Last major update: March 31st, 2020
This is my guide to calculating macros based on Martin Berkhan’s Leangains system.
I have been using this with clients since 2011 years. You can see the results that this system produces on my online coaching results page. If you’re looking for an overview of Leangains, see my Leangains Guide.
As with any serious nutrition strategy, these initial calculations are just the start point. The key to your success will be fine-tuning your macros so that you keep progressing. These will come in later guides on the site. For now, I’ve worked to make this guide as simple as possible, without compromising on the efficacy. I’ve given the bare-minimum theory because most people don’t want it when they are first starting.
Calculate Your Leangains Calorie Intake
There’s a calculator at the bottom of this page. But first, I’ll teach you briefly about each of the steps. This way you’ll understand what’s going on and what choices to make in the calculator.
Step 1. Calculate your BMR
Think of your basal metabolic rate (BMR) as your ‘coma calories’ — the energy intake you need, should you fall into a coma, to maintain your body weight. There are a variety of formulas, all of which produce a guess at best, so don’t worry about trying to calculate things perfectly because we’ll adjust our intake based on how we progress.
There are a variety of formulas designed to estimate basal metabolic rate. I like the Harris-Benedict formula because it’s just as effective, yet simpler to do.
For those who use pounds and inches:
- Men: BMR = 66 + (6.2 x weight in lbs) + (12.7 x height in inches) – (6.8 x age)
- Women: BMR = 655 + (4.4 x weight in lbs) + (4.6 x height in inches) – (4.7 x age)
For those who use kilograms and centimeters:
- Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 x weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) – (6.8 x age)
- Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 x weight in kg) + (1.8 x height in cm) – (4.7 x age)
Step 2. Find Your TDEE By Adjusting For Activity
You need to add an ‘activity multiplier’ to your BMR depending on your lifestyle/training. This will calculate your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).
- Sedentary (little or no exercise) [BMR x 1.15]
- Mostly sedentary (office work), plus 3–6 days of weight lifting [BMR x 1.35]
- Lightly active, plus 3–6 days of weight lifting [BMR x 1.55]
- Highly active, plus 3–6 days of weight lifting [BMR x 1.75]
Step 3. Adjust Calorie Intake Based On Your Goal
It’s important to choose a goal – fat loss or muscle gain. Yes, I know you want both, and you might be able to achieve that to a degree, but for now, I need you to look at yourself in the mirror and choose what you think is most important right now.
[If you need help with this, have a read of my article: Should I Cut or Bulk? The Definitive Guide.]
How To Adjust Your Calorie Intake For Fat Loss
I recommend a weight loss rate between 0.5–0.75% of body weight per week.
For busy individuals who can’t afford the lethargy and brain fog, 0.5% seems to be the sweet spot. (I’m basing this on my years of client work.)
As it requires an approximate 3500 kcal deficit to burn 1 lb of fat (7700 kcal per kg), to lose 1 lb of fat per week, you need a 500 kcal daily deficit (1100 kcal for 1 kg).
The calculation to adjust your calorie intake for a fat loss goal is as follows:
Target daily calorie intake (TDCI) = TDEE – (Bodyweight x target weekly fat loss rate x 500*)
*1100 if you use kg
However, our metabolisms adapt to fight a caloric deficit, which means that if we use the calculation above, it will not likely lead to the 0.5% of body weight loss per week we are hoping for. Therefore, I have set the calculator below to use 0.75%.
HOW TO ADJUST YOUR CALORIE INTAKE FOR MUSCLE GAIN
The newer you are to training, the faster the rate you can gain muscle; the more advanced you get, the slower this will happen. Therefore, it is best to set weight gain targets based on your level of training experience. If you ignore this, you’ll either gain too much fat or make slower progress than you could have.
Categorizing training advancement is tricky, but here is my preferred method along with the monthly rates of weight gain I recommend:
- Beginner: 2% (Totally new to training.)
