Calculate Your Portions

This involves a little bit of maths for a whole lot of progress. You don’t need to follow this to the letter to see results, but adjusting your intake of proteins, fats and carbs will reap rewards when you’re back in the gym, no gains lost. Use this guide to ensure that the fuel you fill up on is fit for purpose.

Set Your Calories If you want to maintain your current bodyweight but add strength and muscle mass, your total daily caloric goal should be about 15 times your bodyweight in pounds. So, if you weigh 160lb, that’s 2,400kcal per day.

Prioritise Protein You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating: spreading your protein intake evenly throughout the day is crucial for maintaining muscle mass. The oft-cited target of 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight is the gold standard. So if you weigh 160lb that’s 160g of protein, or 40g per meal with two 20g snacks.

Fill in Your Fats You need to derive at least 20% of your calories from fats in order to maintain your hormone levels, says St Pierre. That might equate to roughly 500kcal, depending on your size. (We’ll do the maths for you later on.)

Pile on the Carbs Start with a base of 20% – if that sounds low, there’s space to build on it. St Pierre recommends diversifying the carbs you eat, making sure to include phytonutrients and myconutrients. You can tinker with this percentage as you adapt the diet to suit your tastes and specific needs.

Start Experimenting! You might notice you have some calories left over: about 750kcal. How you allocate them is up to you. St Pierre advises trialling a few different systems, adding more fat or more carbs until you find a balance that satisfies your stomach and your taste buds. If you’re not sure where to start, split the remaining calories equally into carbs and fat and see how that feels.