Bodybuilding Forums

Hello Everyone,

I want to start the G.L.A.D. diet but have a couple questions before I begin. Hopefully someone can give me some guidance; I would really appreciate any feedback!

1. My caloric requirement per meal is ~620 calories and I know I need to eat ~39 grams of protein (156 cals) per meal. How do I calculate the amount of fat I need to eat per meal? Is there a target amount of fat that should be consumed on the G.L.A.D. diet? I've read that 30% of the total calories should come from fat but wasn't sure if that was correct or not.

2. Once I figure out how many fat grams & calories I need to consume per meal, do carbs make up the remaining balance of my daily caloric requirement as long as I don't exceed 90 GLs per day? For example, let's assume the following:

- I need to consume 620 calories/meal
- 156 calories (39 grams) must come from protein
- 186 calories (21 grams) must come from fat, assuming 30% is the correct percentage of fat calories
- therefore, should I assume that I need to eat 278 calories (70 grams) of carbs (620 total cals - 156 protein cals - 186 fat cals = 278 carb cals) per meal?

3. If I want to cut, do I keep my protein and fat calories the same and just drop my total GLs to 45 per day? If I decrease to 45 total GLs per day, will my carb calories naturally decrease as well?

Thanks in advance!

You are correct on both parts. If you have trouble keeping your GL's under the limit, or you want to lower your GL's further to cut, add more protein and fat to replace the carbs and still meet your calorie requirement.

I used a different approach when determining what I was going to eat on GLAD. Instead of doing the protein calculation first, I calculated how many carbs I was going to get with a given GL, since that is the only nutrient with a hard limit and I limited myself much lower than 90. After I knew how many carbs I was going to get, I just filled in the rest of my needed calories with protein and fat.

I didn't bother with calculating my protein needs because keeping GL's that low means carbs are going to be low, which in turn means protein/fat is going be high because calories don't come from anywhere else. Although my daily GL is on the lower end, around 30-40, so I imagine you may have more room for carbs and doing the protein calculation first might make more sense.

SurferX, thanks for taking the time to help me out. I'm still unclear about a couple points, though.

I calculated my nutrient requirements per meal as follows:

P = 39g, 156 cals
F = 21g, 189 cals
C = 70g, 278 cals
TOTAL CALS = 623/meal or ~3,700/day

I understand that if I want to bulk, I must keep my GLs around 90 and consume roughly 623 cals/meal. However, if I want to cut, do I reduce my GLs to 45 (or less) and still consume roughly 623 cals/meal by replacing the missing carb calories w/ protein and fat calories? Don't you have to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight?

How much of a calorie surplus are you figuring at 3700 cal/day? Since your surplus is pretty high, then yeah I would just drop the carbs and leave the protein/fat alone for cutting. You definitely don't need to replace those calories.

I wanted clean muscle weight only so I had a fairly low surplus (maybe 200-300 calories). So I took the low GL, saw how many carbs I was going to eat, and just filled in the rest with protein and fat. My diet turned into a 20/40/40 split of carbs/protein/fat which has served me well for dropping fat percentage to get more cut while still building some muscle (albeit slowly). I know I would probably put on more muscle if I increased my calories by upping my carbs but I know some fat would come along with it and I'd rather just stay where I'm at and get leaner than get bigger and softer.

OK, let me see if I understand you correctly...

My daily caloric requirement is ~3,600 cals. I'm like you and only want to put on lean muscle. I know I need to eat 235g of protein per day based on the formula in the GLAD diet, which is 26% of my daily calorie total and will change only when my lean body mass changes.

1. During a bulking phase, do I calculate the calories from protein and 90 GLs of carbs, add those together and then subtract from 3,600 to determine the fat calories I need to consume?

2. During a cutting phase, my carb calories will decrease b/c I'm only consuming 45 GLs. Do I increase my fat calories to make up for the reduction in carbs and ensure that I'm meeting my daily requirement of 3,600? Or do I maintain my fat intake from the bulking phase and thus consume less than my 3,600 daily requirement?

Sorry for the 20 questions. I guess I'm mainly confused about whether or not I consume 3,600 cals/day regardless of which phase I'm in.

Thanks again for your help.

That is the textbook way to do it, eat your protein requirement, 90 GL or less of carbs, and fill in the rest with fat.

For cutting, it depends on what happens to your calories when you drop your GL. If the deficit is too big, fill in the calories with some more protein and fat to keep from losing any muscle. The idea behind GLAD is to always be hovering around your exact calorie needs, give or take just a few hundred calories.

Now after doing this for about a year and a half already, the textbook way is a great guideline but doesn't always work out in practice. Think about are you really in the position to plan all of your meals that closely and stay consistent for a long period of time? If you are, that's great, go for it. But I know for myself, life happens and it can be difficult to get the exact amount of macro nutrients, and I've had my share of unnecessary frustration with things in my life that would otherwise be considered positive because of it.

It's for this reason that I took the more realistic approach in recognizing that the absolute most important part of the diet is just keeping the GL down. I let the protein and fat fill in the rest of the calories however it comes, because protein and fat always come together in animal products anyway.

Also I'm not totally comfortable with the calorie requirement calculation. The Katch-McArdle formula is great by itself, but when it comes to multiplying it by the factors of 1.5/1.7/1.9 to estimate what you burn in your daily life, is when the final value becomes too generalized. I believe for people with inactive office jobs, the multiplication factor is lower, based on what I saw on my friend's Bodybugg calorie monitor and based on the lower limit of calories I can eat without being hungry at any time during the day. The value you get from that calculation may be a good starting point, but the right calorie value will just take some trial and error if you find you aren't making progress getting leaner staying around 3600 calories a day.

SurferX, you are the man. Thanks for all the feedback...I really appreciate the help.

One more question before I go: Based on your experience, what do you think is a more accurate multiplication factor for inactive office jobs? Is it closer to 1?

Take care!

It's somewhere in between, and obviously going to be different for each person. Mine was like 1.3 according to my friend's Bodybugg. My job has me working on my feet all day as well so it's not just a sit down all day office job either.