So here you have it, that juicy post you’ve being waiting for. Without doubt this is has been the toughest article to write so far. It’s longer than I intended but I didn’t want to skimp on any of the details. I could have easily broken this off into four separate articles, but I figure it would make for a better reference tool this way. Just be warned that this isn’t the kind of article you want to attempt to read on your iPhone while on the toilet, people will think you’ve died in there before you emerge.
It appeals to us that something as simple as changing the timing of things can have a potent effect. People go mad for any short cut to actually putting in some effort and marketeers take advantage of this (flash a little bit of science while conveniently not talking about the bigger picture) to sell us on something new. Any time someone presents you the nutritional importance pyramid upside-down your BS detector should go off.
The truth: Getting the timing of things right most certainly has favourable effects on body composition, however, if you gloss over the most impactful, foundation levels of your nutrition plan (calorie intake, the macro composition, and the micronutrition) you are wasting your time, money and effort.
Don’t fight gravity! - Nyarly
Consider the first three stages of the nutrition pyramid the big picture. Now we’re going to look at the fourth stage while trying to not get lost in the meaningless details. Here’s what we’ll cover:
How Many Meals You Should Probably Be Eating
When To Eat Relative To When You Train
Special Considerations for Macro Timing
Why You Might Want To Consider Calorie/Macro Cycling
How to Implement Calorie/Macro Cycling
Clearing Up The Nonsense Surrounding Intermittent Fasting
Why You Might Consider Skipping Breakfast
Notice the wording.
This is not a short article, nor a simple one. If at any point you get confused, stop and apply everything you’ve read up until that point and then come back in a few weeks.
How Many Meals You Should Probably Be Eating
Suggestion: 2-3 meals when cutting, 2-4 meals when bulking
Definitions:
‘A meal‘ in this context refers to anything from a snack (protein shake for example) to a real food meal (protein, veggies, fats and carbs). I am not including a low-calorie pre-workout supplement such as Jack3D (whatever is the trend these days), or BCAAs in this definition.
The number or meals you will want to consume is related to the volume of food you are consuming and what time of day you will train.
I suggest you eat the minimum number of meals that you can get away with without compromising your goals.
This makes things simpler, both in terms of food preparation and in terms of macro counting for the day. Simpler -> higher adherence rate -> higher long-term success rate.
Other than that, there are no likely drawbacks to eating more frequently than this, so if you wish to eat more meals in a day then feel free to do so.
For those cutting, it can be beneficial psychologically to have fewer meals because you can eat more at each meal. This is one of the benefits of skipping breakfast – enabling larger lunches and dinners. One meal a day is simply not going to be optimal for lean mass retention and also forces people to make poor, calorie dense/highly palatable food choices in order to cram enough calories in a single meal.
For those bulking, it can get to a point where it is not comfortable or practical to eat just two meals a day because of the volume of food that needs to be consumed. Consider splitting your meals into three or four meals, or having liquid meals/snacks. Though there are no likely benefits to eating more than four meals a day, it is perfectly fine to eat more if you wish.
Exceptions: Athletes training multiple times a day
If this is you, you might want to go up to five meals. Not being so stuffed that you vomit during practice, as well as recovery concerns (glycogen replenishment) are clearly important.
Running around on a full stomach isn’t fun. So even for non-athletes, if you’re going to have a kick around in the afternoon then it makes sense to eat less at lunch and have a snack later on that day.
Mentioning the recovery/glycogen replenishment issue I fear many people with OCD tendencies will immediately assume this is them. So let’s be more specific:
Glycogen depletion requires roughly 90-120 minutes of continuous work on a single muscle group, and you must use those same muscles competitively within the same day need to worry about maximal speed of glycogen restoration.
Therefore, if you’re not an endurance athlete, stop worrying about it.
(I’ve had that above on my “add to blog” to-do list, frankly I can’t remember whether I wrote it myself or it’s a quote. Let me know if I need to credit someone here please.)
Anyway, bearing in mind the above, let’s move onto the next section.
