What is the optimal way to allocate your calories for fat loss, muscle gain or maintenance? In this episode, you'll learn how to distribute your macros for different calorie levels, the key differences between them and practical tips to make your meal plan both simple and foolproof. Learn how to master your meal planning on today's episode. Welcome to the wit's end weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Whitson weights community Welcome to another solo episode of The Whitson weights podcast in our last episode 181 How not to be skinny fat and week with Adrian McDonald. You learn the real reasons that you might be skinny, fat and weak right now and what to do to get strong to feel energize, nourish your training and your body and build that lean, well muscled physique you're going for. Adrian shared his personal journey with body dysmorphia, so you could come away with strategies for a healthier, more positive self image. Today, for Episode 182, how to allocate 1200 2003 1000 calories in your meal plan plus hit your protein, we're tackling a topic that comes up constantly with my coaching clients and with my listeners, how to allocate calories for optimal results, we get questions all the time about meal planning, you know, how do I set up my macros for fat loss? What's the best way to distribute my calories if I'm trying to build muscle. And the truth is, there's a lot of conflicting information there about meal planning, and setting your macros. And the real big thing here that I want you to get out of this episode is meal planning itself is a skill, it's very personal to you, that's the approach that we take to be given a meal plan is like being given a blank workout template that hasn't been personalized for you. It might work in the short term, but it's not sustainable and probably is not going to match you your preferences, your lifestyle, the things that you enjoy about food, and so on. And then you have the conflicting information where some people say, you have to eat six small meals a day, you know, just okay metabolism. Others claim intermittent fasting is the key to burning fat. And then there's you know, cutting out carbs, and cutting out fat and all those sorts of things. And all of which is I'll call it prescriptive and restrictive. Whereas what we want to do is develop an open ability to put this together for yourself based on your goals and your preferences. And I want to cut through the noise, I want to give you evidence based practical strategies that you can implement today. Because you can follow the most scientifically optimal, you know, program meal plan, take the right supplements. But if your nutrition is off, you're never going to achieve the physique that you want. So this is more than just hey, here are the meal plans you can put together. This is what's behind that. Now, when you do nail down your nutrition, everything else becomes easier, right you have more energy to crush those workouts, you can recover faster, you can start seeing changes that you want to see, because you're in control. So whether you're cutting, you're bulking you're maintaining this episode's gonna give you a clear blueprint for how to set up your meal plan for success. And we're going to do it by allocating calories and macros at three different levels. These are totally random, but I picked them because they cover the spectrum where most people fall 1200 is really on the very low end. 2000 is kind of in the middle. And then 3000 is a little bit on the upper end for most people. And then you can find the approach that works for you based on your goals and lifestyle within those levels. And so by the end of this episode, you're going to know exactly how to structure your meal plan your nutrition to optimize whatever it is fat loss, muscle gain, performance, health, whatever. And before I get into this, I just thought of something. I have a guide that I've created for private clients that has sample meal plans. It has foods by macro, and it has foods by protein density. If you want that just join my email list and then reply and say, Hey, give me your meal plan guide. To join my list. Go to Whitson weights.com/email or click the link in the show notes. Again, go to Whitson weights.com/email You'll get a welcome email and then just reply to Hey, Philip, I heard you on the podcast. Can you give me that meal planning guide and I'll be happy to send it to you. All right, get ready to take notes and let's dive in today's episode how to allocate 1200 2003 1000 calories in your meal plan plus hit your protein. So first, we have to talk about the basics of energy balance as a refresher, because at its core, managing your weight managing your mass that the amount that gravity pulls you into the earth, right that's really all that is, comes down to the first law of thermodynamics energy in vs energy out. If you consume more calories than you burn, you're going to gain weight. You consume fewer calories than you burn. You're going to lose weight If you consume the same, you're gonna maintain your weight. And this is independent of everything else of body composition of fat loss building muscle, right? This is purely the weight on the scale. And as much as we talk about fat loss versus weight loss, fat loss being more important, we still have to understand energy balance and how that affects this whole thing. And so this might seem simplistic, right. And there are certainly other factors that influenced body composition, like the macronutrient, split the amount of protein you have, and then all the things like sleep stress, even your genetics, at the end of the day, calories are king when it comes to weight change. Understanding that it's a lot, you know, it's easy to say that, and then there are practical things that come in place that actually make it challenging for people, especially in the what we call obesogenic environment in the western world with easy access to food, that makes it challenging to actually control those variables. And that's the key distinction here. Now, if we look at studies, right, I like to call on studies, there's a meta analysis from 2017, that looked at 400 Weight Loss studies and found that the only consistent predictor of weight loss was calorie intake. Okay. So again, not a surprise, it wasn't low carbs, it wasn't low fat, it wasn't intermittent fasting, it wasn't exercise, the participants who lost the most weight were the ones who stuck to a deficit, regardless of what they follow. Now, you might say, Okay, that's great. The problem is maintaining the weight. Yeah, that's a whole separate thing. We're not going to get into that in detail here. I just wanted to cover the fact that calories are important for