- Novice: 1.5% (Still able to progress most training loads in the gym on a week to week basis.)
- Intermediate: 1% (Able to progress most training loads in the gym on a month to month basis.)
- Advanced: 0.5% (Progress is evident only when viewed over multiple months or a year.)
It takes roughly ~2500 kcal to build 1 lb of muscle and ~3500 kcal to burn or store 1 lb of fat.
As people typically gain fat and muscle in a 1:1 ratio in a bulk phase, and if we assume a 30 day month, this means we need a 100 kcal daily caloric surplus to gain 1 lb of weight per month (~220 kcal for 1 kg).
However, like the additional downward adjustment I made for metabolic adaptation when cutting, I believe we should make an additional upward adjustment when bulking. This is because as we raise calories, some of that calorie increase will be eaten up by NEAT and not result in a caloric surplus. So I’ve set the calculator to add 50% to these numbers.
The calculation to adjust your calorie intake for a weight gain goal is as follows:
Target daily calorie intake (TDCI) = TDEE + (Bodyweight x target monthly gain rate x 150*)
*330 if you use kg
Calculating Your Leangains Macros
Now that we have our daily calorie intake target, we can calculate our macros.
Setting Protein Intake
Protein is good. You’ve heard this even if you can’t remember why. Here’s why: It forms the building blocks for muscle, it has a protective effect on muscle tissue when dieting, and it keeps hunger at bay when dieting.
Taking all the research into account, we can come up with the following guidelines for protein intake:
| CUTTING | MAINTENANCE OR BULKING | |
| Protein | 1.0–1.2 g/lb (2.2–2.6 g/kg) of body weight | 0.7–1.0 g/lb (1.6–2.2 g/kg) of body weight |
You’ll notice that the common number between each of these is 1 gram per pound of body weight and for simplicity, this is where I would suggest you set your protein intake regardless of whether you are cutting or bulking.
If you have a lot of fat to lose, the “1 g per pound rule” will set protein intake too high for overweight or obese people. If this is you, I’d suggest you set your protein intake as per your height in the chart below.
You’ll need to adjust the number the calculator spits out at the end. Just swap the protein for carbs.
So, if the calculator gives you 200 g of protein (because you are 200 lbs) but you are 5’6, reduce your protein intake down to 145 g and add 55 g to your carb intake number.
Setting Fat Intake
I recommend that 20–30% of your calories come from fat when bulking, and 15–25% when cutting. The reason for the lower range when cutting is because of the relatively higher importance of keeping up carbohydrate intake for performance.
The minimum fat intake I recommend is 0.25 g/lb (0.5 g/kg) per day.
Setting Carb Intake
Carbs should make up the remainder of your calorie budget.
The minimum carb intake I recommend is 0.5 g/lb (1 g/kg) per day.
These bottom-line recommendations aren’t likely to be relevant when you do your initial dietary calculation, but after a few months of dieting when you are considering where to make cuts to your calorie intake, you need to consider them.
Adding Leangains Calorie and Macro Cycling
As mentioned at the start of the article, your training days will have a higher carb and lower fat intake, with a higher calorie intake overall. Your rest days will have a higher fat but lower carb intake, with a lower calorie intake overall. This looks something like as follows:
I have set the calculator to calculate the rest day fat intake 20% higher than the training days. As carbs balance the calorie budget, this means the training days have more carbs than the rest days.
The Leangains Macro Calculator
^ If the calculator doesn’t load above the first time, please refresh the page. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Leangains Macros FAQ
1. What about macro ratios? I read somewhere that I should have 40/40/20.
Ignore the idea of macro ratios; these are just a function of the stage of dieting rather than something to target.
As you have just seen, protein intake is best set based on lean body mass, there are minimum recommendations for fat intake, and carbohydrate just makes up the calorie balance. What this means is that the ratio of the macronutrients that make up your diet will change as you progress – there will be more carbs when we are bulking, and less when we are cutting. If you target specific macro ratios, you’ll end up with a diet that is suboptimal for you.