When To Eat Relative To When You Train
* Within two hours of finishing your training *
* More calories post workout than before *
* Some carbs post workout *
* Not completely fasted *
Definitions:
‘Training‘ refers specifically to purposeful weight training, not random exercise.
‘Post workout‘ refers to the timeframe between when you train and the time you go to bed.
‘Not completely fasted‘ refers to training carried out in the state where there have been any meals consumed earlier in the day. BCAA consumption immediately prior to ‘training’ is the exception and counts as not completely fasted.
There are multiple ways you can set things up, but as long as you keep to these principles then you will be fine. I’ve expanded below with specific suggestions but when it comes to examples, for the sake of brevity, I’ve given the simplest set-up option for that training time only.
Fasted Training
10g BCAAs ~10minutes pre-workout, then 10g BCAAs every two hours until you eat your first meal of the day. (Ok, technically this is not fasted.)
Generally: two or three meals with an even split of calories/macros.
Two-meal example:
08:50 10g BCAAs
09:00 Training
11:00: 10g BCAAs
13:00 Lunch ~50% calories/macros
20:30 Dinner ~50% calories/macros
If you’re training earlier then you may need 10g more BCAAs, if closer to lunch then you may not need the BCAAs after. – Refer to the first bullet point above.
A slightly larger dinner than lunch is fine, and vice versa. If you’re eating three meals, a snack in the afternoon with a big lunch and dinner is fine.
Reasons for the BCAAs explained here by Martin Berkhan, who was pretty much the key man in bringing fasted training to the main stream by justifying it with science.
Afternoon Training
Three to four meals, depending on whether you skip breakfast or not.
Consider having one of those meals as a snack for simplicity.
Late-afternoon, breakfast-skipping example:
13:00 Lunch (~35% calories/macros)
17:00-18:00 Training
18:00-18:30 Snack (10-15% calories/macros)
20:30 Dinner (Remaining calories/macros)
Early-afternoon, breakfast-skipping example:
13:00 Snack (~20% calories/macros)
15:00-16:00 Training
16:30 Afternoon Meal (20-40% calories/macros)
20:30 Dinner (Remaining calories/macros)
The principles are the same here for morning, non-fasted training
Evening Training
Skipping breakfast? Either have two meals – with a larger lunch than dinner. Or eat three meals with a small lunch, small afternoon meal and then a big dinner.
Eating breakfast? Medium breakfast, medium lunch, larger dinner.
Two-meal example:
13:00 Lunch (~40% calories/macros)
18:00-19:00 Training
20:30 Dinner (~60% calories/macros)
Special Considerations for Macro Timing
In the above examples you’ll see that I have suggested generally that you split your macros in the same ratio that you spit your calories – i.e. don’t worry about the optimal split of macros as it doesn’t matter. A few tricks of the trade though:
Carbs make you sleepy? You can use this to your advantage by positioning your final meal of the day nearer to bed time, or increasing the proportion or carbs in this meal. If this is you then there will be the following two main considerations:
Breakfast eaters that feel lethargic mid-morning should consider increasing the protein and fat content of their breakfast and reducing carb intake. Adjust the latter meals of the day to maintain the macro balance overall. Of course, some people simply love a lot of carbs at breakfast. If that’s you, you feel good afterwards, and you can make it fit your macros for the day then go for it.
A lot of carbs at lunch may cause afternoon lethargy - that feeling of wanting to pass out at your desk. Try increasing veg intake or changing your choice of carb (swap that box of cereal for some potatoes or pasta for example) at lunch. Or try shifting your intake of carbs so that you have more later in the day. You could also consider smaller meals.
Large meals make you sweat? Not so much of a problem during the day but a small minority of people find they have issues getting off to sleep at night. You could try repositioning your carb intake to have less in the last meal of the day, eat the last meal of the day earlier, or eat less total calories in that last meal (more in an earlier meal).