energy balance. Now, before you get caught up in the details of like meal timing of food composition, you have to have a handle on this. And that's why I'm starting here. Because if you don't know, your maintenance calories, your total daily energy expenditure, right, the number of calories that you burn in a day. And that includes your basal metabolic rate, your activity level, the thermic effect of feeding for your food, it includes everything, it's the whole pie, everything you burn in a day, if you don't know that, it's very hard to decide where to go from there. And most people who reach out to me saying, I've struggled, you know, to lose weight, right hit a plateau. The first question I ask is, are you tracking, and usually it's either, well, I'm using my fitness pal and I track my food, but they don't know what their expenditure is, they don't know how many calories are actually burning. Or they'll say, I'm looking at my wearable, my Apple watch, and it says, No, very, very inaccurate, you have to have a way to know pretty precisely what your maintenance calories are on any given day or week, so that you can constantly adjust those calories accordingly. And there's a lot of online calculators and formulas. And the problem is they can be off by like 400 calories in either direction. So it's okay to start with that. But then you're gonna have to track your food and weight over time to see how it changes in response. And then you'll know your true maintenance. And of course, I'm gonna plug macro factor as a great food logging app that does that for you. And if you want to download macro factor, use my code, Whitson weights get an extra three week on the free trial. And it's the only app I know that really does this correctly, it determines your true maintenance calories, doesn't just give you an estimate. And then it will go up and down based on your activity, what you're eating, how your lifestyle changes, whether you're in fat loss or not, right. And then once you do that you can maintain for a few weeks and say, Okay, I'm ready for fat loss, I'm gonna go ahead and set a goal to lose fat at a rate of x, maybe it's half a percent of my body weight a week. And that's going to require a certain deficit. And there you go. And that'll determine what calories and macros you then need. And that determines what you need for your meal plan, right when you put your meal plan together. So when I work with clients, and when we talk about our physique university, you know, sometimes I'll have a new client that isn't too familiar with the podcast or what we do, and they'll come in and they want to lose fat right away. We say, Well, hold on, let's determine your maintenance calories first, and then go after it. And then the other. The other question is, well, do you give me a meal plan? Like no, I don't give you a meal plan. I want you to put together your own meal plan based on what you enjoy, what your timing is, what your preferences are for like level of protein and fat, things like that, within some constraints, right within some boundaries, of course, within some general guidelines of 80%, Whole Foods, 20%, indulgences, things like that. But at the end of the day, you can eat whatever you want, as long as it fits your personal goal for your meal plan which is calories, macros, and micronutrients for the most part Other than that, it's things like timing, and oftentimes a meal plan will have timing in there it'll you'll have like in my pre workout, my post workout, my lunch, my midday mid afternoon snack, my dinner, for example. You don't have to it could just say like, here's four meals in the day, figure out where you want them. But whatever you do for your meal plan, you know, calories are the foundation, then the macros, and then the micros and timing and all that kind of fill in the gaps. And it's just a starting point because whatever your day one meal plan is, you might find that it doesn't work for you in some way and and you're gonna have to swap it out, right, and you know, swap one food for another change around the timing, reallocate the calories and the macros. So let's start with the lowest level of calories, because I know that can be the most challenging of all. And I want to start with the good stuff just right away. Okay, let's say you're in a fat loss phase. And you've determined that 1200 calories is the right target for you. And I will say 1200, the more I've worked with clients, the more that this is generally a very, very low number, almost the rock bottom lowest amount of calories that I would recommend for anybody. And it's usually when you have a slightly low metabolism to begin with, and you're trying to go moderate to aggressive. Other than that, I am generally seeing most people higher than this, you know, more more like 15 to 1800 calories. Okay, and again, it depends on your weight, right depends on your starting point depends on how aggressive you're going, but slightly lower than 1200, you're gonna start to run into some malnutrition. And it's hard to get protein with having much of anything else, you know what I mean? Like just practically, these absolute numbers do have some significance, right? Even if you are 100 pound female, and your metabolism is only, you know, 1400 calories, we still have to understand there are practical limitations to being able to eat enough nutrients and different foods and macros, when you go too low in calories. Alright, so having said that out of the way, I'm starting with 1200, because it's kind of the rock bottom, and it has the most restrictions on you, and we're going to make it work anyway. And then from there, it should get easier, the more calories you have. So again, you might be smaller frames, you know, more petite person, you might have a slower metabolism, you might just be looking to go pretty aggressively from a moderate level of metabolism. Okay, it's probably gonna be a very specific reason for that. And it's important to be strategic then with how you allocate the calories. So we always start with protein, right? Protein is the most important macronutrient when you're in a deficit, because it helps you preserve that lean muscle mass, it helps you stay forward, it helps you stay satisfied, it burns the most calories of all the macros, right. And that means you only have so many calories to work with, you're going to be taken away from fats and carbs, because protein is number one. So keep that in mind. Most people when they're down at this level of calories, it ends up being a fairly low carb diet anyway, not because carbs are bad, but because you don't have room for them once you allocate so many of your calories to protein. So if we're going for something like that