Leangains Calculator for Lean Bulk or Cutting

Leangains is an intermittent fasting system for lifters created by Martin Berkhan, a Swedish nutrition coach and personal trainer. He set out the method in his Leangains Guide in 2010, and it is still one of the best-known ways to build muscle and lose fat without long bulk and cut cycles.

Leangains combines a daily 16-hour fast and 8-hour eating window with three short, heavy strength sessions a week. What sets it apart from plain 16:8 fasting is that the food changes with your training. On training days you eat more, mostly carbs, and most of it after your workout. On rest days you eat less and swap most of those carbs for fat. Protein stays high every day.

The calculator starts from your maintenance calories, the amount that holds your weight steady, and moves them up on training days and down on rest days. Pick a recomp to keep the week at maintenance, so you lose fat and build muscle at about the same weight, or choose to lose fat or lean bulk instead.

What the Leangains Calculator Gives You

Most macro calculators give one calorie number for every day of the week. Leangains doesn’t work that way, so this calculator gives you two days and a timetable:

• Training days: calories, protein, carbs and fat. These days carry most of the week’s carbs.
• Rest days: fewer calories, the same protein, fewer carbs and more fat.
• Your meals: the time and size of each meal on a training day and a rest day, built around when you train and when your window opens.
• Your week: total calories, your daily average and the weight change to expect.

How the Leangains Calculator Works

The calculator works in four steps:

1. Maintenance calories. Your resting burn comes from the Mifflin-St Jeor equation (sex, age, weight and height), multiplied by your activity level. That is roughly what you burn on an average day, workouts included. Our TDEE calculator explains this number in more detail.
2. Training days and rest days. Your goal sets the week. For a recomp, training days are about 15% above maintenance and rest days come in under it, so the week averages out at maintenance. To lose fat, training days sit at maintenance and the week averages about 15% under. For a lean bulk, training days are about 20% above maintenance and the week averages about 8% over.
3. Macros. Protein is 0.8 g per pound of body weight (about 1.8 g per kg) every day. Fat is 20% of calories on training days and 40% on rest days. Carbs fill the rest, which is why training days come out high in carbs and rest days low.
4. Meal timing. The calculator places your meals the way Berkhan describes in his guide. If you train before your first meal, you take 10 g of amino acids before training and eat your biggest meal straight after it. If you train a few hours into your window, a smaller meal comes first and most of the day’s food comes after training. On rest days, the first meal is the biggest, at about 40% of the day’s calories.

Berkhan set calories and carb cycling individually for each client and never published a fixed formula. The percentages in steps 2 and 3 are our planning model, built to follow his rules: more food on training days, the carbs around the workout, fat on rest days and high protein throughout.

How to Use the Leangains Calculator

1. Choose imperial (pounds and inches) or metric (kilograms and centimeters).
2. Choose your sex, then enter your weight, height and age.
3. Pick your activity level. Count your workouts: if you lift three times a week and walk a fair amount, moderate is usually right.
4. Pick your goal: lose fat, recomp or lean bulk.
5. Choose how many days a week you train, the time you usually train and the time of your first meal.
6. Choose 16:8 (the Leangains standard) or 14:10, and two or three meals.
7. Press “Build My Leangains Plan”.

Reading Your Results

Your results show two numbers, one for training days and one for rest days. Eat the training-day amounts on the days you lift and the rest-day amounts on the other days. The meal plan shows the calories and protein for each meal; split the day’s carbs and fat the same way, with most of the carbs in the post-workout meal. You don’t need to hit every meal to the calorie: hitting the daily totals matters most, then eating most of your food after training on training days.

Here is a typical training day for someone who breaks the fast at noon and lifts at 4 pm:

• 12 pm: Pre-workout meal, about 20% of the day’s calories
• 4 pm: Train
• 5 pm: Post-workout meal, the biggest meal of the day with most of the carbs
• 7:15 pm: Last meal before the fast
• 8 pm to 12 pm the next day: Fast. Water, black coffee, plain tea and diet soda are fine.