Avoid extreme macro partitioning, fancy ideas such as only fats and protein earlier in the day and only carbs and protein later. - It’s not likely to have any nutrient partitioning benefits and will threaten adherence by becoming very restrictive as well as less satiating. Refer to the ‘if it ain’t broken…‘ rule.
I may get around to updating this section to talk about athletes, expanding on the above. But for now consider it outside the scope of this article.
Why You Might Want To Consider Calorie/Macro Cycling
Being another complication to sell people on you’ll find the effect of macro cycling completely overblown in many articles on the internet. I believe it is important, and does have favourable effects, but it belongs here in the nutritional hierarchy of importance. Please remember that if any of the following confuses you.
Definitions:
‘Calorie cycling’ is the purposeful increase and decrease of calorie intake relative to the days that you train, while maintaining the calorie balance for the week.
‘Macro cycling’ is the purposeful repositioning of certain macronutrients across your training week – with a goal to improve body composition, training effect or performance – while maintaining the macronutrient balance for the week.
Put another way, calorie cycling is eating more on your training days than your rest days, when your energy demands are higher.
Macro cycling has two common forms. The first being eating more carbs and less fats on your training days, and less carbs and more fats on your rest days (as with Martin Berkhan’s Leangains). The second being strategic carb refeeds, usually every 4-10 days, with general low carb dieting (the most famous/pure example being Lyle Mcdonald’s cyclical ketogenic diet CKD).
The idea is that by strategically increasing or decreasing the intake of certain macronutrients on certain days of the week relative to training one can get nutrient partitioning benefits that will positively impact recovery and growth, as well as having favourable hormonal benefits that will aid in fat loss.
The difference is mainly in the extent of the carb refeeds. The Leangains style calls for a more controlled carb refeed every training day, Lyle’s for more of a splurge, with the tradeoff being heavier restrictions on carbs at other times. For a more in-depth look here is an article with a section on the benefits of carb/macro cycling.
We’re going to put aside Lyle’s CKD aside for now and focus on the less restrictive style.
How to Implement Calorie/Macro Cycling
Calculating the Calorie Split
You want to give yourself more calories on your training days, less on your rest days. How much? Try anywhere from a 25% to a 50% difference between the two days. Don’t go over this or you’ll negatively impact recovery due to the especially low intake on the rest day.
Training 3-4 Days A Week? Use This Easy Math Version
If you’re fine with not getting too hung up on the actual percentage, and follow Martin’s general guidelines of training three days a week, then here’s a simple way of going about this.
1. Decide how much you’d like the calorie split to be.
Let’s say we choose ~40%.
2. Add calories to the daily energy intake (calculated in #1 Calories) for the training day and subtract for the rest day.
If energy needs were calculated to be 2500kCal, then a good approximation is to take half of the 40%, (20%) and add that to get your training day calories, 3000kCal (2500×1.2), and subtract that to get your rest day calories, 2000kCal (2500×0.8).
3. Adjust to maintain the calorie intake target for the week.
With fewer training days than rest days, with the above simplified calculation you’re going to be a little under calories for the week. We must maintain the energy balance for the week so we need to adjust.
Our target energy intake for the week is 17,500kCal (2500×7).
With three training days we only consume 17,000kCal (3000×3 + 2000×4), which is short by 500kCal. So the easiest thing to do would be to add ~71kCal (500/7) to your training and rest day calorie targets and not worry about the slight gap in the percentage math.
Training Day Target Intake: 3071kCal, Rest Day Target Intake: 2071kCal
If you train less than three days a week or more than 4 days a week then the math above isn’t going to work very well. See the next part.
Training <3 days, >4 Days A Week? Pure Math Version
I often get asked how people can adjust their intake based on more or less training. That’s not what I generally recommend, but I want to make this guide accessible to anyone. So, if you can handle the math I’ve spent a couple of hours reverse engineering these formulae for you from what jives with my experience.
We know: Number of training days a week (N), average daily calories (A), target percentage difference expressed as a decimal (D).
We want to find: Training-day calories (y), Rest-day calories (x).