magic, you know, one gram per pound of protein of lean body mass or one gram, we're gonna make it simple. One gram of protein per pound of target bodyweight, right. So if you're 150 pounds, and you're trying to lose 20 pounds, go to 130, we're gonna go about 130 grams of protein, right? When you multiply that by that four, multiply that by four, you get, what 520 calories. So actually, you don't have these Aerohive these numbers right now, I'm just doing them in my head. But 520 Out of the 1200 calories, notice how much that is, that's almost 50% of your calories. Right? It might seem like a lot in percentage wise, if you were to use like zone or some other percentage based system. It sounds like a lot of protein, but it's actually a very good balanced level, that will make a difference in holding on to that muscle on your results and how you feel and it's probably going to make it a lot easier to get through the dieting phase, just because of the types of foods now you're going to be eating good protein sources like lean meats, right chicken, turkey, fish, lean beef, eggs that you know the challenge with eggs, of course, his whole eggs are roughly the same amount of protein and fat. So if you eat a bunch of eggs, you're also going to have a lot of fat for the ride. And that's why I like adding an egg whites along with whole eggs to kind of dilute it toward more protein. Things like Greek yogurt, or cottage cheese in the dairy department, right? Tofu Satan, right, all the soy based stuff if you're plant based protein powder, of course, like whey protein, casein protein, plant based proteins, and then all the plant sources of protein like say oats or legumes, knowing that those things also contain. They're not primarily protein sources. They also contain carbs, and some some of them contain fats, right. The rule of thumb here is including a solid serving of protein at every meal, when you set up your 1200 Calorie plan is going to be pretty much required. If you're going to get in all that protein. And one of your snacks might be mostly protein. As much as I love balance, it might not practically work out that way for you. If you were to eat, say four times a day one of those might be a snack that's predominantly protein. But you know, something like Greek yogurt, or cottage cheese does have some carbs in there so it ends up being a little bit balanced. And then you can use this protein supplementation like whey powder to kind of fill it in to get more of a pure protein. So that's where we start with protein and in the 1200 calorie diet that's going to dominate everything. Right then we get to fat, right? Fat is very important. It's essential for hormone production. for vitamin absorption for brain function, and the challenge with low calories with fat is we don't want it to go so low that we're starting to harm our health. And that's where we get to, I usually say about 30% of calories. And for most people, even at 1200 calories, that's going to be enough. In terms of grams, I wouldn't want to go below, say 10 to 15, rock, bottom right 10 to 15, rock bottom, but you probably can be more up like, say, 30, or 40, something like that, maybe in the 20s, right to kind of keep it a little lower fat and give you room for extra carbs. So when you do the math on 1200 calories, that's kind of where you're constrained, because then the rest of it goes to carbs. And when we talk about fat sources, this is where you've got to be a little bit more judicious in your meal planning, right? You know, foods like nuts can definitely be in there, but you're probably not going to have too much peanut butter, for example, because so calorie dense, you're not gonna able to have much of it. Seeds, avocado, olive oil, you know, fatty fish is great, because now you've got your protein and your fat in there that that's where the fat can come from a little bit of saturated fat from things like eggs and beef and things like that, you're not gonna have much of it, most likely during a fat loss phase. And we always want to limit saturated fat to like a third of your fats, or 10% of the total calories roughly. And then the rest is with carbs. Right. And of course, contrary to hopefully, it's not popular belief anymore, but I think it is, you don't have to avoid carbs ever. Carbs don't make you gain fat. It doesn't help you lose fat to cut carbs, right? Carbs fuel your workouts, they replenish your glycogen, they keep your metabolism humming, they spare protein. And the challenge when you're at 1200 calories is you just don't have very much room. For carbs, you might be down to like 80 grams. And that ends up being fairly low carb, I mean, in the Keto world, you're looking well sub 100, generally, but even when we put the low carb label on it that I usually think of as 100 or less. And so when you're at 1200 calories, and you're giving almost half your calories of protein, and then a decent amount of fat just for health, you're left with probably 80 or 100 grams of carbs. And notice I'm not giving you exact numbers, because it's going to depend, you may be the type that wants to go up to 1.2 grams per pound of protein and really crank up that protein and have very little of the other stuff. You know, hitting your fat minimum always but not very much from for carbs. Or you might be a little bit lower, you might be down at the point eight grams per pound, giving yourself some more room for carbs. So it really depends. And whatever you start with, listen to your body, document your biofeedback and see if it wouldn't help to say, Cut some protein and give yourself some more carbs. Right. And this all assumes you're not changing the calories you're at 1200 ish calories. When you choose carbs for your meal plan. Again, in fat loss. This is where the complex nutrient dense sources kill two if not three birds with one stone, the other birds and they kill. Sorry to be so McCobb about death here. But birds is nutrient density, so getting your nutrients in and also fiber. So when you choose carbs for a low calorie meal plan, you want them to kind of satisfy the fiber nutrient density, satiety and carb buckets all at once. And that would be simple things like fruits, veggies, some whole grains, but you're gonna find whole grains also have a decent amount of like calories. So you may be limited there. And maybe even legumes right beans, you know, people forget that. But that's beans are like a carb source with some protein. So if you're going to have beans in your, you know, kind of serves both of those. So, a lots of veggies, you know, green veggies, veggies that have very low calories, but take up a lot of space are really going to be helpful when the calories are low to fill up your stomach to