day (usually around 1.2-1.3 liters that contain everything I can throw in)
No research suggests there’s a muscle growth benefit to eating many small meals throughout the day as opposed to the typical routine of three big ones. So perhaps stick to the standard routine of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and occasional snacks.
It’s extremely hard to sustain a 3000+ cals diet, so to help consistently reach your daily calorie target, it’s critical to develop a reliable muscle building meal plan based off some core foods. These are healthy, high-calorie foods you should stock in your kitchen to form the basis of meals: oats, sweet potato, rice, etc. Decide which of the core foods you’re willing to eat. Then buy a ton of them. Don’t overlook the convenience of having these simple go-to foods on-hand. Otherwise you’ll cave and eat out more than you should. When you eat out, it’s tough to know how many calories you’re getting.
Have high-calorie snacks (i.e protein bars) at hand -even when you go out- and munch on them constantly. Snacks can be an easy way to put on weight, without affecting your appetite.
When in doubt, always underestimate your caloric intake because we can’t risk undereating. Failing to hit your calorie target will hinder or prevent muscle growth from that day’s workout. (Yes, slightly overeating on workout days means you might gain a couple pounds of fat. But you can burn that off when you’re done gaining muscle.)
After a certain point (~>500 caloric surplus), all calories from a caloric surplus will start accumulating fat instead of muscle, which will take more time to get rid of. Low caloric surplus (5-10% of maintenance calories) is better than high caloric surplus for building muscle (4:1 muscle:fat gain ratio vs 4:3), although it will take longer for a low caloric surplus to gain the same amount of weight. Slow & steady wins.
Ideally you should start lean bulking at ~15% BF, any higher than that, you got to trim down fat first. Otherwise, you’d be stuck in the permabulk :v (link)
An intermediate lifter would ideally gain 0.5%-1% of his weight every month
Protein is the most satiating macro, and it may be preventing you from incorporating more calories. You may want to stick to the minimum grams of protein you need per day if you’re having a hard time hitting your caloric surplus goal (link)
There’s a not-so-known concept which is Calorie Compensation. Let’s demonstrate it using an example: if you’re daily intake is at 3100, you can basically consider that you need 21.7k calories per week & it won’t affect your muscle synthesis. Meaning if on sunday, monday & tuesday you did 2900, you can compensate by eating 3300 during the rest of the week or vice-versa. To me this is interesting because I tend to eat out towards end of the week, so more calories, which means I don’t have to strictly eat 3100 at week start.

Some recommended reading: