Dr. Will Murtagh is a performance physical therapist and writer who helps Fitness Athletes elevate their fitness and train pain-free.
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If I had to guess, you currently have no problem getting to the gym and training hard. Assuming you have no injuries or nagging pains that are preventing you from doing so.
If so, I encourage you to book a free consultation so we can get you pain-free and training hard again.
You can do so HERE.
But, once you are healthy, without orthopedic issues, and training consistently then it’s time to shift your focus towards optimizing your nutrition to suit your goals as a CrossFit Athlete.
As a CrossFit Athlete, having a nutrition protocol that is in line with what you are doing in the gym is imperative to allow you to reach your goals.
When I take on new CrossFit Athletes as a client there are three phases of a nutrition protocol that I will have them move through. This allows me to ensure that the nutrition protocol that they follow meets them where they are at and ensures their success.
The three phases include Life, Fuel, and Person.
LIFE
The Life phase includes basic lifestyle guidelines that every human should adhere to on a daily bases that promote great metabolic, and immune system function, circadian rhythm, and overall health.
Many CrossFit Athletes skip this phase and as a result, end up in some sort of dysfunction as they jump to a nutrient profile that is only “good enough” versus optimal since they are prescribing themselves macronutrients and calories without first laying a great foundation of daily habits and healthy behaviors.
FUEL
The Fuel phase is where we dive into the actual nuts and bolts of the nutrition. This is what most people will think of when they think of crafting a diet. The fuel phase contains the specific prescription of calories, protein, carbohydrates and fat that you need to support performance and aesthetics.
The Fuel phase also contains the actual foods that you will consume. For example, in this phase, we are working towards moving away from processed foods and consuming more natural whole foods.
PERSON
The last phase is “Person”, where there is true personalization taking place. In the Person phase you are making tweaks to your diet based on dietary preferences or sensitivities and utilizing things like fasting to “deload” the gut.
The Person phase isn’t necessarily necessary as not everyone needs personalization at this level as not everyone needs to deload their gut or have food preferences or sensitivities that require it.
In fact, these three phases are not linear in nature whenever a new client begins their 1:1 Pain-Free Performance Program. If a new client starts and they have great lifestyle behaviors that promote great metabolic function and circadian rhythm then there is no point in changing things. We’ll simply monitor them to make sure it is sustained.
If you fit this category and we jump straight to Fuel, then we will focus on improving food quality and designing the specific calories and macronutrients that you need as a CrossFit Athlete.
For the remainder of this article, we’ll focus on crafting your Macronutrients Profile to help you drive fat loss, muscle gain, performance or fuel your activity level.
Setting Calorie Intake
Setting calories per day is the first step in designing a nutrition plan for CrossFit Athletes. How many calories per day you need is going to be based on several factors which make up your total daily energy expenditure.
The first element of calorie intake is going to be determining your basal metabolic rate which is the amount of calories burned by your body at complete rest.
The basal metabolic rate makes up 70% of your total daily energy expenditure and is driven by the metabolic function of the body and not the energy expended due to muscular effort.
Next is Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis or NEAT for short. Which makes up the next 15% of total daily energy expenditure. NEAT comprises all of the muscular actions and movements that take place that are not considered exercises such as daily steps and blinking.
After NEAT, is the Thermic Effect of Food which comprises roughly 10% of total daily energy expenditure and are the calories burned from the digestion of food. This can vary based on which kinds of foods you eat most.
Diets with mostly protein will have a higher amount of calories burned in TEF as it takes more energy to break down and absorb.
Lastly in total daily energy expenditure is the amount of calories that are burned as a result of exercise. This is the smallest percentage of the total calories burned per day at 5% and will vary based on how much volume and intensity is in your training.
Now that we know what makes up your total daily energy expenditure we can then set calorie intake.
To start you will determine your basal metabolic rate which can be tested using high-tech and expensive machinery or you can use more affordable bioelectrical impedance scales like my personal favorite the InBody Systems.
From there you can base the rest of the elements off of the basal metabolic rate.
For the thermic effect of feeding, you will add 10% to your basal metabolic rate.
For exercise activity thermogenesis you will add calories based on the training that you do. If you train at high intensities and high volume you’ll add more and if not then you’ll add less. The range for this will be between 200-500 additional calories.
The same rule of thumb will apply to non-exercise activity thermogenesis. If you are more active you will add more calories and if you are more sedentary you add less. Again, this range will be between 200-500 additional calories.
The full equation to set your total daily energy expenditure will be as follows:
TDEE = BMR + TEF + EAT + NEAT
However, it is important to note that many CrossFit Athletes will see this total number and be shocked at how many calories it is per day.
If this is you, then it is likely that there is some sort of down-regulation of the basal metabolic rate due to various factors. But more often than not it is due to chronic under eating.
So instead, you can take a 3-5 day food log and track what you currently eat to maintain your weight and then use this number as your total daily energy expenditure while you work towards normalizing your calorie intake.
Setting Daily Calories For Your Specific Goal
CrossFit Athletes’ total number of calories will likely need to be high to support the large amounts of exercise and intensity that take place.
As a general rule of thumb, if your goal is to simply support your training and energy levels over time then you will want to keep your total calorie intake as is.