have more volume. That's super key. Right. So this is not the time where we're going to have lots of, you know, pizza and doughnuts, or we're not going to have probably lots of refined grains just because they're not going to make you as full you can have them there's no rule against them. But they don't have as much fiber and they don't have as much volume. And so you're just consuming a lot of very easily pre digested calories that don't fill you up. And that's not going to help as much in fat loss as going with, you know, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, things like that. And then even with fruits, you can kind of be a little judicious and lean more toward things like berries, which will have more volume for the calories. But still things like oranges, apples, bananas are awesome because of all the other nutrients they have as well, electrolytes and things like that. So you've got about 100 grams to work with or less. It's not a ton of room. So you've got to be strategic, having high fiber, high volume foods, lots of protein. That is the strategy here, right? A lot of volume without much calories, leafy greens, berries, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, all the lean proteins that we talked about before. And so real quick hear, you know, even though the title of this episode sounds like I'm just giving you meal plans, the actual meal plans are just kind of a drop in the bucket here as an example for how to construct this and everything I just told you are other principles behind a low level of calories. All right. So here's what a sample 1200 Calorie day might look like breakfast, a cup of Greek yogurt, half a cup of berries, quarter cup of some low sugar granola. So right off the bat, when I say low sugar granola, I'm talking about a processed food you get in the middle of the grocery store that you might like the taste of to kind of add some variety to your yogurt. But you're picking a something that food science has developed. For us that happens to have low sugar, you're not doing it because you're on a low sugar diet, or low carb diet. This is where the creativity comes into play. And using food science to your advantage, and not listening to the influencers that say you can't have any processed food at all. I'm starting to throw in the little examples where it's perfectly fine, and it might work for you. Okay, so yogurt, berries, a little bit of low sugar granola, you can have a snack with some, like a protein shake with protein powder and almond milk. So I love almond milk during fat loss, instead of say 2%, or even whole milk or something that has more calories. But if you're gonna use a milk like a 1% fairlife could work because it's mostly protein. Okay. And again, this is kind of fitting a snack in like maybe it's after your workout, lunch, some sort of lean meat, let's say grilled chicken, that's the classic go to but you can have a lean, you know, pork or beef or fish or whatever, with some mixed greens, tomatoes, avocado, balsamic vinegar that make a big, big ass salad. But like they say, I'm a big fan during fat loss when your calories are really low. I'm having lots and lots and lots of veggies with some protein for lunch. Like that's a great combination. And because you already probably had some carbs earlier in the day, or let's say you worked out earlier, you may not you might work out in the afternoon, in which case you could flip it around. But let's say you did you had you should have most of your carbs during fat loss around your workout. And then maybe reserve a little bit for dinner because that's where people like to have another source of carbs. So that's lunch, it's some sort of protein with a bunch of veggies, add in zucchini, peppers, cucumbers, you know, anything that's just like big crunchy volume, Enos has water in it, and almost no calories. All right, then if you were to have another snack, which again, this is really tough, right 1200 calories, typically you're going to have maybe as little as three meals, but some people don't like to go a long time between eating because of their hunger signals. And so you're either going to have, you know, five or six small meals, or you're going to have three bigger meals. And one more caveat during 1200 calories, if you want to use a little bit of intermittent fasting because it helps you manage your hunger signals and be consistent and stick to those calories go for it. If on the other hand, you're like me, you can't go this long stretch of data, you just don't want to Well, then you're gonna have to spread out the feeding window, and then make the calories work within that window. So if you were to have a snack on this diet, you might have like a hard boiled egg and an apple, you know, very simple like fat, protein, carbs. Now, that may not actually be enough protein. But because we're dealing with low calories, you may not be able to hit some sort of minimum for a particular snack and give you permission to do that. The total protein is what matters. So I'm throwing a bunch of little caveats at you here to show you that there's no such thing as perfection when it comes to this. But you could just get rid of that snack and allocate those calories to the other meals. Hey, this is Philip and I hope you're enjoying this episode of weights and weights. I started with some weights to help ambitious individuals in their 30s 40s and beyond, who want to build muscle lose fat and finally look like they lift. I noticed that when people transform their physique, they not only look and feel better, but they also experienced incredible changes in their health, confidence and overall quality of life. If you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same thing to build your ultimate physique and unlock your full potential whether you're just starting out or looking to take your progress to the next level. That's why I created wits and weights physique University, a semi private group coaching experience designed to help you achieve your best physique ever, with a personalized done for you nutrition plan, custom designed courses, new workout programs each month, live coaching calls and a supportive community, you'll have access to everything you need to succeed. If you're ready to shatter your plateaus and transform your body and life, head over to Whitson weights.com/physique or click the link in the show notes to enroll today. Again, that's Whitson weights.com/physique. I can't wait to welcome you to the community and help you become the strongest leanest and healthiest version of yourself. Now back to the show. All right, dinner again, four ounces of salmon, a big cup of broccoli, a half cup of quinoa, right simple. quinoa, brown