{ MACRO PLAN {

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W hat you have here:

This spreadsheet automates your diet adjustments. You say how quick-
ly you want to gain or lose weight, answer a few simple questions about yourself
and your diet preferences, and it tells you what macros to hit to meet those goals.
You provide some basic measurements on a daily or weekly basis, and it makes
adjustments to keep you moving in the right direction at the pace you’d like. No
guesswork needed.
From the outset, however, I want to be upfront about the fact that, especially if
you have a history of having issues sticking to a diet, this does not take the place
of a professional diet coach (especially a dietician). The most important part of
a diet is actually sticking to it, and a spreadsheet doesn’t offer the motivation and
accountability that professional diet coaching does. Quality nutrition coaching
(should) go far beyond macro adjustments. This is simply a good but admittedly

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inferior alternative if you can’t afford coaching. ESPECIALLY if your goals in-
clude getting absolutely shredded (sub 10% bodyfat) or if you have a history of
food issues, including eating disorders, you should be working with a competent
professional. Also, by no means should you take this as an attempt to diagnose,
prevent, treat, or cure any disease. It simply suggests macro targets to help you in
meeting your strength and physique goals.

Key metric:
Base Metabolic Rate. There are a lot of subtle ways your daily caloric expendi-
ture changes when you’re dieting. Your Basal Metabolic Rate drops a bit, sure.
You also fidget and just generally move around less during the day (non-exercise
activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, decreases). You find yourself not being able to
train quite as hard, and your training itself (especially aerobic training) burns few-
er calories since it simply takes less work to move a smaller body over long dis-
tances. Those factors are exactly reversed when you’re gaining weight – everything
you do ends up burning a few more calories.
Because there are so many factors like that, and many of them are difficult to
quantify individually, we lump several of them together under “Base Metabolic
Rate.” Base metabolic rate is basal metabolic rate + NEAT + calories burned lift-
ing weights. As one or all of those numbers increases or decreases, the spreadsheet
will make adjustments for you week-to-week.

How to use it:

Page 1 – Basics.
If you’re a female, fill in cell D4 with your age. If you’re more comfortable using
U.S. measurements (inches and pounds), fill in cells D6 and D7 with your height

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in inches, and your weight in pounds. If you’re more comfortable using Metric
measurements, fill in cells F6 and F7 with your height in cm and your weight in
kg.
If you’re a male, fill in cell I4 with your age. If you’re more comfortable using
U.S. measurements (inches and pounds), fill in cells I6 and I7 with your height in
inches, and your weight in pounds. If you’re more comfortable using Metric mea-
surements, fill in cells K6 and K7 with your height in cm and your weight in kg.
That will calculate your basal metabolic rate.
To get a good estimate of starting calorie needs (base metabolic rate), pick the
activity level that best describes you. If you’re debating between two, go with the
less active option (fewer calories) if you’re trying to lose weight, and the more ac-
tive option (more calories) if you’re trying to gain weight.
Page 2 – Diet Setup.
Take baseline calorie level determined on Page 1, and enter it in cell B4. Put
your weight (in pounds. If using kilos, multiply by 2.2 to get pounds) in cell B7.
Enter the portion of your calories you’d like to come from fat in B10, as a decimal
(so 50% would be 0.5). This is mainly a matter of personal preference – as long as
at least 20% and no more than 50% of your calories come from fat, you’re probably
good; if you love butter, nuts, coconut oil, fatty meats, etc. then start with a higher
proportion. If you love to pound down the carbs, start with a lower proportion
from fat.
In B13, enter how many grams of protein per pound of bodyweight you’d like to
consume. When in doubt, stick with .82. In well-trained people, especially in a
caloric surplus, you may be able to get away with a little less. In a caloric deficit,
you may want a little more to be better safe than sorry, but odds are VERY slim
that you’d benefit from more than 1.3 grams/lb.

