all right hey folks so today's video is going to be talking you through how I set up my diet now this is just one way of setting up your diet there are plenty of ways to do this so if this approach doesn't really jive with you if you want to do something like if if it's your Macros approach it's a macro accounting approach whatever your thing is cool do it but this is an approach which works and this is what I'm currently doing to set up my diet now I like lots of different approaches for to setting up a client's diet so if a client is comfortable with the micro calorie approach cool do that use chronometer use my fitness power whatever you want to use if a client is comfortable with a meal plan a flexible meal plan that's also good if a client is more comfortable with a flexible habit-based eating approach I have education tracks for all of those things depending on the vibe of the client what they enjoy what they respond to all I will say is in practice what people like the idea of versus what they actually get along with can be two very separate things so one guy for example may think he wants to do a habit based approach where he's just going to eat based on Broad guidance and in reality that's an absolute mess for him because it's too much freedom for some people tracking macros and calories is too much Freedom they might like the idea of it they might think ah yes this is great diet flexibility all that kind of stuff but the reality is when they try to do it and they get down to the nitty-gritty of it they just fail because it's too much Freedom it's too much thinking time so when it comes to making a choice about food and they're given time to think about it when they're hungry they're not able to make the right choice that describes I would say a reasonable amount of people that I've seen and worked with over the years for certain groups of people too much Choice can be a passing H and I would say in certain circumstances that probably described me to a certain extent as well but the reality is people change over the years so what you need in a certain part of your life may be different to what you need in another part of your life and it also depends on the rest of your life stresses too if you're a relatively stressfree individual with a reasonable amount of time on your hands you actually might be fine doing a macro calorie flexible dieting approach cool do it what I'm about to detail for you now is how I'm currently setting up my diet and some guidelines for you and how to set up your diet in the same way and also some guidance at the end about how to adjust macros up and down depending on whether you're trying to cut whether you're trying to bulk okay so bear in mind this is one way of doing it it's not the only way I have multiple ways where I work with multiple clients and it's about finding what works best for that individual so follow along this is a starting point to set up your diet and it's currently how I'm working with things so first of all we're going to start with just figuring out calories um that's the first section calories where do we start I would say there are lots and lots of macro calorie formulas out there you catch Marda formula lots and lots of complicated formulas which give you the impression of accuracy fact of the matter is none of them are that accurate they don't know you they don't know your metabolism your activity levels all of that they're just guesses at the end of the day so I take a much more simple guess and it's just based on body weight times 15 is your total calories where you're going to start now that is assuming you are relatively normal weight okay if you're a lot heavier if you're a beast or let's say you've just got a few extra pounds on you let's say you're like an internet 20% Then I would say take your height in centimeters and times that by 15 now for those of you who are more observant you'll notice that number is about the same so I am about 180b I'm about 180 cm in height Ergo that number is about the same okay so that's the starting point we're going to use this imaginary person just for illustration of the course of this video so this imaginary person who is our example is going to be um 180 pounds and we're going to take their body weight times it by 15 to give us a total calories which is 2700 that's where we start okay now from there we're going to work out the macros and then I'm going to speak to you about how to adjust those calories up and down depending on what your goal is so let's go into protein now protein my recommendation is to go from anywhere between one to 1. 5 times your body weight in pounds or again like I said or height in centimeters depending on where you sit based on the first section now for our hypothetical man that we split the difference let's say between one to one and a half grams let's split right down the middle let's say 1. 25 that's 225 grams of protein now some of you might not be comfortable with going so high like 1.