rice. I mean, you could do white rice, but again, white rice, brown rice, make the comparison and you'll see you could eat more brown rice with the calories and it fills you up and gives you more fiber. Again just during fat loss. Maybe you go back to white rice during maintenance. It's not a huge sacrifice. It's Still rice, you're not cutting out the rice altogether. Again, rice, quinoa, things like that. And then if you need one more snack before the end of the evening, here's where some cottage cheese cucumber can come together, you know, or you can have like a casein protein pudding that you've made a lot of my clients during, and even myself, if I'm at fairly low calories, I might reserve like 150 of those calories or 200 of them. For the end of the day, just in case I know I'm gonna get a little hungry or want a snack or dessert, and reserve that for this pre bed snack or this post dinner snack. Okay, so I just gave you one of a million permutations for a 1200 Calorie day, but what you noticed is very little processed food, because that's just not going to satisfy you. It doesn't mean that you can't like on a given Saturday, or a given day of the week, say I have to have ice cream, I want to have ice cream. And I'm going to reserve ice cream in there. And it's just going to affect the rest of my day up up ahead. And I'm going to pre plan for that. I'm just going to pre login or pre plan or if I know I'm going out to a restaurant during a fat loss phase, I'm going to pre plan for that, I'm going to switch up my meal plan. So the first, you know, two meals of the day, are mostly protein and veggies. And then I've reserved most of my fats and carbs for dinner. Right? totally your choice. And that's how we do it. That is how we do it. 1200 calories is not a lot of food. And so making it balanced, nutrient dense. Hitting your macros as the day goes on is going to be very important. So if you're using macro factor, for example, you can tap the macros at the top and look at how what percentage of your macros you've hit so far. And if you keep them more or less aligned, right, knowing that you need a lot of protein, every meal is going to have a big percentage of protein, keep them aligned, don't let any one macro fall too far behind. And that'll be a really easy way to get where you need to be at the end of the day. All right. So the key to 1200 calories is really quality over quantity, making every calorie count. Choosing whole minimally processed foods that nourish your body. But planning in indulgence is where you need them. And don't tell yourself, you can't have anything, you can have anything, it's just going to be very strategic. And if 1200 calories, doesn't feel right to you, if it just feels too restrictive, no matter what you do, you've gone through all these changes, you've come up with like the ideal meal plan for you. And it still just doesn't satisfy you, it may be too low calories. And I don't care if that means your fat loss phase slows down. It is what it is now there may be changes on the calorie burn side of the equation that we can deal with. We never want to overdo it there. We never want to say well, okay, I'm just going to add in five hours of cardio a week, it doesn't work, the body will compensate for that. But increasing your step count, maybe adding one or two small cardio sessions and things like that, if you're not moving enough, if you're simply getting 6000 steps a day during a fat loss phase, and you're struggling to hold on and calories. Well, the 6000 steps a day is probably the opportunity, right? Not necessarily the calories or your meal plan. So just throwing that in there. So that's 1200 calories, any lower than that it gets really, really tricky. You're getting closer and closer to more of a protein modified fast, right? If you're down to 800 or 700 calories, you're eating almost entirely protein. And if you're not, you're probably going to lose muscle. Right. So just keep that in mind that as these principles apply, no matter what it's just you have more room to work with, the higher the calories are. So now let's move into the middle level, the 2000 calorie meal plan. And again, I just kind of chose this it was around number, maybe you're at 1800. Maybe you're at 2200. But you've got a little more wiggle room to work with than the 1200. Well, quite a bit more, right? Because when you go from 1200, to even like 1600, that extra 400 calories, you know, that's like a decent sized snack or even a small light dinner. Right? So with 2000 calories, you have a more moderate level that's more sustainable for people. And by sustainable, I simply mean, you can go a longer duration and not feel psychologically drained or taxed at that level. And for some people that's like, you could go years at that level depends on who you are. You know, I'm a bigger guy. My metabolisms around 3000. For me 2000 calories a day is a really aggressive diet. And so for me, it's not something I want to be on for more than I'll say, like at most four months. Now, you might be like, Oh, that's a decent amount of time. But I mean, that's like the upper end. If I were to do it day after day after day, eventually I would just get kind of tired of that. Right. And by the way, I did an episode recently about how fast to lose weight for fat loss. And I talked about diet breaks and refeeds there. Go listen to that episode, if you want to learn about strategies for breaking up the diet along the way to make it even more sustainable for the whole dieting phase to get to your endpoint without feeling like you ever have to give up. Okay, I'm not covering that today, though. So 2000 calories a day. At this level, you have some more flexibility with your macros, you're still going to prioritize protein, you're still going to be up at that, always within that point seven to one gram per pound. All right. And if you're at 2000 calories, maybe you're dieting, maybe you're maintenance, maybe you're gaining depends on where you start, I don't know, okay, we're not the 1200 was focused on fat loss, this one is just focused on hitting the macros properly, and it gets a little bit easier, right? For fat, you get a little bit more room as well. So the fats can come up a little as a percentage of calories, they stay the same, but they come up in grams, you know, maybe they're up around 5060 grams now, right four to 500 calories. And then now you've got your carbs. And this is where at the 2000 calorie level, the carbs might come up to 200 or more, right, so now you've gone from way down at the 100 level, up to the 200 level, now you start getting into that spot where you've got some flexibility you've got, you're able to put a decent amount around your workouts, right, if