Best Diet To Build Lean Muscle : Science Simplified
In this instructional video, Eric Roberts explains how to determine the calories and macronutrient targets needed to build lean muscle through a controlled calorie surplus. He starts by defining maintenance calories and shows viewers how to add a modest 200–300 kcal surplus to support muscle growth, warning against excessive “dirty bulking.” Roberts then breaks down the three macronutrients—protein, carbohydrates, and dietary fat—detailing why protein and carbs are essential for muscle synthesis and glycogen storage while emphasizing that excess fat is easily stored as body fat and can hinder calorie goals. He provides a step‑by‑step formula for calculating daily macros: 1 g protein per pound of body weight, 0.35 g fat per pound, and the remaining calories allocated to carbs. An example for a 180‑lb individual targeting 2,800 kcal yields ~180 g protein, ~65 g fat, and ~375 g carbs, with a note that a ±10 g range is acceptable. Roberts also discusses when body recomposition (simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain) is feasible—primarily for beginners or those with significant excess weight—provided they follow a proper strength‑training program and stay in a calorie deficit. The video concludes with calls to action: a free calorie‑calculator link, 45 free strength‑training workouts, and a paid Clubhouse membership offering detailed nutrition and training guidance.
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In this video, I'm going to show you how to find not only your calories, but also your macros, protein, carbs, and fats in order to build muscle by going into a calorie surplus or a bulk. Let's first start with your calories that you're going to need to figure out in order to go into a calorie surplus to gain muscle and gain weight. And before you ask me, which I know you're going to do, you're going to say, well, Eric, what if I want to lose weight but also gain muscle? Don't worry. We'll talk about that at the end of the video. Right now we're going to talk about if you are looking to go into a calorie surplus to gain weight. You are going to first need to find your maintenance calories. Your maintenance calories are just how many calories does your body need in order to maintain its current body weight. If you don't know what your maintenance calories are, don't worry. I'm going to drop a totally free calorie calculator in the description of this video. Now please just make sure to go to that calculator after you watch the whole video because if you go right now you'll get this But the rest of the video won't make any sense. Okay? So go back to that after you're done the video, but you're going to find your maintenance calories and then you are going to add 200 to 300 calories to your maintenance calories. And the reason you want to do this is from these extra calories, you are going to be able to put these extra calories towards the muscle building process because The process of actually building muscle takes energy. Energy comes in the form of calories. And here's what you need to know about building muscle, especially as you get a little bit more towards that intermediate to advanced stage when you're not just like a beginner to lifting weights anymore. Your body doesn't want to build muscle. You are going to have to give your body a reason in order to build muscle and your maintenance calories. Remember we talked about this. This is how many calories your body needs in order to just maintain, maintain your hormonal profile, be able to, you know, have energy for digestion, have energy for recovery, have energy for sleep and do all the things that you need to survive. Okay? If you want to do something more, build muscle, because remember building muscle is not like a survival thing. Your body doesn't need to build muscle. You, Want to build muscle. And so you need to give your body some extra reasons, some extra energy, some extra calories to say, okay, body, we have taken care of all of the cell functions. We have, you know, gotten our hormones done. We've gotten our digestion done. All of these things, we've taken care of this. So these extra calories are going to get put towards the muscle building function. Process because you're lifting weights, you're pushing yourself in the gym. You're going to use these extra to tell your body, hey, use this in order to build muscle. And this is why, again, the more intermediate to advanced you get, the more important this becomes. When you're a beginner, you can build muscle like no matter what, it won't really matter. But the more advanced you get, you're going to have to give your body a reason to build muscle. Now the one thing I want to make sure you do not do, and I've made this mistake, I've seen a lot of people make this mistake, do not just do what we call a dirty bulk in the sense of don't just say, okay, well I have to eat more food, I'll just go eat whatever I want. I'll go eat ice cream, I'll go eat endless pancakes, I'll go eat endless pizza or French fries or whatever it is. Because number one, it's not going to fit within your macros, which we will talk about in a very brief second. But number 2, if you need, let's say, 200 to 300 extra calories in order to facilitate muscle growth, you going to an extra 500 to 600 calories is not going to expedite and speed up the muscle building process. It is just going to expedite the process of you gaining more body fat than you would