INSTRUCTIONS

THE SELF-CORRECTING MACRO PLAN (UPDATED)

General Instructions:

1) If it’s a blue-tinted cell, you can write in it. If it’s white or gray, don’t mess with it.
2) You should be able to download this sheet to use it with the newest versions of Excel
or Numbers. However, if you have problems, I’d strongly recommend you make a
copy
(​
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h9xhvd4m8qtq6sj/Screenshot%202016-03-25%2020.51.4
5.jpg?dl=0​
) and use it in Google Sheets. That lets you use it on the go as well via the
Google Sheets app. All you need is a free Google Account.
3) In the rest of the instructions, I’m going to put parentheses around the things you
should fill in each cell. When you fill in the cell, drop the parentheses. I’m just
adding them so those things will stand out from the rest of the text.

Setup:

B1) Choose what units you want to log in. Choose pounds or kilos from the dropdown menu
(arrow at the side of the cell).

B2) Choose your biological sex from the dropdown menu.

B3) Enter your height. Use inches if you chose pounds in B1, and cm if you chose kilos in B1.
Do not use feet and inches, or meters and cm. If you’re 5’10,” you’d enter “70” for 70 inches,
not “5’10.”’

B4) Enter your age in years. Enter it only as a number. So, you may say “30,” not “30 years
old.”

B5) Enter your weight using the same units you selected in B1.
B6) This is an estimate of your basal metabolic rate using the Harris-Benedict equation. Do
not edit this cell.

B7) Select your activity level from the dropdown menu. If you’re unsure between two
options, choose the slightly lower activity option if you’re planning on cutting, and the
slightly higher activity option if you’re planning on bulking.

B8) Based on your BMR and your activity level, this is your estimated daily caloric
expenditure.

B9) Enter how much protein you’d like to eat per day, expressed per unit of bodyweight. In
most circumstances, I’d recommend 0.8g/lb or 1.8g/kg. You can go a bit lower than that,
especially in a caloric surplus, and up to 1.2g/lb or 2.5g/kg may help with muscle
preservation in an aggressive calorie deficit. If you’re using pounds, put a number in this
cell between 0.6 and 1.2. If you’re using kilos, put a number in the cell between 1.35 and 2.5.
Leave off the units (i.e. don’t add “g/lb or grams per kilo” after the number).

B10) Enter the percentage of your non-protein calories you’d like to come from fat, using the
dropdown menu. This is almost entirely based on personal preference. I’d recommend not
going lower than 20%.

B11) Choose from the dropdown menu whether you like to eat roughly the same macros
every day, or if you prefer to eat more on training days and less on rest days. This is totally
up to you, and just a matter of personal preference.

B12) Enter how many pounds or kilos per week you’d like to gain or lose. In general, I
wouldn’t recommend trying to lose more than 1% of your bodyweight per week, and I
wouldn’t recommend trying to gain more than 0.5% of your bodyweight (those numbers are
in cells B13 and B14), but if you want to cut or bulk faster than that, the spreadsheet will still
work for that as well. Enter a negative number in that cell if you’d like to lose weight, and a
positive number if you’d like to gain weight. So, for example, if you want to lose 1 pound or
kilo per week, “-1” would go in that cell. If you entered “1,” it would give you macros for
gaining 1 pound or kilo per week instead.

Here’s a screenshot of how my personal setup page looks:

After you fill out this page, just forget it ever existed. Don’t delete it, but if you want to
change anything about you diet, that will be done on the “Adjustments” page after the
initial setup.

(navigate to the “Weight Tracking” tab)

Weight Tracking:

A2) Fill in the date in month/day/year or day/month/year format, using just numbers. This
will auto-populate the dates for the rest of the spreadsheet.

Column B: Enter your weight every day, first thing in the morning after you pee, but before
you eat or drink anything. Don’t enter the units. For example, you’d enter “160” not
“160lbs.”

Column F: At the start of every day, say whether or not you’ll be working out that day. You
can use the dropdown menu, or just type “yes” or “no.” You don’t actually have to fill out
column E unless you selected that you wanted different macros on training days and rest
days.

Columns C shows you the daily weight goal to stay on track with your desired rate of weight
gain/loss. Obviously you’re not going to hit that exact number every day, so columns D and
E tell you the range you should aim to stay within. It’s 4 pounds above or below, or 2kg
above and below. This will account for the weight fluctuations that naturally happen.
If you stay within that range, you’re moving toward your goals, so when you enter a weight
within that range in column B, the cell will turn green. If you enter a weight outside of that
range, the cell will turn red. This gives you instant feedback about your progress.

This may seem like a little thing, but people don’t like breaking chains of successful
behavior, especially when they can visualize that success. When you get a chain of 10+ green
cells in a row, you’ll start really feeling the pressure to make sure you stay within the weight
range and avoid getting a red cell when you track your weight. This helps with motivation
and adherence, and almost makes it like a little game, with your longest string of green cells
being the high score.