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If you’re cutting, enter what proportion of your weekly deficit you’d like to come
from dedicated cardiovascular exercise (percent expressed as a decimal again, so
25% would be .25) in B16. 0-0.3 is recommended. The more cardio you do, the
more you can eat, and vice versa. If you are NOT in a deficit, leave B16 blank or
enter 0.
In B19, enter how many pounds per week you’d like to gain or lose. Gain is pos-
itive (0 to 1 recommended) and loss is negative (0 to -2 recommended).
B22 tells you your weekly calorie deficit or surplus to aim for to meet the desired
rate of weight gain or loss, and B25 tells you how many calories you need to eat
per week.
If in a surplus (if you entered a positive number in B19) but you’d still like to do
dedicated cardiovascular conditioning, enter how many calories you’d like to burn
via aerobic exercise per week in J25.
Below where you entered this information, you’ll see some suggested macro
breakdowns based on your preference for calorie distribution (eating more on
training days and less on off days, versus eating the same amount every day). The
column on the left is for cutting, and the column on the right is for bulking.
You may notice that in a large deficit, some of the suggested plans will suggest
negative carbohydrate intake on some days. Obviously that’s impossible. You can
either adjust the proportion of your calories that come from fat (decrease), increase
the amount of aerobic work you’re doing, decrease your target rate of weight loss
or simply move some carbs from a training day to those off days. So if it suggests
150g of carbohydrate on training days and -30 on off days, you could move 50g of
carbohydrate from your training days to your off days to give you a positive num-
ber.

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Page 3 - Tracking
In C3 through D9, fill in the number of calories you eat per day, and the number
of calories you burn doing cardio each day. In D12, fill in the amount of cardio-
vascular work you’re supposed to be doing for the week, from F25 or J25 on Page
2.
All of this calculates your net calorie intake for the week — calories consumed
versus those intentionally burned via aerobic exercise (NOT NEAT or strength
training — those are taken care of in Base Metabolic Rate).
In C18 through C24, fill in your morning weight each day. Weigh each morning
after peeing, before drinking anything. Weigh to the nearest .2lbs or .1kg. Con-
vert weights to pounds to enter in the spreadsheet (B35). In C26, enter your aver-
age weight for the previous week.
Based on 1) your net calorie consumption for the week 2) your average weight
for the week 3) your average weight for the previous week, the spreadsheet will
calculate your base metabolic rate for the next week. If you lost more weight or
gained less weight than would be expected, your base metabolic rate will be ad-
justed higher for the next week. If you lost less weight or gained more weight
than would be expected, your base metabolic rate is adjusted down for the next
week. These ongoing adjustments ensure than you’ll be eating the appropriate
number of calories for your goals within 2-3 weeks of starting. Also, since it bases
adjustments on weekly averages, it’s less sensitive to big daily swings some people
experience that can cause large knee-jerk calorie adjustments that are unneeded.
Take your weekly average weight (C25) and type that number in C26 on Page 3
and B7 on Page 2 for the next week’s baseline. Take the base metabolic rate calcu-
lated in C30 and enter it in B4 on Page 2 to adjust macro levels for the next week.
If you’d like to track more data than just weight, that’s what the table from E17

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to M29 is for. Currently there are cells to enter weight, base metabolic rate for
each week, waist circumference, hip circumference, and chest circumference (the
ones that tend to be more indicative of overall fat loss or muscle gain). The graphs
on Page 4 – Visualization show those changes. If there’s more you’d like to track,
that’s easy to set up. Just add a column somewhere between F and I, label it, enter
data, highlight the column from the labels to the bottom of the data, click “insert”
--> “Charts” --> “Scatter Plots” and then select which scatter plot looks best to
you. Cut and paste that chart into Page 4. Easy peasy.
M18 through M30 on Page 3 also helps provide an easy sanity check as you’re
dieting. It calculates your Base Metabolic Rate per pound of bodyweight. Even
as your metabolisms slows down a bit over the course of a diet, you should find
that the numbers in that column don’t vary by more than 20% tops. If they do,
it’s generally a good indicator that NEAT is dropping (because basal metabolic
rate tends to track pretty closely to bodyweight), which should encourage you to
be more conscientious about making small choices throughout the day that burn
more calories (sitting with better posture, standing instead of sitting, housework
and yardwork, etc.).
That covers everything! If you’re still confused, read back through this “user’s
manual” again, and I’m 99.9% sure your question is answered somewhere.
Remember, you enter data and measurements in GREEN cells. BLUE cells
contain calculations, so if you fiddle with them, you may accidentally screw some-
thing up. If you’re an excel wizard, obviously fiddle away; there’s nothing overly
complicated here. Just the basic tools needed to set up, track, and adjust a mac-
ro-based diet for your goals.

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