The most important thing to understand when it comes to calories and building muscle is this:

In order to gain muscular weight, you must consume more calories than you burn!

How many calories should I consume per day?
Don’t worry, Please keep reading…

This is nothing more than simple mathematics. If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose body weight. If you consume the same amount of calories that you burn, your bodyweight will stay the same. So obviously in order to gain muscular body weight your caloric intake must exceed your caloric expenditure. If you fail to consume more calories than you burn, you will NOT gain weight, plain and simple.

Remember, not all calories are created equally, and in order to see increases in lean muscle mass you consume the right types of calories. What do you think would be a better approach to building muscle, consuming 150 grams of fat or 150 grams of protein? Here’s the bottom line when it comes to calories…

1) The raw number of calories that you consume each day will determine whether you gain weight, lose weight or maintain the same weight.

2) The types of calories that you consume will determine what kind of body weight you gain, whether it be fat, water or muscle.

The key for you is to consume more calories than you burn and from the proper muscle-building sources.

So How Many Calories Do I Need A Day?

The basic idea when trying to figure out your daily caloric intake is this…

1) Determine your caloric maintenance level, that is, how many calories you require daily in order to simply maintain your weight.

2) Add 300-500 calories to your maintenance level. This will create the necessary caloric surplus within your body to facilitate muscle growth.

There are many different methods that can be used to determine this, and in this section we’re going to examine 3 of them…
1) The Basic Multiplier (least accurate)
2) The Harris-Benedict Formula (more accurate)
3) The Katch-McArdle Formula (most accurate)

Any of these 3 methods is acceptable in the majority of situations, but for the most accurate reading, methods #2 and #3 are probably best. Now I’m going to explain method #2 and how to use it in order to determine your daily caloric intake.

#2 The Harris-Benedict Formula

The first goal with this method is to determine your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Your basal metabolic rate is the total number of calories that your body requires to perform all of its natural daily functions. This does not include extra activities such as weight training or playing sports; the BMR is for natural processes such as breathing, digesting food, regulating body temperature etc.

Once you have figured out your BMR, you can then plug it into the Activity Multiplier (how active you are on a daily basis) in order to determine your Caloric Maintenance Level.

You should then take your caloric maintenance level and add 300-500 calories to that number in order to create a caloric surplus that supports muscle growth. So, once again…

1) Determine your basal metabolic rate
2) Find your caloric maintenance level by multiplying basal metabolic rate by the activity multiplier
3) Add 300-500 calories to your caloric maintenance level to find your daily caloric intake Sounds complicated, right?

It really isn’t, and I’m now going to outline step-by-step how to calculate all of this…

Calculating The Harris-Benedict Formula

Calculating Basal Metabolic Rate
Men: 66 + (13.7 X bodyweight in kg) + (5 X height in cm) – (6.8 X age in years)
Women: 655 + (9.6 X bodyweight in kg) + (1.8 X height in cm) – (4.7 X age in years)
Take that number and multiply it by…

Activity Multiplier
Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (little to no exercise)
Lightly Active = BMR X 1.375 (light exercise: 1-3 days a week)
Moderately Active = BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise: 3-5 days a week)
Very active = BMR X 1.725 (intense exercise: 6-7 days a week)
Extremely Active = BMR X 1.9 (intense daily exercise and strenuous physical job)

Take that number and add 300-500 to it in order to determine daily caloric intake.
I’ve provided an example of this formula as follow to make it even more clear…

Example Of Harris-Benedict Formula

In case you’re a bit confused, here is an example of how to plug all of this information in.
We’ll use Bob as our example. Bob weighs 68 kg, he is 177.8 cm tall, he’s 25 years old and is moderately active.

First we determine Bob’s Basal Metabolic Rate…
BMR = 66 + 931.6 + 889 – 170 = 1717

Bob’s basal metabolic rate is 1717 calories. This is the number of calories that he requires daily in order for his normal bodily processes to be carried out. We’ll now take his activity level into account by multiplying his BMR by the appropriate activity multiplier.

1717 (BMR) x 1.55 (moderately active) = 2661
This means that Bob needs to consume 2661 calories daily in order to maintain his weight. In order to create a caloric surplus that supports muscle growth, he needs to add 300-500 calories to this maintenance level.

2661 + 300 = 2961
2661 + 500 = 3161
Bob’s daily intake should be 2961-3161 calories.

Caloric Intake Overview

Here is a very quick overview…
1) You must consume more calories than you burn in order to support muscle growth.
2) The raw number of calories that you consume daily will determine whether you gain weight or lose weight while the types of calories that you consume will determine what kind of body weight you gain or lose.
3) The most accurate method for determining caloric intake is to figure out how many calories you require daily in order to maintain your current weight, and then adding an additional 300-500 calories on top of that number. These extra calories will keep you in an anabolic, muscle-building state throughout the day.