Nutrition Overview

Nutrition Goal. For the holiday season, (a couple weeks max, broken up as desired to encompass the days surrounding your favorite holiday) I recommend increasing your daily macro/calorie goal by 10-15%.

Nutrition Basics. One pound of fat is roughly equivalent to 3500 calories. So, if you need about 2500 calories to maintain your current body weight, a 15% increase in calories is 375 calories. It would take almost 10 days of consistently eating 375 calories over maintenance to gain 1lb of fat. When you’re building muscle your total calorie needs will increase. You’ll need to account for this in calculating your macros. The 10-15% increase is taken into account after accounting for your increased caloric needs to build muscle. Don’t know what your calorie goal should be? Check out https://www.calculator.net/macro-calculator.html. Or, if you want to make sure you need additional help, check out SamFit Transformation to get 1:1 nutrition and exercise coaching.

Estimating macros. My philosophy for maintaining progress and physiques around this time of year is to avoid completely coming off the rails by minimizing damage. There’s a time for being strict when counting your macros/calories, but unless you have a compelling reason to do so through the Holidays, it’s not the time. Get an estimate of what you’re eating, try your best to stay within 10-15% of your calorie goal, enjoy yourself and get back to work after the holiday.

Indulge, but don’t binge. Set your calorie/macro goal 10-15% higher for days of festivities, going out, family gatherings etc. Allowing room for the foods that you’re looking forward to won’t kill your progress and will reduce the chances of completely falling off with your nutrition goals. For weight loss, this will likely put a hold on your progress. If you’re currently working on losing weight, I recommend choosing only a day or two to loosen up restrictions to avoid loosing progress and momentum. For maintenance, a 10-15% increase in calories won’t meaningfully impact your weight as long as it’s not long term. For muscle gain. Utilize the extra calories to be sure you’re in a caloric surplus. Congratulations, you can justify eating the most in the name of “bulking”, just don’t overdo it. The same rules for fat gain apply to you too.

Banking calories. Daily goals are useful for convenience and tracking. However, more important than daily calories are total weekly calories. Realistically, it doesn’t matter if I eat 2000 calories Monday to Saturday or eat 1,000 Monday to Friday, and then eat 4,500 calories on Saturday and Sunday. Technically, you’d have the same outcome, 14,000 calories that week. This is called “Calorie Banking”. If you’d like, you could utilize a less dramatic version of this strategy and limit your weekly calories by an additional couple of hundred calories to allow for more on certain days.