1- x/y = D
Ny + (7-N)x = 7A
Example: Three days training a week, 2500kCal calculated energy requirement per day, 30% target split. (N = 3, A = 2500, D = 0.3)
1- x/y = 0.3, 0.7 = x/y, x = 0.7y
3y + 7-3x = 7(2500)
Resolving for y: 3y + 4*0.7y = 17500, 5.8y = 17500, y = 3017
Resolving for x: x = 0.7(3017) = 2112
So, Training day intake = 3017kCal, Rest day intake = 2112kCal
My spreadsheet skills are quite limited. So if you know how to create a spreadsheet calculator with these formula, if you can make it and link to it in the comments I’d be most grateful.
Calculating the Macro Split
In #2 Macros & Fibre you will have calculated/set your daily average protein and fat needs, and carbs will have been the balancing figure.
Significantly more carbs should be consumed on the training days than the rest days.
Significantly less fat should be consumed on the training days than the rest days.
Fat intake must not go below the calculated daily target on average for the week.
For the sake of simplicity we’ll keep protein intake the same for each day for now.
Continuing the example from above,
Let’s round those calorie numbers to 3000 and 2100.
Let’s say the protein intake was calculated to be 160g each day – that’s 640kCal.
We’re left with 2360kCal on the training days and 1460kCal on rest days to fill with carbs or fat.
(1g of protein & carbohydrate = 4kCal, fat = 9kCal)
Let’s say that the minimum average fat intake is 60g, which is 540kCal. That leaves us with 455g of carbs for the training day, 230g for the rest day.
The problem with that is that food choices can get quite limiting with such a low fat intake. You can swap out a good portion of those carbs on the rest day for fats as fits your taste preferences. Some guidelines (not rules):
You can go a little lower with the fat intake on training days if you wish as long as the average fat intake across the week does not go below your calculated minimum.
You can go a higher with protein intake if you wish.
You can drop the protein intake on the training day by around 10% if you wish.
So, taking preferences into account we may end up with the following:
Training Day Macros - Protein 160g, Carbs 455g, Fat 60g
Rest Day Macros – Protein 180g, Carbs 97.5g, Fat 110g
Note: It is normal in most instances to consume significantly fewer carbs when cutting due to the lower energy intake.
Clearing Up the Nonsense Surrounding IF
The increasing popularity of IF has led to a flood of new gurus looking to profit from it and the proliferation of nonsense such as:
“Calories don’t matter as long as you eat within an 8 hour window,”
“Your body actually wants you to gorge on junk food in the evenings after your workouts as it will shuttle the nutrients into the muscle and not be stored as fat!”
These people, selling books and e-books, don’t live in the real world where they are actually held accountable to client results, so it’s very easy for them to talk utter bullshit.
I often use IF with my clients in helping them get very lean because I think it has advantages for achieving this. However, as the order of this series of articles should tell you, the IF wasn’t the deal-breaker, they would have likely gotten good results without it.
Why You Might Consider Skipping Breakfast
1. Simplicity with meal planning and counting macros.
2. Increased control over hunger, and greater satisfaction from bigger meals.
3. Potential to help oxidise more stubborn fat. – This is only relevant to those that are (or have gotten) lean to the point of visible abs, and a looking to get completely shredded. (This is why cardio is rarely needed with a well executed IF protocol.)
Further reading:
Quick Introduction to Intermittent Fasting, Leangains and the Benefits
Intermittent Fasting and Stubborn Body Fat - Leangains.com
I’ll end this with a quote from Alan Aragon, as I think it sums up the attitude most people would benefit from taking when it comes to their nutrition:
“In the process of obsessively seeking out the “perfect” foods, food timing, food combinations (and separations), and food avoidance, the big picture gets buried in the meaningless details.” Alan Aragon, from the AARR, Feb 2009.
Anticipated FAQs
So you don’t think that IF and calorie/macro cycling is important then?
No, that is not what I am saying. Importance comes with context, there is no blanket black and white statement that can be made. Please go back and re-read the above. (This is known as a straw man attack of someone’s position.