you've got 200 grams of carbs to work with, you could put like 75 to 100 grams around the workout, if you want, you can have like, you know, say 30 to 40 grams before like 50 or 60 grams after you don't have to, but you might find that that makes you feel great for your training sessions. And you can start to include starchy carbs, you know, like other like white rice, pasta and bread, the higher sugar fruits, you might be able to eat more of those met bananas, mangoes, things like that. And then the indulgence is when we talk about our 8020, the 8020 rule 80% of your diet comes from whole nutrient dense foods. And then 20% from less optimal choices, sources that you just love to eat. You've since you've got more calories to work with the 20% also becomes a few more instances of that right, some extra squares of chocolate or extra slice of pizza, you know, and not that you could you ever have to say that you're limited to those period, it's just that now you have more flexibility to do it. And you can, you know, go out to eat things like that a little bit more frequently. And always however, we want to plan in those indulgences, we want to fit them in to our targets and our goals rather than just winging it and hoping for the best. That's where people often screw up, people come to me and they're like, I hit a plateau. And even if they are a quote unquote, tracking, they might not track everything. And even if they're tracking, they might still go out to eat on the weekends and just far over consume, what they thought was their deficit for the week and offset it. And now they're still at maintenance or gaining weight, right? And they're inconsistent, and all of those things, even if they are tracking, right. But usually when you're tracking when tracking properly, it helps you gain that awareness and start to change your behaviors and give you a sense of what portions look like and how different foods fit into your plan. That's why we do it. We don't do it to count calories, or to restrict ourselves. We do it to give us information and empower us to say okay, 2000 calories actually makes a lot of sense. At that rate, I can you know, gain or lose x pounds a week. That's reasonable for me, and I can eat this way. And I can eat this way. And that's what sustainability is all about. It fits within your lifestyle. So what does 2000 calories look like? Well, let's say we were to have again, four or five, even six feedings a day, right? Depends. I'm going with more because it's harder to do to go from less to more than more or less. Make sense like I'm giving you more frequency. And then you can say well, I'd rather only eat three times a day so now I'm gonna squish those together and just increase the volume of each of those meals fine. But if I only gave you say breakfast lunch dinner, then you'd be like well what do I do to create a snack here or pre or post workout here or pre bed over here. I don't want to make you overthink that so if you were to have breakfast on a 2000 calorie meal this is where you might have your eggs right eggs mixed with egg whites and some arrows spinach and mushrooms and toasts with almond butter for example or peanut butter a little bit right and that's that's a delicious breakfast right there. snacks throughout the day might look like say protein powder with almond milk but now you can add in some banana or make a smoothie with it if you want. Another snack might look like you know the classic like vegetables dipped in hummus if you'd like and then another might be you know cottage cheese, Greek yogurt and things like that with protein you know, again I'm giving you two or three snacks throughout the day if you'd like but smush them together get more protein in any one snack that's how you do it. Lunch. I get a li meat with some vegetable this time you might have not only greens but also something like sweet potato and then for your greens. It could just be any leftover greens you have broccoli, green beans, brussel sprouts, a little bit of olive oil. You know this is where you can have a lot more oil and butter and things because you have more calories to work with dinner you know dinner and lunch you're going to hear from me and are pretty much similar, you know Brown Turkey or you know pork loin with some rice and some zucchini and some sauce of some kind that you like like a tomato sauce or say a low calorie barbecue sauce and they're not on this one but like if you were going to have pork, you can throw some barbecue sauce on there. There's some like nice lower sugar varieties or just have the full up and just planted in. And then in a 2000 calorie diet, you probably can fit in small desserts if you'd like them, like I'm a big dessert eater. It's just how I like to do it. My family likes desserts, you know, we're active, we keep the calories reasonable, we like indulgences here and there. I love ice cream. So fit it in. And I'm telling you, you've got the permission to do that, and you've got the room to do it. If you plan accordingly. That's all it comes down to, if you're not just snacking, and licking, and taking off of your kid's plate, and randomly drinking six beers on the weekend, not tracking anything, if you're not doing those things. Well, now you can put all this delicious, nourishing food, including things like ice cream, if you like it into your plan, right. So you get more food more variety, at this level of calories. And this is tend to be a more realistic and sustainable level for a longer duration. So that's really all I'm gonna say about that. And no matter what you do, you don't want to ever feel restrictive, you'll ever want to feel deprived or burnt out. So that's sort of the diet breaks come in, or increasing your calories. Or using forms of nonlinear dieting, which is going to be a topic I cover in a upcoming episode, I'm going to cover all the ways to use non linear dieting, like you don't just diet on the same calories day after day after day. There's ways to be creative about it. Again, not for today, upcoming topic. So make sure to follow the show always follow the show, click the Follow button in your app. So you get notified of those episodes. All right, finally, let's talk about 3000 calories. And some of you are like I could never eat 3000 calories you ladies out there. I know I've heard it many, many times. Some of you guys are like, well, that's my maintenance, you know. So when I say 3000, just imagine it's just a fairly high level of calories for you. Maybe it is 2500, maybe it's 4000. And it represents being in a building phase. This is a building phase, I'm not talking about 2000 was more in the middle kind of maintenance, maybe cut, maybe build three sounds like you're