2. Do these macros look right?
It is impossible to say. You won’t know that until you try them out. Initial calculations are an estimation, a start point from which to adjust based on how you progress, nothing more.
- Your actual energy expenditure will vary somewhere between plus or minus ~20% of what you calculate due to genetic differences,
- Your metabolism adapts when you are in a calorie surplus or deficit; your calorie target is a moving target, not a static one.
You need to make sure you are tracking your progress in detail so that you have data from which to base fine-tune adjustments to your calculations off of. You then, of course, need to know how to make the adjustments. Fortunately, I’ve put together those guides for you here:
3. The macros I calculated using your guides are different from what I have currently been using, should I change?
Not necessarily, for the reasons mentioned in the previous answer. You are better off tracking how your current set up is doing and then adjusting it if necessary.
Good luck. Thanks for reading. Questions are welcomed in the comments. – Andy
Please keep questions on topic, write clearly, concisely, and don't post diet calculations.
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Hi Andy, What’s the difference between this leangains macro calculator and the new calorie/macro calculator accessed from the menu bar on your homepage? Are there some assumptions based on the leangains method not used in your new calculator? The reason I ask is outputs for overall calories and macros using your new calculator are quite a bit lower than the leangains calculations above, namely target avg, target training day, target rest day, target carbs on training days, target fat on rest days. (Training day carbs above suggests ~400g vs. 256g in new calculator. Rest day target fat above is 100g vs. 34g in new calc.)
Hi Mike,
The new one is more customizable and I have also adjusted downward for in anticipation of some metabolic adaption. (You’ll see I have written about that in the notes.) I’ll come back to this page and update it at some point.
I’m sorry but I was surprised that the BMR calculator isn’t based at all on gender and age. Are they not relevant?
Hi Dave, thank you for asking.
Some calculations use age to help estimate BMR. This is because we tend to lose muscle mass as we age, and muscle takes a higher amount of calories to maintain than fat. However, if you have an estimate of your muscle mass, this isn’t necessary.
In the calculation currently on this page, I chose to use a BMR calculation that requires people to estimate their lean body mass. However, in an updated calculator I created here, I decided to use one that doesn’t. Why? Because the difference is small, the calculations are estimations anyway, and so it made sense to simplify this step for people.
I’ll update this page with that calculation in the future. Just haven’t had time yet.
Hi Andy,
I ran through the calculations in here and everything is high than what I’ve been doing. I’m afraid if I increase my macros or daily calories I’ll gain weight. For example I’ve been getting about 1300 cal with ~115g carbs, 51g fat, and 115g protein. I’m 5’6” 139lb. Body fat 26%. Your calculations are giving me 1922 cal in training days and 1282 on rest days.
What are the risks/outcomes with staying with what I currently do? What I’m wondering is if I’m not losing enough fat because I’m not eating enough?
Hi Alyssa,
See the notes in FAQ points 3 and 4.
I’m not sure if somebody will reply to this.
But, I’m 21 years old.
Weight: 160Lbs
Body Fat: 19%
Body type: Skinny Fat
Not sure if i should go for a bulk and then cut down the fat i gain while gaining muscle or do a recomposition..
Hi Gurwinder, thanks for the question. As you can see from the comments, I reply to everything.
Probably a recomp, but have a read of this article as it should help: Should I Cut or Bulk? The Definitive Guide
How do I calculate fat intake for Training and Rest days for the “Recomp” scenario? There are only options for cutting and bulking unless I am missing something.
Hi Ian, use this newer calculator I created instead.