Alan Aragon in the AARR suggested a minimum of 3 meals a day as optimal. Why do you say two is fine?
This recommendation ignores the option of fasted training with BCAAs. It was based on a meal being eaten sometime before working out, some time within a couple of hours after, and one more meal either earlier or later in the day as being the minimum optimal nutrition & protein spacing/frequency.
As for fasted training with BCAAs, is this more or less optimal than fed training?
For the same reasons as with the morning fasts it can help get through to stubborn fat for sure, this time by increasing blood flow to those stubborn fat areas. (See links in the ‘Why you might consider skipping breakfast‘ section.
Alan tends to constrain his thoughts by what has been proven/shown in the research, which when it comes to fasted training there is little and frankly, more is needed. I would guess this why Alan made no direct recommendation or condemnation of fasted training.
If there is anything to the added “anabolic sensitivity” of fasting, the IF strategy may well be taking advantage of it. It’s really too soon to say if the IF approach to eating is really superior or just a convenient way of dieting, but it does get results.
(December 2009 issue of the AARR, guest analysis of the study ’Increased p70s6k phosphorylation during intake of a protein-carbohydrate drink following resistance exercise in the fasted state‘.)
Further reading:
Early Morning Fasted Training – Leangains.com
Fasted Training For Superior Insulin Sensitivity And Nutrient Partitioning
Why do you say keep an even split of macros across the meals?
At the moment I don’t feel that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that there are any benefits significant enough to make the additional complication worth it. Exceptions covered in the ‘Special Considerations’ section.
You’ve given a range of figures for the calorie split between training and rest days. Is there an optimal figure?
From reading through old forum posts on Bodyrecomposition.com we know that Martin experimented with very large differences in his rest and training day energy intake initially when forming his Leangains system. I don’t know if he actually formulated specific guidelines, I’d imagine they’d depend on body fat percentage, calorie deficit/surplus relative to maintenance, recovery and a few other things
Regarding that last point on recovery, it is easy to imagine that having too large a difference in your training day and rest day intake would not be optimal.
It’s quite geeky topic that isn’t worth worrying about to most, but I’d find a roundtable with thoughts from Alan, Lyle, and Martin fascinating, particularly for the latter’s extensive client experience with such narrowly controlled variables.
Why the recommendation to eat a meal within two hours of ending your workout?
There is a definite window of opportunity for nutrient partitioning in the post workout window. This is not merely an hour as once thought (see “The effect of protein timing on muscle strength and hypertrophy: a meta-analysis.” Brad Schoenfeld, Alan Aragon and James Krieger), and while there may be an effect lasting 48 hours that you have read about, this is likely going to be on a sliding scale rather than any set cut off point. (Kind of like if I kick you in the nuts, the pain will fade over time.)
The recommendation of two hours is a precautionary one. It can be a full meal or a snack.
Early-morning fasted training is the exception, where you can delay eating with BCAAs post workout.
I’ve read Layne Norton talking about advantages of more frequent meals/BCAA supplementation between meals. What are your thoughts?
Firstly, let me just say that Layne Norton seems to me to be one of the good guys in the industry, highly knowledgable, and with a very good track record with clients. It’s important to note that Layne works with competitive bodybuilders as his recommendations should be taken in that context.
Someone pointed out that he has said that 1-3 meals is not optimal. Of course, it depends on how one defines ‘optimal’. I would define it as getting a balance between simplicity and complication so that the non-competitor can stick to their nutrition plan long-term, but still reap >95%-99% of the benefits without going fully anal about things.
Layne has also invested a lot of time and effort researching into the effect of BCAAs so it’s natural for him to be a little biased towards their use. The results of the research he has done so far, in the end, showed that the effect of BCAA dosing between meals was small/negligible. More on this here.
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As much as this article has stressed me out I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed writing it and I hope you have found it useful.
Questions welcomed in the comments.
Please keep them on topic so that people can read through to find relevant answers.
Kindly refrain from requesting that I calculate or confirm your own personal calculations.
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