Iron man Iron Man USA April 2017 | Page 68

fooD The firsT seT of rules per- tains to food and how to eat to gain size. The commonly asked question is usually about protein intake. Ideally you want to eat approximately one gram of protein per pound of lean body mass (LBM). I don’t mean your bodyweight, I mean fat- free mass. If you’re 250 pounds with 25 percent body fat, then you’ll eat about 188 grams of protein per day. Protein can be increased up to 1.5 grams per pound if you wish, but that just takes away from other macronutrients that have a critical role in building muscle. Start with one gram per pound of LBM and adjust from there. To find your carbohydrate intake, you just double your lean mass. If you have 188 pounds of lean mass, this means you’ll be eating 376 grams of carbohy- drates a day. Finalize your macro count by cutting your LBM in half to come up with the amount of fat you will eat—at 188 pounds, this is 94 grams of fat per day. This ends up being a total calorie load of 3,102 calories per day. This is a start, and you adjust from here. Ad- justments should happen slowly, not in large jumps; if you increase your calories too quickly, you run the risk of gaining excess fat, which is counterproductive to an aesthetically pleasing physique. 66 april 2017 | ironmanmagazine.com