5 grams per pound of body weight of protein is is 270 Gram now that's a lot of protein for some of you that's going to be like way too much some of you are still struggling with getting in one gram per pound now none of what this what I'm saying here is scientifically supported the science says something like 08 grams per pound of body weight what my experience is people tend to do better with more okay so if you're trying to maximize I would push you towards the top end of that scale if you are making some good gains and you want to be a bit more flexible sure at the bottom end but I would try and put you between one to one and a half gram per pound of body weight so for our imaginary man who's 180 PB we're going to split it down the middle we're going to do 1. 25 grams per pound of body weight which is 225 grams now the next thing is we want to split that up because that forms the basis of our meal structure for the day we start with protein protein is the deciding macro because based on your protein that's going to influence your carbs and your fats so I would say you want to split that between four or five meals ideally in an ideal circumstance you again you can get away with three but more feedings more often is going to be better for your growth this is just what I've experienced in myself and in clients who are able to do that and are dedicated enough to do so now in terms of protein sources the ones that I tend to favor are animal sources or animal-based so chicken beef fish whey lamb pork all the big ones right horse depending on what's available in your country right and I would say depending on your own personal proclivity it's going to affect the carb and the fat macros to a greater or lesser extent what I mean by that is if you are a carnivore guy or like you're a keto guy let's say you're particularly fond of fatty meats you like your fatty Lambs fatty beef steak all that kind of good stuff right or like eggs for example cool that's fine you can Factor all that in just be aware when we move on to the fat section it's going to have a knock on effect there or let's say for example you're a vegan guy vegetarian guy a lot of your protein sources may have extra carbs fine cool go for it not a problem but just be aware it might influence a knock on with the carbs later in the video so depending on what you pick it'll have an impact on the rest of the macros so far with said protein for a hypothetical 180 pound man is 225 gram we're going to split that up into five meals of 45 gram of protein per meal because we're trying to optimize we're trying to do put our best step forward again if you're trying to learn a new system let's learn how to do it right and then we can adapt it later on now the next thing I want to look at is actually fat before I look at carbs I want to look at fat because we need to get that to a certain minimum level before we move on so let's discuss fat intake but also fat sources that I like now fat is an important thing to add to your diet like there are studies to back this up one of the best studies I saw about this very recently which I think was released a couple of years back was a study comparing three groups one which was a lowfat group the next which was a lowfat group with the addition of olive oil the next which was a lowfat group with the addition of nuts now it was a very clever study because the first group the control group which was just lowfat was not eating a bunch of saturated fats and all these kind of and trans fats they were just eating a very lowfat diet so you literally were comparing low fat versus low fat with healthy fats and both the olive oil group and the nuts group had better health markers by the end of the testing period so that is pretty clear concrete evidence which we've known for a long time make sure you get your healthy fats in the level of healthy fats you will have available to you will be influenced by how much fat is in your protein sources like I explained in the protein section so what I'm going to say is with fat intake I'd like to go with about3 to 0. 5 grams of fat per pound of body weight or again height in centimeters depending on your overall weight and bear in mind the impact from your protein sources so you'll have to subtract that from this number so let's say our hypothetical man is 108 pounds again he would go at the bottom end of that will'll go with 60 grams of fat which is a reasonable amount and those 60 grams should include the fat that came from any protein sources and also the addition of some healthy fats my favorites are various types of nuts and avocados and olive oil my personal favorite I think is just various types of nuts why convenience really you can buy a kilo bag of almonds Brazil nuts hazelnuts cashews whatever you want off Amazon and that could just sit in your cupboard for as long as you like whereas avocados they have a fairly short um date you go off fairly quickly so avocados are great I like them I don't often buy them though because they don't stay for very long in the house as you guys know I like to prep my food I have quite a lot of food essentially in the bank ready for when I need it so I tend to add in various types of nuts currently I'm working on picans so there you go in case you wanted to know olive oil is also a good option but olive oil it's not one of those things which is going to much satiety it's a great option if you're trying to bulk and have trouble eating your food you can take a tablespoon full of olive oil mix it into your rice for example extra tip for you guys there it's like a hidden secret for bulking but in general if you struggle with your appetite like if you struggle as in you find it hard to control how much you eat I would rather go for nuts and avocados it's going to fill you up more it's a Powerhouse so bear that in mind bring that up to that3 to.