building, you need a lot of food. And if you're a bigger guy, think of this as like 4000. If you're a more petite female, maybe this is 2800. And that's a lot for you. All right. So this is you know, you're active, you're training you have you're building muscle, you're trying to gain weight, most likely. And maybe you're a hard gainer, and you've experienced the situation where as your metabolism ramps up, you can't keep up with the calories and you start to plateau, and you're not able to gain so kind of covers all those scenarios. And at this calorie level, on the plus side, you have a ton of room to play with your macros and your food. Okay, protein is still important. But believe it or not, it doesn't have to be nearly as high as it would in fat loss in terms of grams per pound, which sounds a little bit ironic, since you have so many more calories to play with. And in reality, you'll probably end up having no problem hitting that protein, if you've been doing it at those lower levels. And so point seven to one gram per pound. Again, I'll target body weight. So let's say you're 160 and you're trying to get to 190. All right, you know you're aiming in the 181 90 range for protein in terms of grams. Alright, so you know, you're talking, I don't know what, what does that come out to be six 700 calories from protein, something like that, which as you as you realize now is only like a fifth of the calories, where it was almost a half of the calories are in fat loss. So the higher your calorie level, the lower the percent of the protein is because you don't really need to change it much. Protein is almost always around the same amount. For me, being that I'm around 180 pounds, I'm usually eating around 180 grams of protein, whether it's very aggressive fat loss, maintenance, or, you know, optimal muscle building gain, I'm still always around 180 grams. So what changes is the fat and carbs, fats scale with the the calories, so they don't go like way up or down. They just kind of scale a bit. So when you're at 3000 calories, now you're up to like 7080 90, even 100 grams of fat kind of in that range. Some people like to eat more fat than others. Some people like to eat fattier cuts of meat. And that's fine. As long as we're cognizant of the saturated fat. As a portion of that, again, reminder, we don't want to really exceed a third of our fats from saturated fat, or put another way, around 10% of our calories. So if you're at 3000 calories, you don't want more than, you know, 300 calories from saturated fat, and that's really on the upper end. So we try to keep that reasonable but overall your fats probably 7080 90 100 grams, and then the rest is carbs. Now you're up to three, four or 500 grams of carbs, right again, depending on where everything else lies. I'll say for most people, you're going to be around three or 400. Okay, and this is where everything just opens up, right? Dried fruit, honey, maple syrup, starchy vegetables, like the amounts of them just get a lot more flexible. And you don't have to be as you know, cognizant of them. You still plan you still track. You still make room. It's still easy to over indulge and over consume just like it isn't any level. And I've seen cases where you are now at such a high calorie level that you almost lose a little bit of that control. Because you have so much flexibility. And you're prone to say, going out to a restaurant and consuming 5000 calories. Because you know, you have all these calories to work with, you know, maybe not 5001 meal, but 5000 for the day, let's say. And before long, you're having a problem by over consuming even when you're trying to get a lot of calories. It's less of a problem. For most people, most people have a problem on new consuming, but just be aware of that, that we always need to be tracking and planning. Alright, so what does the 3000 Calorie day look like? I mean, honestly, it's anything. It's like anything goes. And it's gonna be very easy to hit your minimums no matter what. So I would just do what you do with the other levels and just scale things up and add more indulgences where you want them and give yourself some more flexibility. It's really all it is, you may have to eat more frequently to get all the food in. That's the one of the challenges people say I can't eat enough well, you're maybe you're not eating frequently enough, you may have to eat more calorie dense foods on purpose to consume more it so I mentioned the dried fruit, but this is having more oil, butter in your foods having higher fat meats, having a higher fat dairy, so instead of low fat or no fat Greek yogurt, you'd go with the regular you know full fat Greek yogurt, right instead of the low sugar granola I mentioned just regular old full up granola you know, you still want fruits, vegetables, starches, you know carbs all that in there. But now you might have just whole eggs when you have eggs don't even worry about egg whites, right? So anyway, the meals are gonna look the same just scaled so like breakfast could be eggs with some spinach and mushrooms and oatmeal and protein powder and some peanut butter. Right nice big hearty meal to go maybe that's your post workout. For me that would be like a post workout. A pre workout might be whey protein shake and banana. But I don't know when you're training so I'm just kind of giving it to this way snacks throughout the day. It would be things with Greek yogurt and berries, you know fruits, almond or peanut butter dairy products. I think I mentioned already. Maybe it's an indulgence right that's where you might you might have a pop tart. I don't know like if you really have a hankering for a pop tart or bowl of ice cream you want to fit it in there. That's that might be where you have it right no judgment, no judgment at all. You can do this lunch is going to be you know fish and quinoa or, and brussel sprouts and olive oil same is at 2000 calories but just scaled up dinner steak potato broccoli with some butter, right so you can kind of live it up a little maybe have that ribeye that you've been kind of hankering for, you've been eating a lot of top sirloin now you're gonna have some ribeye a fattier cut of steak, a lot more calories, but you've got the room for it. So it's a lot of food for some people, right. And it can be a challenge to eat this much. Especially if you have a smaller appetite. And that's where like liquid calories can be helpful. Protein shakes, smoothies, milk, just good old whole milk. Alright, don't over think it good old whole milk can really help. If you get fairlife Chocolate milk, love that stuff. It's got a nice balance of macros. Lots of protein tastes great sweet. You can heat it up in the winter. And it's like