But, if you want to drive weight gain then the best way to do so is to add 15% of calories to your total daily energy expenditure. If you want to drive weight or fat loss then the best way to do so is to subtract 15% of total calories to create a caloric deficit.
This percentage allows you to kickstart change in the direction that you wish but not drive change so high that you are putting on unnecessary amounts of fat.
Similarly, if you reduce calories beyond 15% then you may drive a plateau in weight loss to quickly due to metabolic adaptation.
You can read more about setting calories in this blog post SEVEN STEPS TO CALCULATE DAILY CALORIES AND MACRONUTRIENTS
Determining Grams of Protein
Next to calorie intake, protein is going to be the most important macronutrient that you can consume as a CrossFit athlete. Protein provides the necessary building blocks to support recovery and the building of new muscle mass via the total and essential amino acids that it provides.
To determine Protein needs of CrossFit athletes, the total grams of protein will likely be around one gram of protein per pound of body weight. This will ensure you have a minimum amount of protein in your system and your amino acid pool will be such that you have the essential amino acids you need for daily training.
However, the total grams of protein that you need may in fact be much more than this if you train multiple times a day and less for recreational CrossFit Athletes who have a desk job the other hours of the day.
So a more accurate way to set total grams of protein will be to first assess your lifestyle and then set grams of protein based on the ranges below.
Sedentary: .5g/lb of lean body mass
Light Activity: .7g/lb of lean body mass
Moderate Activity: .9g/lb of lean body mass
High Activity: 1.1g/lb of lean body mass
Intense Activity: 1.3g/lb of lean body mass
Each macronutrient will contain its own specific amount of calories that will contribute to the total calorie intake for the day.
Every gram of protein will contain about 4 calories so if you were to have 200 grams of protein then the total calories contributed from your protein intake would be 800 calories.
For more info on how much protein you should be consuming, check out this related blog post How Much Protein Do You Absorb In One Sitting?
Determining Grams of Fat Per Day
Fat is the next macronutrient that CrossFit Athletes should be concerned with. Fat is vital for hormone regulation and storage of fat-soluble vitamins.
Fat can sometimes get a bad reputation due to common but misplaced sentiments in mainstream media. But, rest assured it is an absolutely essential macronutrient.
For the purpose of this article, I won’t touch on the different types of fats like Saturated vs unsaturated fats, as well as what constitutes good fats vs bad fats.
But simply describe how you can determine how many grams of fat you need per day.
The best way to determine the number of grams you need per day will be by again assessing your activity levels and how full you find yourself to be throughout the day and selecting a number based on a range.
Grams of fat per day will range from .4 – .6 grams of fat per pound of body weight per day but shouldn’t drop lower than 25% of the total calories per day.
Thus, if you consume 2000 calories per day then your total calories from fat should not drop below 500 total calories since each gram of Fat will contain 9 calories.
At the higher ends of Fat intake, you may not be leaving enough room for calories from protein and more importantly, Carbohydrates to fuel the high-intensity workouts that CrossFit Athletes engage in.
Determining Grams of Carbs Per Day
Consuming ample amounts of Carbohydrates throughout the day is absolutely imperative for CrossFit Athletes.
Carbohydrates will be the number one source of fuel during CrossFit Workouts due to the high intensity of the workouts and the speed at which carbohydrates can be broken down and utilized for energy via Glycolysis.
When CrossFit Athletes attempt to follow a low-carb diet such as the Atkins Diet, the Keto Diet or even the Zone Diet where total amounts of carbohydrates are reduced they will inevitably run into fueling issues.
When Carbohydrates are restricted like they are in this diet the body turns to other sources of energy such as fat and in the worst-case scenario protein or the muscle mass that we currently have.
The problem with this is that fat takes longer to break down and thus will slow performance down as energy production is bottlenecked by this process known as Lipolysis.
To determine the amount of Carbohydrates you need per day you can simply add up the total calories that you are consuming from Protein and Fat and then subtract that number from your total daily energy expenditure.
For example, let’s go back to the same 200 gram of protein per day individual who is consuming 25% grams of Fat and 3000 calories per day.
Their total Carbohydrate will be as follows:
3000 Calories – 800 calories from protein (200*4) – 750 calories from fat (25% of 3000) = 1450 Calories left for Carbohydrates.
From there, you will take the 1450 calories remaining and divide by the calories in each gram of Carbohydrate which is 4 calories to get your grams of carbs per day.
For this individual, it will be about 362 grams of carbs per day.
This may seem like a tremendous amount of Carbohydrate to you but it is important to realize this is just one instance. Your actual grams of Carbs per day can vary from 1x body weight all the way to 2.5x body weight.
It is important to assess what your body needs and how you respond to certain prescriptions of Carbohydrates to determine the actual number you need.
Summary
To summarize, the best way to calculate macros for CrossFit Athletes is as follows;
- Determine Total Daily Energy Expenditure (BMR + TEF + EAT + NEAT)
- Determine grams of Protein based on body weight or activity
- Determine grams of Fat based on total calories or activity
- Determine grams of Carbs based on activity and total remaining calories
I hope you now have some insight into how to best calculate a macro breakdown for CrossFit Athletes.
It is important to understand that your actual nutrition prescriptions will be highly individualized and based on what you need for CrossFit workouts but also what your goals are related to performance, body composition and/or health.