5 grams of fat per per pound of body weight figure or height in centimeters so our hypothetical man so far we're looking at 2700 calories he wants 225 grams of protein and 60 grams of fat now the remainder of the calories remaining are going to be funnel towards carbs so if we have a look at that remainder is about 290 okay 290 grams of carbs means we get enough calories to take us up to our original figure of 2700 calories which is our starting point for this diet okay so I would say when it comes to that we are looking at say 290 divided by five which is about 60 grams of carbs so our hypothetical man will be looking at about 60 grams of carbs per meal if he were to add in an even amount of carbs from meal one stra through to meal five bear in mind again at this point you want to take away the carbs which you gained from the protein so let's say you had a lot of vegetarian vegan sources cool fantastic uh beans legumes great source of protein I'm a big fan of um black beans kidney beans isuki beans Pinto beans love them fantastic if that's your bag cool make sure you take away the figure that you get from your proteins from your carb total if you're relying on those types of proteins which have a varied source so that's how you can incorporate things like beans and legumes into your diet very easy now the remainder what I would say in terms of carb choic is nice easy ones that a bodybuilder would use if you struggle to eat use rice and pasta really easy to prep really easy to cook really easy to eat particularly white rice sushi rice I mean goes down like nothing right brown rice is a bit more filling so if we look at options which are a bit more filling brown rice um sweet potatoes regular potatoes yams they are a bit more fing those of you guys who perhaps are at the point in the diet where you're struggling with appetite love load upon those with the remaining carbs that you have okay so that's calories so far protein carbs and fats we've covered them all so we have a baseline for the diet that's where everybody starts wherever you are you start there you do that for the duration of say one or two weeks and you see what's happening to your body weight now if I were to do that my body weights stay about the same if not go down slightly but that's me my maintenance is about 3,000 calories a day okay based on my size also activity level for you guys it's going to be different based on your size and your activity level but that's where you would start and then you would take a two-e period to evaluate what's happening and that gives you a much better idea of what your maintenance is than a calculator online calculator doesn't know who you are doesn't know your circumstances doesn't know whether you're very active or very lazy doesn't know all that kind of stuff right only this method will definitively tell you what your maintenance is so stick with those caries for a period of two weeks don't deviate from the diet unless you're just changing out foods and that'll give you an idea of where you're at log everything measure everything weigh everything out so you know where you're at now at the end of that period let's say you have stayed the same weight great that's your maintenance and then we would have to make a decision on what to do with your food let's say you want to cut and you've actually gained weight well we know we need to slash some calories let's say you want to gain weight and you've lost weight we need to add some calories in but it gives you a number based on you and your activity level as an individual that's the only sherfy way to have a maintenance and that actually sets you up a lot better than a maintenance calculator this gives you real data on you and who you are which is important because throughout the course of the diet what are you going to need to do when you stall you need to add more weight and your body weight stalled you're going to need to see what your calories are if your fat loss is stalled you're going to need to look back at the last couple of weeks and look at what you've been eating so you can take some away you're not going to stall 10 weeks into a diet and then look up a macro calculator see what you need to do no that will might throw you off it might give you way more calories You're simply going to look at your last couple of weeks and see what you at see what the numbers were and then adjust it from there so let's talk adjustments let's say you need to adjust downwards okay let's say you want to lose weight you've not been losing weight let's talk about adjusting downwards so what I would say is the adjustments would primarily come from carbs leave the protein alone for now okay leave the fat alone you've picked a reasonable amount if you've done my recommendations you should be at 1 to 1. 5 grams of protein per pound of body weight fat should be at reasonable amount so leave those alone for now we don't need to touch those yet adjust your carbs downwards and what I would say is this when you're reducing your carbs if you really want to optimize if you really want to specialize leave the carbs around the workout even the days of training maybe just leave those intact remember you're looking at a weekly macro view here your body doesn't work in days it works in long time frames so if you can create a deficit away from your workouts you're GNA have a much better chance of maintaining good workouts and maintaining your muscle mass if you're just slashing carbs Left Right throughout the day just so you can binge all your carbs at night stupid approach moronic maybe that's a bit harsh maybe it works for you cool if you've gotten shredded that way great but for a lot of people it's not the best approach because you're going through the course of the day underfed and then feeding yourself lots of food right before bed is probably not the best idea bottom line um if you want to specialize try and keep your carbs around your workouts and just start to pull them away elsewhere my personal preference this is just what works for me is to pull them away from from Bedtime meals okay I sleep better restful which is very important to me I don't want a bunch of carbs and a big carb surge through the night that's not what I'm after I'd rather have a nice meat-based meal with some vegetables so I can have some nice slow energy aminos seeping through my body as I sleep I don't want a big sort of carb rushing down not a not a way forward for me personally I think the majority of people who really try and leverage their carbs before bed this is just what I think you guys might have a difference of opinion but but just what I think is a lot of those guys are undefeated themselves during the course of the day so do you really need the cars before bed or are you just starving by the time you get to bed again I don't think it's a great idea to be starving right the way through the day so anyway that's just my preference you guys might feel differently some people feel very passionate about that so if that's you cool can't be asked to hear about it don't care now let's discuss adjusting calories upwards so this kind of depends more on where you're coming from so I would say if you originally took the base level of protein like just one gram per pound start there adjust it upwards I've had more luck with having a lot more protein during a bulk than I have with a cut weirdly enough right because the common advice is to ramp your protein up during a cut that's fine I think but during a cut it's even more important to maintain performance with carbs and that's it's helpful to try and maximize your carbs if you're on a cut I find in a bulk because you've got so many calories to play around with anyway you may as well just Ram that protein up like I've had protein as high as 1.