I’m 5’5″, 120 lbs, and fat percentage around 15%. Should I re-comp, bulk, or cut? I started upper/lower split about 2 months ago, and I see immediate results. I gained a lot more muscle. Now, I can see there are muscle definitions in my biceps, triceps, and legs as well as feel (very hard to see even with good lighting) some definition in my abs. I used to be extremely skinny and weak (50 lbs sand bag used to be almost impossible for me to lift 2 month ago). My current calorie intake is around 1880-2200. I can’t decide which meal program to stick to since every sites give me a different numbers. So far your like your calculator the most since you give explanation to your numbers.
Hi Danny, this article will help: Should I Cut or Bulk? The Definitive Guide
Thank you for asking. I’ll add it to the article.
It seems like I should set my intake at maintenance level while continue with training and give it some time to decide whether I should cut or bulk.
Most welcome.
Using the calculator above, my TDEE with “little to no exercise” is ~2300. If instead, I indicate “training 6-7 days a week”. my TDEE is ~3300. I didn’t think that an average workout would be even close to 1000 calories. Am I misinterpreting?
Hi Samantha. You must have clicked ‘Extremely active’, not ‘Training 6-7 days per week’
The multiplier for the 6-7 days a week is 1.725. The multiplier for lightly active is 1.375. So, if the 2300 figure you’ve quoted is correct, your TDEE for 6-7 days per week will be 2877. [(2300/1.375)*1.725]
I double-checked that I was clicking the right choice. Here are my results…
BMR: 1920
Sedentary TDEE: 2304
Very Active (6-7 days) TDEE: 3312
I was particularly interested in the difference between Sedentary (2304) and Very Active (3312), which comes out to +1008 calories burned per day. If I’m understanding that correctly, it means that daily workout/exercise burns 1000 calories per day, but that seems like a lot, no?
Yes, I’d agree. If you are sedentary outside of your workouts, I’d use the multiplier below that.
Can you please help I filled in everything right but my carbs for my active days are way to high saying I need 706 g of carbs witch I know is way to high could u help?
Hi David. You know that’s wrong or this is an assumption that it is? Because if you know, adjust for what it should be.
Now, if you’re asking, “Hey, does this look right?” I don’t know, it could be for some people but I don’t know you. Equally, you could have screwed up the calculation though.
Try again to confirm what you get. Also, consider trying my new calculator to compare. Make sure you look at the notes there.
Hi Andy,
First of all, thanks so much for the article. I have several doubts: In my case I have a sedentary desk job and my NEAT is more or less 8000-10000 steps per day and I going to the gym 3 days per week, doing weight lifting about 60′ and then HIIT about 10-12′. I have been doing a keto diet for 45 days without problems. But in spite of lose weight (4.5 kg) and reduce my waist from 78 cm to 73 cm and my percentage of body fat from 14% to 11% more or less I couldn’t reached to show my six pack, a layer of fat covers my belly button. Therefore I’d like to know if it would better to do this diet and I don’t know if bulk, recomposition or cut. Thanks a lot.
Hi Luis. Everyone has a six-pack, you just need to get leaner.
I’m curious about the activity multipliers. I’m only lightly active outside the gym (occasional walks and stair climbing), but my routines are pretty intense: ~90 minutes 4-5 times a week (usually 5). Overall volume these days tends to be in the 25,000-30,000lbs range per session. I’m thinking that should qualify for “very active.” Do you agree? Are there more details somewhere about how to map activity to multipliers?
Hi Matt,
There probably are, but I wouldn’t attempt to get too analytical with it because you’re adding attempts at a more accurate estimation, to initial estimations anyway. The only way to do things is to set, track, then adjust based on the outcome. (See the FAQ items at the end of the article for more on this.)
Now, I don’t have figures for climbing, nor do I know a way of accurately estimating caloric expenditure from pounds of volume (which is an estimation also, so I’d recommend you avoid it even if you find one).
But we can use some common sense and deduction to come up with an estimation.
You can see in the caloric expenditure for cardio here that if you were running at a high intensity for 90 minutes at a bodyweight of 200 lbs, you’d burn 1260 kcal per session (9*140). But despite it feeling high intensity, your climbing is not continual activity, but intermittent.
