In other articles, I outlined how to calculate your recommended calorie and macronutrient intake targets for optimising performance and body composition as an athlete.
I also went through how to track your food intake in order to hit those targets.
It’s important to reiterate, however, that these targets are estimates, based on the average requirements for someone of your physical attributes and goals.
Therefore, these figures may need to be adjusted to suit you as an individual.
One method of doing so involves tracking your weekly bodyweight progress, and adjusting your intake based on that, to the point where you’re making the progress you’d like to see.
Whilst bodyweight isn’t the only metric we care about, it is a really useful metric, particularly in a fat-loss or muscle-gain context, since it is accessible - most people have a weighing scale in their house, but not many have a DEXA body fat scanner, for example - and it is a good proxy for body fat and muscle gains over time.
It isn’t the only thing you should track, as outlined below, and if you’re someone who gets obsessive about scale weight when monitoring it, it may be worth leaving out and focussing on the other metrics discussed.
It’s also important to note that as an athlete, you’ll have the added factor of performance levels to take into account.
Any potential performance detriments can generally be avoided (or at least lessened) by taking a slower approach and/or prioritising body composition changes in less competitive times of the year.
Adjusting Based on Progress
When you compare your actual weekly bodyweight progress to your expected bodyweight progress (based on your previous calculations), you can get an idea of whether or not you need to adjust calories.
For example, if you’re aiming to lose 0.5 kg per week, but after 3 weeks, you’ve only lost 0.3kg per week on average, it might be worth considering adjusting your calorie intake downwards to get to that 0.5kg per week average.
There is a bit of nuance required here, however, in that whilst body weight is a great proxy measure for progress in a fat-loss phase, it doesn’t tell the full story.
In the example above, if you set out to lose 0.5kg on average per week but are only losing 0.3kg on average per week, BUT you are seeing a lot of progress visually, are feeling great in training, and are happy with your rate of progress, decreasing calorie intake might not be required at all.
In fact, in this case, it may be better to stick with your current approach, allowing you to keep eating that higher calorie intake whilst being really happy with the progress you’re making.
It’s also worth noting that the difference in these measurements can easily be down to rounding errors and fluctuations, so it’s worth measuring your weight multiple times per week, at the same time of day and in the same conditions, and then taking a weekly average, using that as your progress metric.
The need to change your calorie and macronutrient target is more applicable in cases where your actual progress is very different from your goal.
For example, if you are aiming to lose 0.5kg per week, and weight hasn’t moved at all in 3-4 weeks, or worse yet, you’ve gained weight, that is a good sign that you probably need to change your intake targets.
This concept also applies to those aiming to gain weight.
For example, if you’re aiming to gain 0.3kg per week, and the scales haven’t moved up in 3-4 weeks, it’s probably time to increase your calorie intake.
Again, even in this case, visual changes can be indicative that calorie changes may not be required, but generally, muscle gain is going to be optimally achieved during a phase where your body weight is increasing over time, and fat-loss is likely to be optimised when you’re losing body weight over time.
There are also cases where you may be moving too quickly in the direction you wanted to, and again, adjusting your intake would generally be advised.
In the case of fat-loss, losing weight too quickly can mean that you’re not supplying adequate fuel to allow for optimal performance, and gaining weight too quickly can lead to excess body fat gain.
Other factors, such as visual progress and subjective assessments of the sustainability of current calorie intake levels should be taken into account, but generally, body weight moving faster than recommended tends to lead to diminishing returns over a longer period.
There is a really useful decision tree included at the end of this article to make this super simple for you.
Given the nuances outlined above, it can be very useful to have external support from someone else (like a coach) who can step in when you’re second-guessing yourself.
How Much to Adjust by?
If you’ve deemed it important to adjust your intake based on all of the above, you’ll want to know by how much.
There are a multitude of factors at play here, but from experience working with 1000+ athletes, a 5-10% adjustment is usually sufficient.
E.g. For someone eating 2500 kcal, this would be an adjustment of 125-250 kcal.
This range will depend on various factors, including how far off you are from your goal rate of progress (Is your body weight moving in the right direction, but too slowly, or is your bodyweight moving in the wrong direction?), and where your current hunger levels are (If you’re already hungry often, decreasing by a large amount is likely to lead to increased hunger levels, and potentially a less sustainable approach).
In terms of macronutrients, this change in calories will generally be achieved through a decrease in carbohydrates, rather than fat or protein.
The reason for this is that protein and fat recommendations are generally recommended based on your body weight, as outlined in previous articles, whereas carbohydrate intake recommendations are at least partially based on your fuelling requirements, and therefore have a bit more flexibility when it comes to adjusting them.
However, there may be cases where adjusting only carbohydrates leads to increased difficulty in sustainably adhering to the macronutrient targets, in which case, adjusting fat (or in rarer cases, protein) could be an option.
An example of this would be someone who is in a weight-gain phase while being extremely active, who may require a large calorie intake.
By increasing their intake by increasing carbohydrates alone, they may be needlessly making it more difficult for themselves to hit those high calories targets, compared to if they’d given themselves a bit more flexibility in food choices by increasing the fat content slightly.
On the other end, someone decreasing their food intake might end up decreasing carbohydrates to the point that food volume decreases significantly, meaning they end up being hungrier, in which case, decreasing your fat target could allow for some extra carbohydrates to remain part of the diet whilst still hitting the total calorie target.
Another Option: Adjusting Your Output
In addtion to adjusting the amount of food you are taking in, another option is to increase the amount of energy you are expending.
You may want to do this by introducing some extra running or other cardiovascular work into your week, but if your training load is already high, you may be adding to the stress placed on your body, and therefore reducing your recovery capacity.
In this case, you can increase activity through tracking your daily step-count, using a watch or smartphone to track this, for example.
Once you’ve tracked it for a few days, you can increase your step-count target by 1000-2000 per day, which likely lead to an increase in energy output, and therefore assist in fat-loss, perhaps without decreasing energy intake.
Alternatively, this could be used in conjunction with altering your calorie intake, reaping the combined benefits.
The Decision Tree
The decision tree below illustrates the concepts above in the context of considering adjusting your intake targets based on your progress.
This should be done on a weekly basis, or perhaps a fortnightly basis, using an average of about 4-7 weigh-ins per week (at a similar time of day), in order to even out some of the daily fluctuations that are often seen.
It’s worth noting that there is an element of both a science and an art to this, so a combination of the objective markers (body weight, for example) and subjective markers (visual progress from mirror or progress photos) will be useful, as will the experience you’ll get from going through this process over time.
Article Written By Conor O’Neill
Conor O’Neill is a Nutritionist, Strength & Conditioning coach, Psychologist, and Author.
He has helped 1000+ everyday athletes to pursue excellence in their physique and performance through optimising their nutrition, training, and psychology.
You can find out more about The Everyday Athlete Program by going to everydayathleteprogram.com/coaching.