6 Simple Steps to Designing Your Own Meal Plan

Dieting will always be a big hype topic for the fitness enthusiasts or for anyone who cares about their weight or simply about their general health for that matter. The mass media, including the internet is abundant of mixed information about what to eat, when to eat and how much to eat. All this information can be overwhelming and sometimes confusing because you will often have different sources telling you completely different things.

If you feel what I am saying you are in the right place.

In this article we are going to put dieting in simple and practical steps that you can implement right away in order to achieve your goals, whatever they may be – build more muscle, get leaner or both.

At the end of this post you will be able to design you own personalized meal plan which you can stick to (and actually enjoy), a meal plan what will be optimized for your personal goals and that you can adjust on the fly based on the results it gives you.

That being said, let’s start.

Step 1: Calories in versus calories out

The very first step of setting up a meal plan is figuring out how many calories you need to be eating and setting the number of calories correctly. This is the ground foundation that you need to get right otherwise it will not work.

Gaining or losing weight is determined by the number of calories we eat, not by what we eat or when we eat it. Just by how much we eat, opposed to what many famous nutritionists are telling us.

It’s simple thermodynamics (if you happen to like physics) – a negative energy balance (caloric deficit) will trigger weight loss, while a positive energy balance (caloric surplus) will trigger weight gain.

Now, in order to place yourself in a caloric deficit or surplus you need to know what your caloric maintenance level is. There are a few of ways you can find this out:

1. By using an online calculator – this method is very easy, quick and it’s free. The downside is that it’s not that accurate because everybody is different, but you can use it as a reference value and start from there.
2. Have your BMR (basal metabolic rate) measured – this method is very accurate but you need to get a doctor appointment and pay for it. Then, a multiplier should be applied to the BMR, based on your daily activity level.
3. Track calories and weigh yourself regularly - the plan old method that I use and recommend. If you are losing weight you are in a deficit, if you are gaining you are in a surplus and if you are maintaining your weight you are at caloric maintenance level. This method has the advantage that is very accurate if your measurements are correct, but it takes a couple of weeks to get an accurate reading. Measure your weight each morning in the same conditions, count your calories and determine what your maintenance level is.

It is really important to determine it as accurately as possible because all of the other steps in setting up your meal plan will rely on it.

Setting the right caloric deficit

If you want to cut back on calories and lose some fat you need to be in a deficit; but not just any deficit, the optimal one. You need to set your calories so that you lose fat at the fastest possible rate while maintaining as much as possible your muscle mass.

Luckily for us there are quite a few scientific studies out there and a lot of anecdotal evidence from a lot of amateur bodybuilders, which make things easy for us.

As per the information we now have, a caloric deficit of 20 to 25% is optimal for fat loss and muscle mass preservation. So, if your maintenance level is 2,000 kcal a day, you should around 1,500 – 1,600 kcal a day.

The 20 to 25% threshold has the purpose of protecting your metabolism and hormones while still forcing the body to tap into the fat storages for those extra calories it will need.

If you cut back on calories more aggressively you will slow down your metabolism too much, you will start losing muscle mass, your energy levels will be low and your workouts will get worse. There is no point in starving yourself.

On the other hand, if your deficit is too small, it will take ‘forever’ to get down to the weight you want which is not good either. You want your cut to be as quick as possible so you can go back into an anabolic / muscle building state faster.

Long caloric deficit periods are pretty bad for our bodies – they mess you up at hormonal level, you will feel hungry and frustrated most of the times, the workouts will be less productive and you can’t build any muscles mass (unless you are very new to lifting weights).

A good and healthy fat loss rate is 1-2 pounds per week – but this will depend on you actual body fat level – fat people should see a higher rate, while lean people should see a lower rate. But for the average guy and gal, 1-2 pounds per week is a good weight loss rate.

Setting the right caloric surplus

If your goal is to build muscle mass you need to eat more. But surprisingly to what many people think, you don’t need to eat a whole lot more.

Again, luckily for us we have access to plenty of studies on this topic. It turns out that a surplus of 5 to 10% is enough for us to build muscle mass at the fastest possible rate from a biological point of view (unless you are using steroids, but I don’t think it’s the case).

That’s all our body needs to be able to get into an anabolic state and start producing new muscle fibers.

If you do the math, considering the same example as above, for a person who is maintaining at 2,000 kcal, the caloric surplus should be set at just 2,100 – 2,200 kcal a day. You can get those extra calories just from a protein shake or 100 g of grilled chicken. That’s how little you need to eat.

This is also referred to as lean bulking – bulking up while minimizing fat gain. There is no way you can build muscle without putting on a little bit of fat, but you can minimize it.

A good way of telling whether you are gaining more fat that you should is by measuring your weight and waist size regularly while bulking. Typically your weight should go up 0.5 to 1 pound per week and the waist size shouldn’t go up too high.

A good fat to muscle gain rate is 50:50. If you are gaining more fat that muscle you need to drop your calories and if you are building more muscle than fat you have really good genetics.

Step 2: Macronutrients distribution

Once you have your calories nice and setup the next step is to distribute them between the 3 macros: proteins, carbohydrates and fats. In case you don’t know it already, each macronutrient has a caloric content: 1 gram of protein is 4 kcal; 1 gram of carbohydrate is also 4 kcal and 1 gram of fat is 9 kcal.

These should be set slightly different when cutting and when bulking – meaning that you want to up your protein intake when cutting and you want to up your carb intake when you are bulking.

Setting macros for cutting

As said above when you cut one of your main concerns is muscle mass preservation, that’s why protein intake should be increased to about 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight.

Coincidentally or not, protein rich foods are also the most satiating of all foods which makes them perfect when you are in a caloric deficit because you won’t feel hungry throughout the day.

After you figured out how much grams of protein you need to eat, all you have to do now is to split the remaining calories between fats and carbs.

For example, if you are cutting with 2,000 kcal and you weigh 180 pounds you will need to eat around 180 grams of protein which will make up 720 kcal (or 36% of your calories) and you have left 1,280 kcal to split between your carbs and fats.

In order to keep our bodies running smoothly at hormonal level the fat intake should be at about 40-50 grams. You can eat more fat but that will mean less carbs which are essential for putting glycogen into the muscles and give your workouts a boost.

Setting macros for bulking

When you are bulking you don’t need to be as strict with the macros. As long as you are getting about 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight you can do pretty much whatever you want with your carbs and fats.

Of course the smart way of splitting would be to eat slightly more carbs than fat, in order to make your workouts better and increase the chances of making more muscle gains, but this is down to personal preference.