like along the way. I want you to think of this like a bell curve. When you add more calories, You will see better muscle building results. But once you get to a certain point, there becomes a point of diminishing returns. Already, you going into this calorie surplus is going to cause you to put on some extra body fat. It should be minimal and it should be not that much if you follow what I'm going to say in the rest of the video in regards to how you're going to set up your macros. But this is the first step in order to making sure you can maximize your muscle growth and minimize your fat gain along the way. Now that we talked about your calories, let's also talk about your macros, which again are just your protein, carbs, and fats. Macros play a massive role in minimizing the amount of fat gain that you will have when you go into a calorie surplus and then also maximize your muscle growth when going into a calorie surplus. And here's why. We already talked about your calories and making sure you don't go too high in calories. That will do this as well. But when it comes to your macros, it is important to not eat too much of one specific macro, and that is going to be your dietary fat per day. And here's why. When we talk about protein, protein is damn near impossible to store as body fat for a couple different reasons. Number one, as I'm sure you probably already know, it's going to help facilitate the muscle building process. It is the only macronutrient that helps you build and retain lean muscle. So as you can imagine, if you're looking to maximize muscle growth, you want more protein. Protein is going to be good, but also protein, literally every single cell in your body needs protein to function. So for that reason, protein is going to get used up as either Building muscle, or it's going to go off into your cells and make sure it gets used. The protein will get used. So that's number one. Number 2, when we talk about our carbohydrates, once again, very hard to store as body fat despite what some people may want to tell you and believe. Reason being, if you are somebody who is going into a calorie surplus to build muscle, I would assume you're lifting weights, correct? Correct. So if you're lifting weights, Number one, carbs are going to be the main source of fuel, the main source of energy for those workouts. And so the carbs that you consume, they're going to get used for pushing hard in your workouts, used for energy. You know, you're going to be able to have better workouts, have, you know, better performance, more strength, all those good things. So that'd be the first thing. And the second reason, the second thing they're going to get used for is they get stored as something that we call muscle Glycogen. Just think of like muscle glycogen as, again, like energy for your muscles. Whatever your muscles aren't going to use in that workout, for example, or let's say you're not doing a workout that day and you're not going to use it for the energy, it's going to get stored in your muscles. There is muscle glycogen inside of your muscles that can then say, okay, when you go and work out, bam, you're going to be able to use those carbohydrates. If you're training glutes that day, The glycogen in your glutes is going to get used as energy. So this is why the carbs that you eat are going to get used for energy for workouts. So that covers protein and carbs. Both those are very hard to store as body fat because they get used for something. Dietary fat. When you consume dietary fat, it's important because you need it for a healthy hormonal profile. Okay? But after, again, Think of dietary fat as once again, like a bell curve. After you reach a certain point of dietary fat and you've already covered, you know, what you need to have a healthy hormonal profile, so on and so forth, there's not really much else that dietary fat gets used for. It doesn't get used for workouts. It doesn't get used for building muscle. It just kind of gets stored as extra body fat. Whereas these 2 guys, this really doesn't get stored for anything because it gets used for everything. And this gets stored in your muscles as muscle glycogen. This, just the extra dietary fat that you eat, if you overdo it, which we'll talk about how much you should do, but if you overdo it, you're just going to store extra body fat that you don't want to store. Not to mention as well, dietary fat is usually slower digesting and it keeps you fuller for longer. If anybody's tried to actually eat in a calorie surplus, Again, without just, you know, fucking eating nothing but pizza and, you know, candy and Oreos and chips, it's hard to consume the amount of calories you need because you're not that hungry. If you eat too much dietary fat, you're gonna be way too stuffed, and you actually probably won't be able to reach your overall calorie intake for that day. Not to mention, last but not least, for— and we'll get into this in a second— for every 1 gram of dietary fat that you eat, There are 9 calories in that 1 gram of fat. So if you are eating a lot of dietary fat, what do you think is going to happen? Your calories are also going to shoot up as well, which would lead you into eating maybe more calories than you would like, which would lead to you also putting on more body fat than you would like. All right, now that we know all of this, let's actually give you the formula to set up your own macros. So we talked about your maintenance calories need to be 200 