I’d say half of that (630 kcal) is the likely upper bound, but probably still too high, because when typical gym workouts have been measured (I don’t recall the paper), they come to between ~120-300 kcal of energy expenditure.
Therefore, I’d consider your climbing workouts to be an additional 400 kcal of expenditure and as you’re doing this 4.5 days on average, add 257 kcal (4.5*400/7) to your daily calorie totals.
(This is the kind of thing I do when I estimate for clients.)
Make sense?
Yup! Thanks. That helps me ballpark it. I’m trying out “moderately active” and I’ll make adjustments as required after tracking for a week. Thanks!
Hey Andy great info appreciate you taking the time to answer our questions. I was curious what your take was on refeed days? If you think it is a good idea how often should you have a refeed day and how much should you bump your calories? Based on what number should it be bumped from? Your rest day calories calculated above, workout day, or from your TDEE? Thanks!!
Hi Spike, the training days are the refeed days in the Leangains system.
Ah okay thanks! I always thought that a refeed day would be +500-600 calories from your target calories, or calculated BMR, or calculated TDEE wasn’t sure which. I was curious what was your take on maybe once a month not necessarily overeating and going crazy but not tracking and having those foods that are not great for you like cookies, pizza etc lol and going over even your training day calories. I have a friend who actually does this once a WEEK and is strict every other day and is in fantastic shape! Something to do with Leptin levels? Anyway thanks again!
Sure, a refeed can be defined in a few different ways.
To have significant enough impacts on hormones, a longer break from dieting is needed. Guidelines here: How to Implement Diet Breaks to Get Shredded Lean.
I have a friend who actually does this once a WEEK and is strict every other day and is in fantastic shape!
For your friend, it is a combination of luck (his strictness during the week, food environment, social factors, and natural bf% setting) keep him there, and I’d be willing to bet they are currently at maintenance calories which means his hunger signals aren’t skewed.
A once per week “eat anything you want day” is the most common culprit behind people not progressing with their diets. They’re strict in the week but then throw it all away on the weekends. Avoid making this mistake.
Thanks and I agree. I have a question regarding the calculator. If I get a neg carb intake for rest days and have done the first couple of steps to get a positive number what do you mean swap carb from training training days to rest days? Do you mean increase the calories for rest days to get a positive carb intake and reduce calories on training days because you took those carbs from that day? Or keep same amount of target calories but increase fat on training days to reduce carbs.. and reduce fat on training days to basically use those carbs taken from training day but without manipulating calorie target for set days? Thanks!
Either or a combination of both.
I think increasing my fat intake on training days to free up/ reduce carbs from training days to be used on rest days along with reducing fat on rest days to use those carbs that you took from training days to avoid calorie target manipulation for set day(s) would be best. Maybe it doesn’t matter but I always thought that your calories should be higher on the days you lift and lower on. The days you don’t. I don’t know I just feel more comfortable doing it that way lol. Thanks.
about the activity level Moderately active 1.55 is it your experience that it is correct? I mean some sites like Mike Matthews from Legionathletics set it to 1.40 because the 1.55 set up your intake with to many calories in relation to the activity described as 4-6 hours training.I have just started your intermediate body building program and I should properly cut(17% fat according to the navy measurement but I want to build more muscle. According to your Excell spreadsheet I should eat 3100 cal for 0.7kg muscle per month. I am now eating my way up to 2800cal and its hard 🙂 I have previous followed the Bigger Leaner Stronger for 6 month at 2700 cal and gained to much fat. Then and did a cut
Hi Michael, thanks for the questions.
There are many equations for deriving BMR that tend to work out well when looking at group averages, but there are individual differences. Add to this that there are many ways to define a multiplier and the result is that everything is estimation, the key to success is that you track things an adjust. (See the point in the FAQ at the end of the article.) So, choose one and don’t worry about it, for now, adjust later.