The weekly figures show whether the plan should hold your weight, lose it or add to it. Calculators estimate; they don’t measure you. Weigh yourself a few mornings a week, compare weekly averages after two to three weeks, and adjust by 100 to 200 calories a day if the trend isn’t what you want.

Leangains FAQs

Do you have a question about the calculator or the Leangains diet and workout program? Here are the most common ones.

1. What should I eat during the Leangains diet?

With Leangains, how much and when you eat matter more than exactly what you eat. Hitting your calories and macros on each type of day should get you the results you want, so Leangains works well alongside flexible dieting (If It Fits Your Macros).

That said, you’ll feel fuller and healthier if most of your food is unprocessed. Build most meals around lean protein, vegetables and whole grains, put the starchy carbs in your post-workout meal, and save fattier foods for rest days.

You can still have the occasional cheat meal, as long as it fits your eating window and your week.

2. What workouts do I do on the Leangains diet?

You can follow any strength training or bodybuilding program on Leangains, including the one you are on now.

Berkhan himself favored short, heavy sessions three times a week built on a few big lifts, with a small number of hard sets. It is essentially a powerbuilding program.

A typical Leangains week looks like this:

After a warm-up, each exercise is done with reverse pyramid training: your heaviest set comes first, when you are freshest, and each set after it is about 10% lighter for a few more reps.

For example:

• 1^st set: 100 kg
• 2^nd set: 90 kg
• 3^rd set: 80 kg

3. Do I need to do cardio during Leangains?

No. Leangains is built around strength training, and the calculator already counts the activity level you chose. Cardio can help with fat loss, but it adds to what you burn, so a lot of it can cancel out the surplus you need for a lean bulk.

If you add regular cardio, either pick a higher activity level in the calculator or eat a little more on those days. Then watch your weekly average weight and adjust.

4. How long can I follow the Leangains diet?

Leangains is designed for long-term use. Apart from the daily eating window and the training-day and rest-day split, there are few rules about what you eat.

As your weight changes, run the calculator again with your new stats. That keeps your numbers matched to your body and your goal.

5. How much protein does Leangains use?

Leangains is a high-protein diet: Berkhan wrote that some of his clients ate more than 100 g of protein in their first meal on rest days. The calculator sets protein at 0.8 g per pound of body weight (about 1.8 g per kg) every day. That sits inside the 1.6 to 2.2 g per kg range that research links to the most muscle gain when you lift, and it keeps you full while you fast. You can eat more if you prefer; the extra calories have to come out of carbs or fat.

6. Why do carbs and fat change between training and rest days?

Your muscles use carbs to fuel hard training and to refill their glycogen afterward, so Leangains puts most of the week’s carbs on training days, mostly in the post-workout meal. On rest days you need less of that fuel, so calories drop and fat replaces most of the carbs. Protein stays the same so your muscles keep getting what they need to repair and grow.

7. What supplements should I use on Leangains?

You don’t need supplements to follow Leangains, but a few can make it easier:

• Protein powder: hitting a high protein target with food alone can be hard, especially if you eat some meals away from home. A good-quality protein powder makes it easier.
• Essential or branched-chain amino acids (EAA or BCAA): if you train before your first meal, Berkhan recommends 10 g of amino acids 5 to 15 minutes before training. He later recommended EAAs in place of BCAAs.
• Fish oil: a source of omega-3 fats, which support heart health and may ease joint aches from heavy training.
• Creatine: one of the best-researched gym supplements for strength and muscle. Take 3 to 5 grams a day.
• Vitamin D: many people are low in vitamin D, especially in winter or if they spend most of their time indoors. A blood test tells you whether you need it.

Wrapping Up

Leangains combines 16:8 intermittent fasting with heavy strength training and food that follows your training: more calories and carbs on training days, less food and more fat on rest days, and high protein every day. You can use it to lose fat, recomp or lean bulk.

Working out two sets of macros and timing your meals around a workout is the fiddly part. The calculator above does both in a few seconds. Use its numbers as your starting point, track your weekly average weight, and adjust from there.