Enter your details and how long you've been training to get a surplus range and the weight change to check it against.
Estimates are for general guidance only and are not medical advice. For a personalised plan, book a free guided tour at RPM Gym.
The target is a range, not a number, and the range is a percentage of your maintenance rather than a fixed amount of food. A 300 kcal surplus is a 15% intervention for someone maintaining on 2,000 and half that for someone on 4,000. Those aren't the same instruction.
Training experience sets how wide the range is. Novices and intermediates get 10-20% over maintenance; advanced lifters get 5-10%, because they add lean tissue slowly enough that the extra food mostly becomes fat. That's the single biggest error in most bulks — a beginner's surplus run by someone six years in.
The expected weekly gain is the part that matters most. The calorie figure is a starting estimate; the scale is the measurement. If you're gaining faster than the top of that range averaged over three or four weeks, the surplus is bigger than you need.
Some of what you gain will be fat, and some will be fluid and gut content from simply eating more. No calorie target changes that on its own. What shifts the ratio is the size of the surplus, whether the training is actually progressing, and whether protein is adequate.
Maintenance = Mifflin-St Jeor BMR × activity factor Surplus: novice and intermediate 10-20% · advanced 5-10% Target = maintenance × (1 + surplus) Expected weekly gain: 0.25-0.5% of bodyweight · advanced at the lower end
A 72 kg man, 175 cm, 24, training four days a week, first year of serious lifting.
Start near 2,900 and watch the scale. Around 0.25 kg a week averaged over a month means it's working. Half a kilo a week means cut the surplus; nothing at all after three weeks means add roughly 200 kcal.
Roughly 10-20% above your maintenance level if you're in your first few years of training, 5-10% if you're advanced. For a maintenance of 2,600 that's about 2,900-3,100 or 2,700-2,900 respectively. Start at the bottom and let the scale decide.
About 0.25-0.5% of bodyweight a week for most people, so 0.2-0.4 kg for someone at 80 kg. Advanced lifters should sit at the lower end. Faster than that and the additional weight is mostly fat.
The size of the surplus, and that's all. A lean bulk sits at the bottom of the range and accepts slower gain for a better ratio; a larger surplus gains faster and carries more fat with it. This page gives you the range so the choice is yours rather than a label's.
Some, sometimes. Beginners, people returning after a break and those with higher body fat can gain muscle while losing fat, usually at or near maintenance. For a trained lifter in a surplus, some fat gain is part of the deal.
Long enough to make the fat gain worth it, which for most people means three or four months minimum. Ending after six weeks means the ratio of fat to muscle is at its worst just as you stop.
That page gives you one target for whichever goal you pick. This one is built for a gaining phase specifically: it takes training experience, gives you a surplus range rather than a number, and pairs it with the weekly weight change you use to check the number was right.
The food is the easy half. Getting the lifts to move so the extra calories have somewhere to go is what a free guided tour at RPM Gym in Al Manhal is for.