I am now eating my way up to 2800cal and its hard
This can usually be made a lot easier by adjusting food choices and sometimes meal timing. I have an item in the FAQ covering it.
Also, you’ll probably find this article on adjusting for a bulk helpful: How to Bulk Without Getting Fat.
Thanks. yes I have read the both the faq and the articles but my mind still have to adjust to the fact that you say that the glycemic index doesn’t have any thing to say, and I therefore can eat white bread or even gummi bears to achieve my carb goal for the day. I am starting to include apple juice though
Hi Andy.
Really interesting guide, I’ve never thought about changing my intake for training/rest days before but it makes sense.
One thing that confused me though; on Step 5, Bob and Tom both have additional multipliers on their protein intake of 0.9 and 0.8 respectively, where did those numbers come from?
Also what is your recommended protein and fat intake for maintaining?
Hi Kevin!
This is adjusting for their body-fat percentage because we’re calculating protein needs by lean body mass in this guide.
So, Bob is 10% body fat so 0.9*bodyweight is the lean body mass; Tom is 20% body fat so 0.8*bodyweight is lean body mass.
Ahh, of course. Thanks for the prompt response.
Most welcome, Kevin.
Hi Andy
When using calculators on this page I get very different readings than when I enter them in the spreadsheet. The TDEE is the same and also the protein, but carbs and fat are way off on training and rest days.
They use two different methods of calculating and in the spreadsheet you get a choice of how you split your fats and carbs. If you read the guide on how to use the spreadsheet and have reasons for choosing the numbers that way, go with what’s in the sheet.
Hi Andy,
I found this incredibly helpful and so interesting. Big question: this seems to be geared to men—what modifications would you recommend making for a female athlete over 40? I’ve been practicing IF for years but only this year did I start to look refining and honing it as so much is changing and I’m finding it harder to stay as lean as I have historically maintained.
MB has updated his info for women to 14:10 which I read on Leigh Peele’s site. What other considerations would you make given the obvious hormone changes?
Much thanks!
Rhonda
Nothing, you’re good as is.
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the guide – really helpful and informative.
Just wanted to ask – for the protein calculation are we meant to increase heo figure for training days and reduce it for rest days in line with our overall calories intake?
So, for rest days multiply the protein figure by 0.8 and for training days multiply the figure by 1.2? Or are we meant to have the same protein intake every day?
I’d have the same protein each day.
Thanks for the clarification Andy
Most welcome.
Hi Alex. Thanks for the info you’ve provided here. I’ve found it very useful for the diet I’ve just set up and started this week.
I’m a software developer. I’d be interested in developing a standalone app with you to streamline this whole process. I think it could help you and your community. If that sounds like something you’re interested in, reach out to me at my email!
Either way, thank you for the help. My macro targets were way off.
Hi Michael,
Most welcome. / No, thank you, but I appreciate the offer.
Hi Andy, found your guide really helpful and I was amazed that’s it’s free of cost to use.
Just wondering how would I work out my sugar intake? As I now have my protein, fat and carb but need to know my sugar allowance.
Hi Alex,
Have a read of my guide on how to count macros and make meals out of them.
Hi Andy – I workout early in the mornings around 630am. I feel better going into my workouts having had more carbs the day before. Should I consider treating the day before as my workout day thus ensuring that my glycogen reserves are full to maintain performance in the gym? understand eating more calories throughout the day on a training day if I worked out in the afternoon giving my body time to fill up the tank.
Thanks
Kind of like putting gas in your car, whether you fuel up the day prior to driving or two days prior, the gas will still be there. Therefore, if you’re sure you feel better this way feel free to do what you feel best with.
Hi Andy,
Thanks for your guide.
My body fat is between 10 and 20%
But when I enter everything correctly l get -11,5 carbs intake for rest days.
What should I do ?
See the paragraph at the end of the “Step 7. Calculate Carb Intake” section.