(​
navigate to the “Nutrition Tracking” tab)

Nutrition Tracking:

First thing in the morning, right after you log your weight and say if you’re training or not,
check out the cell in Columns B, E, H, and K that correspond with the current date. These
tell you your calorie and macro goals for the day. Check AFTER logging your weight and
saying whether it’s a training day, because those things influence the number (slightly, in the
case of daily weight, and pretty substantially in the case of whether it’s a training day or not,
if you chose you wanted different calories on lifting days).

Either remember those numbers for the day, or just change your targets in MyFitnessPal for
the day.

At the end of the day, enter your calorie and macro consumption in cells C, F, I, and L. As
with everywhere else in the sheet, just enter the numbers, not the units. I.e. “210” not “210g”
or “210 grams.”
Cells D, G, J, and M tell you how close you were to hitting your calorie and macro goals. The
number will be green if you’re within 150 calories, within 15g on protein and carbs, and
within 10g on fat, and red if you fall outside those ranges. Again, see how long of green
chains you can achieve. Realistically, pay the most attention to calories and protein; if you
sub out some fat for carbs or carbs for fat day-to-day, it’s not going to matter too much.

This concludes how you’re going to use the spreadsheet 99% of the time. Simply log your
weight and say whether it’s going to be a training day in the morning, and snag your macros
for the day. At the end of the day, log your calorie and macro intakes.

Easy peasy.

(​
navigate to the “Adjustments” tab)

Adjustments:

You don’t need to worry about this sheet unless you need to change something.

If you’re going from a cut or a bulk back to maintenance, if you decided you want a more
aggressive weight loss target or a more conservative bulking target, if you decide you want
to eat more of your calories from protein or less of your calories from fat, if you decided you
want to eat more on workout days instead of at roughly the same level every day, etc. –
THEN you come to the Adjustments tab.

If you want to make adjustments, DO NOT make them on the Setup page. USE THIS TAB.

To make an adjustment, go to the current day. So, if you’re making an adjustment on May
4th, you’d go to the row that corresponds with May 4th. Then just make your adjustment in
the desired column. So, if May 4th was on row 20, and you wanted to start getting 40% of
your non-protein calories from fat instead of your current 30%, you’d just delete “30%” in
cell E20, you’d replace it with “40%”, and you’re done.
For columns B, E, and F, just make sure that you only enter numbers, and not also units.
Make sure to put the “%” on the number in column E (though decimals would work as well;
0.4 or 40% would both be fine), and make sure the sign is right in column B - positive
numbers if you want to gain weight, and negative numbers if you want to lose weight. In
column F, make sure you’re putting in the right number for the units you’re using. If you’re
using kilos and you enter 0.8 (which would be a good number if you were using pounds),
you’d be eating very little protein, and vice versa if you’re using pounds and you enter 2.5.

For columns C and D, delete what’s currently in the cell, and then choose an option from the
dropdown menu.

If you’re trying to change C11, for example, you’ll see this if you click the arrow for the
dropdown menu:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4jzaoa9mw2xcilr/Screenshot%202016-03-25%2021.51.58.jpg?dl=
0

If you delete the current contents of the cell, it’ll let you use the dropdown menu:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pq4ii6rh325v033/Screenshot%202016-03-25%2021.52.32.jpg?dl=0

How it works:

The equations that make the sheet tick are on the “back end calculations” page. You may
want to peruse it just out of curiosity, but DO NOT change anything on this page.

Here’s the basic gist of how the sheet works: You tell it how much weight you want to gain
or lose. It tells you the macros you should aim for to move toward the goal.

Macros will be the same for the first two weeks, just to give the sheet enough data to work
with. After the first two weeks, your macro targets will start adjusting, and if you chose that
you want to eat more on workout days, that will kick in as well. Based on how your weight
responds relative to your actual calorie intake during the first two weeks of introductory
macros, the spreadsheet can estimate your metabolic rate (not just basal metabolic rate, but
rather total energy expenditure, including NEAT, TEF, and the rest of the metabolic alphabet
soup). It continually recalculates as you keep logging your calorie intake and weight to
account for inevitable fluctuations in calorie expenditure.

After estimating your metabolic rate, it can adjust your calorie intake to make sure you keep
moving toward your weight goal at the rate you want to. To minimize the effects of single
days where your weight was really high, really low, or where your calorie intake was off, the
calculations are based on 7-day averages, which give you a much better idea of your true
rate of weight change over time. Since these calculations update every day, your macros
targets will always be very close to the “true” values they should be at. Hit the numbers, and
your true rate of weight gain/loss will track almost perfectly with your desired rate of weight
gain/loss. When you switch goals (say, going from a surplus to a deficit, or vice versa), it may
take a week or two to zero in on the right range for you again, because changes in glycogen
storage can change your weight dramatically, and your total caloric expenditure may
increase or decrease quite a bit when changing from a surplus to a deficit, or vice versa.

The spreadsheet will still work if you don’t log every single day, but logging AT LEAST 4-5
days per week will dramatically improve its accuracy over logging just once or twice. If you
miss seven consecutive days, start back over at the setup tab, and delete all of numbers you
entered (in blue, green, or red cells) from the nutrition tracking and weight tracking sheets.
Since all the calculations are based on seven-day averages, there needs to be at least SOME
data in every seven-day period for it to work.

If you run into any problems or you have any questions: