John Berardi’s Method for Determining Weight Gain Calorie Needs

Encase you didn’t already know John Berardi is a much respected figurehead in the fitness world.  He’s a health and performance consultant and is probably most known for his work with athletes and his various books and articles regarding muscle gain.

Among all of his accomplishments John came up with a very detailed way of determining how many calories you need to ingest a day to gain weight.  Before we continue I just want to let you know that the below method is a very condense version of John’s work. If you’d like to read the full text I would advise you go to his website and Purchase his book Scrawny to Brawny.

For application purposes I’d like to introduce you to Scrawny Johnny. He’s going to act as our reference model for John’s method and the General Method for Determining Calorie Needs.

Let’s begin…

Step 1 – Determining your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)

Simply put our Resting Metabolic Rate is the minimum amount of energy our body expels to keep us alive. According to Berardi this number represents anywhere from 50 – 70% of our daily caloric expenditure.

To be able to determine this number you need to know your weight in kilograms. If you don’t already know this just divide your weight in pounds (lbs) by 2.2

Next take your body fat percentage and multiply it by your weight to get your Fat Mass (FM) and then subtract it from your weight in Kilograms to get your Fat Free Mass in kilograms (FFM)

Let’s apply this to our reference model Scrawny Johnny:

Turn Weight to Kilograms: 150lbs/2.2 = 68kg (rounded)
Multiply Bf% by your Wt (in Kg) to get Fat Mass (FM): 150 x 0.1 = 6.8
Subtract FM from Wt (in kg) to find Fat Free Mass: 68 – 6.8 = 61kg (rounded)

Now that we know Scrawny Johnny’s Fat Free mass we can easily find his RMR with this formula

RMR = 22 x Fat Free Mass (in kg) + 500

So in Scrawny Johnny’s case it would be: RMR – 22 x 61 + 500 = 1842

Scrawny Johnny’s RMR is 1842.

Step 2 – Determining Cost of Activity

The cost of activity represents how much calories we burn while doing everyday activities. According to Berardi this factor makes up 20 to 40% of our daily caloric expenditure. The following formula is used to get this number:

Cost of Activity = RMR x Activity Factor

Just substitute the RMR you just calculated by the level of activity below that most represents your daily activity (Don’t include your daily exercise there is a different formula for that).

1.2 – 1.3 for Very light Activities (best rest)
1.5 – 1.6 for Light (office work/watching TV)
1.6 – 1.7 for Moderate (some activity during day)
1.9 – 2.1 for Heavy (labor type work)

Scrawny Johnny is very lazy so his activity factor is 1.2

1842 x 1.2 = 2210 (rounded)

This new number represents the amount of calories it takes Johnny to breath and move around.

Cost of Exercise Activity

To determine how many calories are burnt during exercise use this formula:

Cost of exercise = Body Mass (in kg) x Duration (in hours) x Met value

The Met value represents the amount of calories burnt in a given physical activity. Common met values are found bellow:

high impact aerobics… 7
low impact aerobics… 5
high intensity cycling… 12
low intensity cycling… 3
high intensity walking – 6.5
low intensity walking – 2.5
high intensity running… 18
low intensity running… 7
circuit-type training… 8
intense free weight lifting… 6
moderate machine training… 3

Scrawny Johnny works out really hard with free weights and does some post workout cardio. His formula’s would look like this:

Exercise expenditure for weights = 6 mets x 68kg x 1.5 hours – 612 calories
Exercise expenditure for cardio = 3 mets x 68 x .5 – 102

Note: You need to convert the Duration (in hours) of your exercise into a decimal eg. 15 minutes = 0.25, 30 minutes = 0.5, 45 minutes = 0.75, 1 hour = 1.00)

During his workout he burns a total of 714 calories. Now we are going to add this value to the figure we got when we determined his cost of activity:

Cost of Activity + Cost of Exercise Activity = 2924 calories

Step 3 – The Thermic Effect of food

The Thermic effect of food is how much calories our body burns to digest, absorb and metabolize food intake. According to Berardi this factor makes up 5-15% of our caloric expenditure. Protein tends to have an adverse effect of this number so we’ll take a look at protein intake.

This formula is pretty simple. You need to multiply your original RMR value (for Johnny is was 1842) by 0.10 if you eat 1 gram of protein per pound in body weight or 0.15 if you eat over 1 gram of protein per body of body weight. It looks something like this

TEF – RMR x 0.10 for moderate protein diet
TEF – RMR x 0.15 for high protein diet

Let’s assume Johnny eats a high protein diet so we are going to multiply his RMR by 0.15

TEF – 1842 x 0.15 – 276 (rounded)

Step 4 – Putting it all together!

So how many calories would you need to gain weight? Scrawny Johnny’s final formula would look something like this:

So there it is. That’s how many calories our reference model Johnny would need to gain weight. There is a little bit of a catch with Berardi’s formula. The total amount of calories represents the amount of calories you would need to eat to MAINTAIN your weight on a workout day.

So how you would gain weight?

According to John you’d gain excess calories on the days that you don’t work out. So using our example above on the 3 days Scrawny Johnny work outs he would eat enough to maintain his weight and on the 4 days away from working out he would be gaining a surplus of 990 calories! (3200 – 2210= 990). Considering the fact that you need excess of 3500 calories to gain one pound at the end of each week Johnny would have a total of 3960 which should equate to 1 pound a week!

Now before you get too excited you have to realize that this isn’t a fool proof formula. Check your weight every couple of weeks and if you stop gaining weight add an extra 250 to 500 calories and repeat that process whenever you stop gaining.

Was this method too long for you? If so take a look at the General Method you’ll be pleasantly surprised.