You need to find out your BMR (the calories you burn at rest) +
Your daily calories burned
Here's a helpful link to the BMR:
http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/
Then take your BMR and multiply it by your daily activity the closest as per this formula (which has served me very well in terms of accuracy):
Harris Benedict Activity Formula
Sedentary (little or no exercise) – BMR x 1.2
Lightly Active (light exercise or sport 1-3 days per week) – BMR x 1.375
Moderately Active (moderate exercise or sport 3 – 5 days per week) – BMR x 1.55
Very Active (hard exercise or sport 6 – 7 days per week) – BMR x 1.725
Extremely Active (very intense exercise or sports plus physically demanding job) – BMR x 1.9
Example: a fairly skinny 6'0'' guy at 165 lbs wants to put on muscle without putting on too much fat (aka the smart bulking aka lean gains, understanding that not all the muscle will be 100% free of gaining some fat)
BMR = 1780 per day.
He works an office job and lifts heavy 3 x week
1780 x 1.55 = 2759 calories needed per day to maintain.
If he wants to add muscle, he needs 300-500 more daily *to avoid excessive fat gains* along with those muscles. 400-500 if he's a hard gainer.
Most important part --> He needs to be sure to stay consistent for about 14 days on the calorie amount (and meeting macros) to see how his body responds and adjust accordingly.
It depends on you (what you do), What you want, And your DNA.
If you want to get it right, you gotta have your own guinea pig mentality of testing with a controlled plan, at least for a couple months, depending on your level (beginner, advanced, etc), and tweak until you get to your own sweet spot.
You gotta learn the 'inner game' of it too. Not obsessing over a tiny bit of fat if it means muscle gain, or overeating because you justify it with putting on muscle.
Everyone tries to impose their own as the absolute truth and they're just right about themselves. It's different for everyone.
If I place all that in a short video, it throws people, robbing them of the chance to want to find out how to look and feel they way they want to look and feel, by confusing them.
When you see something is possible and remove all the bullshit limiting beliefs everyone bombards you with, you're far more likely to achieve that same goal not everyone believes to be true due to either negativity, lazy misinformation, etc.
The point is to show people what's possible, to show them don't have to get super fat to build muscle only to spend 2 months out of the year looking like they like to (which depends on each one of their goals).
In other words, how not to spin their wheels and look great all year and still make gains, even if they're slower.
One size doesn't fit all. And eating at a 2500 cal per week surplus to your maintenance slowly gets you leaner muscle than wolfing down 4,000 calories a day relentlessly, unless, again, that that's what you want to do.
*Disclaimer lifted from facebook - not fact checked yet for later**