instant hot cocoa, you can put it in a ninja creamy recipe and make ice cream. There you go. So the key with 3000 calories is, you know, it's like you're listening to your hunger cues, and not really trying to force yourself to eat when you're not hungry, but rather make the meal that what you eat and how you time it work with your hunger. So you don't feel like Oh, I'm just stuffing myself to eat. Because to me that's as mentally unhealthy as forcing yourself to starve at lower calories. Like you don't want to do either of those, it has to be more sustainable, even in the face, even when you are pushing it. And when you're at 3000 calories, it's okay to have a lighter day. And then a heavier day, like if you want to cycle if it makes sense on training days, you feel a lot more hungry, maybe more calories go on those days. Right The goal is to hit on a weekly basis is to hit your averages for the week, not every single day, you can't be a robot. Alright, so hit it for the week. And that really applies to everything, right even if you're at 1200 calories, you want to hit the 1200 on average for the week. If one day you're at 1000, another day or 1400. But again, it averages out. You've planned in going to a restaurant on Saturday, but it averages out it's fine. Never make up for something the next day that you didn't plan for don't do that. But think ahead to make it work for the week. Alright, so we covered a lot of ground. We talked about the importance of energy balance, how to determine your calorie needs for each of these levels, when they might be appropriate, you know, fat loss, maintenance, muscle gain, we broke down meal plans at different levels so you can understand the level of inherent kind of flexibility versus strictness you might have. Right 1200 2000 3000 And then how to allocate macros at each level. You notice that things are pretty much the same, they just tend to be scaled, and there room for indulgences and flexibility goes up the more calories you have. So some takeaways that I want you to come out with this episode are number one, calories are still the be all end all when it comes to scale weight when it comes to weight management. And that's what you have to know you maintenance calories by tracking your food against your weight and macro factors, the best tool to do that. So calories are king, they're the beginning of it. Number two is protein is the next thing we prioritize right prioritizing protein, especially in a deficit and deficit, it's even more important to get that upper level toward that one gram per pound of bodyweight. That's number two. Number three, don't fear fat, don't fear carbs. They're both super important in a balanced diet, you know, focus on quality, especially at the lower calorie levels, and then adjust based on the calorie needs and be creative. Plan ahead, you know, use macro factor and plan out an entire day. That looks like a quote unquote, perfect day just to give you inspiration for how to keep these things in balance. Number four, always plan for treats and indulgences. Right, the 8020 rule is a great guideline, if most of your diet is coming from hold nutrient dense foods then gives you lots of flexibility for the treats and indulgences as opposed to the other way around where you might have lived before, which is a lot of foods or just random processed foods, indulgences, going out to eat fast food restaurants, you know, snacks and licks. And just before you know it 80% of your diet is this unplanned processed food, we're just flipping that around 80% Whole Foods, the rest comes from whatever you want. And then number five, track track track, I'm just mentioning this specifically here. At least initially, it's going to give you a lot of awareness. But most of my clients when they start tracking, especially when they use macro factor, because it's so easy to use. They keep going I mean, I've been going for several years just because I love the information. I like to train myself on on the portion sizes on how different foods fit in different phases. And also be able to track my micronutrients and things like fiber, and saturated fat that can also be helpful. So remember, there's no one diet, there's no one meal plan for everyone. Right, the best meal plan is the one that a meet your goals. And that b You can stick to consistently over the time necessary for that level of calories. So take these guidelines and make them work for you. All right now if you need some help personalizing your approach to all of this and keeping yourself accountable because remember, the information we provide in this podcast is information that you can use, but it doesn't help solve the implementation for you, you have to either do that yourself or reach out for help and help as often the best way to accelerate that process. So doors to widths and weights physique University are open. Inside WWE, pu, you're gonna get a customized nutrition plan right off the bat. Now it doesn't have meal plans, because again, I said it earlier, I'm not a hypocrite. I don't give you meal plans. I give you the guidelines, the macros, the meal timing around your workouts, depending on your workout. I adjust it for your preferences, do you like more fat? Do you like more balanced? Are you from a Keto history, we kind of want to make that work so you can ease into it. Also in www you get live weekly coaching calls, custom courses on everything related to physique development. And then of course, a private community of like minded people are all working toward their best physique, and who also have fantastic ideas regarding meal planning and recipes. So just head to Whitson weights.com/physique. To learn more and join today, or click the link in my show notes. Again, that is Whitson weights.com/physique. Alright, in our next episode 183, the dark side of GLP, one weight loss drugs ozempic Manjaro sat down with Amy Wilson, you're going to learn the root causes of obesity and weight gain, the origins and current use of GLP one drugs like the some magnetite and tricep peptide based brand names that we just talked about, and others for diabetes, and now weight loss, their pros and cons. And what most people can do instead from a lifestyle perspective, because that's at the end of the day, what we are all trying to do here. Make sure to hit the Follow button right now in your podcast app to get notified when that comes out. And it supports the show when you subscribe or when you follow to the show. So please go ahead and take a moment to do that. As always stay strong, and I'll talk to you next time here on The Whitson weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of wit's end weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.