I seriously never wanted to bulk up before but now that I'm in a new town for school I'm thinking of gaining muscle(Kind of a new me thing I guess). I just want some muscle tone I don't want to be to bulky but put on some muscle. I'm 6'1 and around 180-185 pounds. What would be a reasonable protein/carb/calorie intake to maybe bulk to to just 195-200ish? That sound like a good area to stay around at and have a nice tone look?

I go with 20/40/40 fats/proteins/carbs, I also see 20/30/50 pretty commonly.

so 20 fats/40protein/40 carbs? sorry for a noob question but that is per meal right? about how many meals should I have? Or better question what would be a total number for a day be?

he means as a percentage of your total daily intake of calories
you should try to estimate how many calories you will use in a day (google can be your friend there - do your research and you will learn a lot on your own!) and add to it (usually 250-500 calories extra to gain weight per day).
then you can decide on how you want to split them into fats protein and carbs

then you need to develop a routine for exercise and make a commitment to it

in a few weeks you can begin to make changes - i.e. if you are gaining weight too fast, you might want to cut down, or if youre not making any weight gains, then you might want to further increase it.

getting the right amount per day is way more important than per meal. I'd go with at least 4 meals, but you can do whatever works for you. You should find out how many calories you need to bulk and get 20% of those calories from fats and 40% from carbs and proteins.

1 gram of fat = 9 calories
1 gram of protein or carbs = 4 calories.

Math is involved.

/e So if I needed 3000 cals to bulk, I would eat
3000 * .2 = 600 calories from fats, = 67 grams / day
3000 * .4 = 1200 cals from carbs = 300g / day
300 * .4 = 1200 cals from proteins = 300g / day

300g / day of proteins sounds like more than I ate so may have done 20/30/50, but you get the idea.

This post was edited by Mastersam93 on Jan 19 2015 08:13pm

40/40/20 is apparently outdated bb template, 50/30/20 is the new thing as you don't need that much protein, and something about high carbs = insulin sensitivity triggering additional growth, but idk i'm not a surgeon.

If you really want to track, you can do 1g protein per lbs of your bodyweight, then 25% fat, then eat the rest in carbs.

Personally, I just like to hit my protein amount and eat w/e I want for the rest, so long as I hit approximately the right amount of calories.

I prefer

1g/lbs of P
1g/KG of F
fill rest with carbs


makes the counting easier, rather then trying to hit percentages

Above two posts are my general thoughts.

1 - 1.2 grams of protein / lb
25-30% fat / lb
Rest carbs

Use lightmans How to cut thread / links to find your maintenance and add a few hundred to that.

300g protein an day, LOL, dont even worry bout ratio. just hit 1g protein per bw and fill the rest however u want til desire cal is met

This post was edited by Noun on Jan 19 2015 11:47pm