to 300 above. Let's just say we're going to use this as the example. We're going to take 2,800 calories for somebody who's 180 pounds. Again, this is going to depend on you. I'm just going to use this as the example. If we're trying to eat 2,800 calories for somebody who's 180 pounds, let's first start with your protein macro and how to calculate it. We are just going to take your body weight in pounds, your current body weight in pounds, and we're just going to simply multiply that by 1. You can have a range of, let's say, 0.8 to 1.2, so it doesn't have to be 1. But just to make things very easy, let's just say you're going to eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. That would give you 180 grams of protein per day. Now let's also find your dietary fat macro per day, because remember, That's an important one to make sure you don't go too high. You are going to take your current body weight, once again in pounds. So for— if you're outside the US, please just convert to pounds. But take your current body weight and you're going to multiply that anywhere between 0.3 to 0.4. I'm just going to go right smack in the middle and we're going to take 180 times 0.35. That is going to come out to roughly 65 grams of dietary fat So now you have protein and you have fat. The carbohydrates, that is going to be the rest of the calories that you have left over after you've calculated protein and fat. And you might be wondering, well, Eric, you've told me how many grams per day I should eat. How do I find the calories for all this? Don't worry, I'm going to show you right now. So if we have 2,800 calories we are trying to hit, remember how I talked about for every 1 gram of dietary fat, fat, you are going to have 9 calories, right? So remember that. So what we're going to do is also find how many calories are in 1 gram of protein and 1 gram of carbohydrate. For every 1 gram of protein, there is 4 calories. For every 1 gram of carb, there is 4 calories. So simply to find the carbs, all we have to do is add up the calories from protein, add up the calories from fat, Subtract it from our overall calories, divide that by 4, and you'll get your carbs. I know it seems like a lot, but I'm going to walk you through it step by step, so just stick with me. To find how many calories from protein, just take 180 times 4, because remember, there's 180 grams of protein times 4 calories, and that's going to give you 720 calories coming from protein. Next, to find your dietary fat, Just take 65 grams times 9, because there's 65 grams of fat, 9 calories in each gram of fat. That is going to come out to 585 calories. Now all we have to do is just add the calories from protein, 720, plus the calories from fat, which is 585. That together gives you 1,305 calories. So to find your carbs and how many grams of carbs per day you should eat, Just take your overall calories, in this situation 2,800. You're going to subtract it from 1,305 because again, that is your protein calories and your fat calories combined, and that will leave you over with the remaining calories that you are going to put towards carbohydrates. So in this situation, it is 1,495. So let's just take 1,495 Divided by 4, because again, there is 4 calories for every 1 gram of carb, and that's going to leave you around 375 grams of carbs per day. Now you have all of what you need. For somebody who's 180 pounds and trying to eat 2,800 calories to go into a calorie surplus, they would eat 180 grams of protein, 65 grams of fat, and roughly 375 grams of carbs. A quick note on this: you don't have to be perfect. You can be within a range. And so usually for your macros, plus or minus 10 grams each way. So if it says 180, just do 170 to 190. 375, do 365 to 385. You can be within a range. Last but not least, I told you I would touch on this. If you're somebody who's looking to lose fat and build muscle at the same time, this is usually reserved for one of two people. Number one, if you are somebody who is new to following a real strength training program— I don't mean Beachbody, I don't mean Orangetheory, I don't mean HIIT boot camps, I don't mean just like throwing spaghetti at a wall when you go into the gym doing random exercises, random machines with no program in place— if you're new to actually following a real program, which by the way I have 45 Totally free workouts. If you click the link in the description of this video below, I'll send them right to your email totally for free. You would be somebody who actually eats in a calorie deficit, does the real strength training, and then you will be able to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. Or the second scenario, if you're somebody who's a bit more overweight, if you have 40, 50, 60, 70 pounds to lose, you will be able to lose fat and build muscle at the same time by again following that real strength training program, And eating in a calorie deficit. And last but not least, on top of the free workouts I already told you about, if you want some extra help in your journey, you can feel free to check out my Clubhouse. It's where I have all of my nutrition guidelines. I have all of my training programs. You'll get exact exercises, exact workouts, reps, sets. All of the guesswork is taken out for you, and you get access to myself and my team of coaches on top of our entire community. Again, you can check it out right here. Link will also be in the description below. I hope this video helped, and we'll chat soon.
