Optimizing your daily calorie intake in muscle building programs is important. An overshoot can cause you to gain fat instead of muscle. While lack of adequate calories will make you not gain enough muscle mass. The formula has 4 parts:
1) Calculating lean muscle mass: For this measurement you need a skin caliper which will give you percentage of body fat. Consider your percentage of body fat comes to 10% and you weigh–0 lb. That means your fat mass is– lb. Now to calculate lean muscle mass, subtract fat mass from total body mass. In this case it comes to–0-14=126lb.
2) Find RMR (resting metabolic rate): RMR, the number calories a day you require to just keep on breathing, can be calculated by multiplying lean muscle mass by 10 and adding 500. In our example, it works out to 1760 calories (126 x 10 + 500).
3) Calculating calorie intake to maintain current weight: To find out how many calories you need per day to maintain your current weight, multiply your RMR by Activity Index. If you lead a sedentary lifestyle, your activity index is 1.2. If you lead a moderate lifestyle, your activity index is 1.4. And if you lead an active lifestyle, your activity index is 1.6.
Continuing with our example, consider you lead a moderate lifestyle. Therefore to maintain your current weight you will need 1760×1.4=2464 calories.
4) Optimizing additional calorie intake: Add 500 calories to your calculations so far and this should be your ideal calorie intake to gain muscle not fat. If you feel you are gaining fat and not muscle, cut down by 250 and if you are not gaining any muscle at all add 250 more.
Try out your nutrition plan for two weeks before deciding whether to add or subtract calories. Work out with intensity and take adequate rest to put yourself firmly on the path to muscularity.
To learn more about natural body building, read Cecil Kelly’s authoritative articles on bodybuilding.
