In my last articles, I discussed shedding the fat with stackers and losing fat through cardio exercises. In this article, I'll focus on diet. Especially since a great deal of the questions I receive concern diet, it should be a good read, even if you're not looking to lose fat at this moment. I'll soon write an article regarding gaining weight, but since I'm on a roll here, I'll stick to the fat loss for now. I'll try and explain the goal of a cutting scheme first, and the theory behind it.

The goal

The theory

How this plays out in the real world

So it's time we translate this to the real world. You can make this is as easy or hard as you want. There are so many possible diets ranging from exotic ones like keto to the V-Diet. But instead of focusing on those, I'll stick to the basics.

The tactic is as follows: you'll drop your calorie intake 200-500 calories below your caloric expenditure. Though it might seem very tempting to drop 500 calories below your need immediately, this very rarely is the best way to go. I'm talking real world experience here. Instead, try working gradually. Drop 200 calories in your intake, wait until you stop losing fat, and drop another 200 calories. Just keep on doing this, or add some cardio.

As for the diet: you need protein. Lots of it. Protein spikes your metabolism, keeps the hunger away, and it protects your precious muscle from being burnt up as fuel. Thus: you'll ingest 2,5 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight.

Also, you need fat. The bare minimum is 50 grams. It's easy to keep it at 50 grams, because it requires less calculating, but I'd like the fat intake to be a bit higher. Optimally, you should aim for 40% of your caloric intake to come out of fats. This is because it works wonders with your testosterone. So instead of using the minimum, I'll aim for 100 grams of fat.

Then the carbs. You need carbs right? Well, that's another discussion, but for this scheme we need carbs. Every calorie that hasn't yet been used up by either fat or protein, should come out of carbohydrates.

Time for the math

All of this calculating is best illustrated by an example. Let's take a guy named Atta for example. Atta weighs in at 80kg. This means that his intake to maintain his weight is about 3019 calories. To drop some fat, without having his body panic, he'll ingest 2819 calories however.

He needs 2,5grams protein/kg: 80x2,5=200grams of protein=800 calories

He needs 100 grams of fat=900 calories

And the rest would be carbohydrates, which is: 2819-800-900=1119 calories, which comes down to 1119/4=280 grams of carbohydrates.

Divide these values equally among seven meals, except for the last one, which should only contain a slow acting protein.

As some extra support, I can recommend fish oil (use lots of it, and I do mean lots), calcium, maybe a fatburner, and your vitamins.