Diet Plan!

(IIFYM)
The diet plan I've been using for 2015 basically works like this:
1. Calculate your caloric needs for each day, including any physical exercise yo
u do.
2. Subtract 20% (for losing weight) or add 15% (for adding muscle).
3. Calculate protein, fat, and carbohydrate requirements based on your daily nee
ds.
4. Track and log food consumption to meet those goals.
5. Track and log your weight change over time to make sure you're staying on tra
ck.

1. Calculate your caloric needs for each day, including any physical exercise yo
u do:
Online calculators are the best way to do this. What I did was used several diff
erent calculators and averaged together the results. Here's a quick list:
http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/
http://tdeecalculator.net/
http://www.fitnessfrog.com/calculators/tdee-calculator.html
http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/
As an example, here's my maintenance calorie calculation from all four sites:
2666
2666
2594
2408
This breaks down to an average of 2,586 calories per day to maintain weight at m
y current physical activity level.

2. Subtract 20% (for losing weight) or add 15% (for gaining muscle)
So using myself as an example, I would want ~2068 calories a day to lose weight,
and ~2973 calories a day to gain muscle. A sensible range would be 2000-2200 ca
lories to lose weight, and 2900-3100 calories to gain weight. Hitting these numb
ers on the nose is damn near impossible, so a range helps.

3. Calculate protein, fat, and carbohydrate requirements.

To start, calculate protein. I go for about 1 gram of protein for every pound of
lean body mass, but that's because I lift all the time. For a more cardio-centr
ic weight loss routine, 0.75 grams per pound of lean body mass is plenty suffici
ent. Note that we're calculating by LEAN BODY MASS here, which means your total
weight minus any body fat. Most likely, this is around 150-160 lbs depending on
your height. You can calculate this from your BMI.
Using myself as an example again, I'm looking at 140-150 grams of protein per da
y. Protein has 4 calories per gram, for a total of ~580 calories per day.

Next, fat. My initial research suggested that 0.33 grams per pound of lean body
mass is a good amount to shoot for, but I said LOL NOPE and doubled that because
I didn't want to doom myself to a diet of chicken, fish, rice and broccoli. I g
o for 0.5 grams per pound of lean body mass for losing weight, and 0.66 grams pe
r pound of lean body mass for gaining.
Using myself as an example again, for losing weight I'd want to have ~70-80 gram
s of fat per day. Fat has 9 calories per gram, for a total of 675 calories per d
ay.
Lastly, fill in the rest with carbs. Add the calories for your protein and fat,
subtract this from your total daily calories, then divide by 4. This is roughly
how many grams of carbs you need.
For me: ~2100 calories per day, subtract 1255. This equals 845 calories of carbs
, which is ~211 grams of carbs. We'll enter this as a range of 200-220 grams.
Final calculations:
Calories: 2000-2200 per day
Protein: 140-150 grams per day
Fat: 70-80 grams per day
Carbs: 200-220 grams per day.

4. Track and log food consumption to meet those goals.

You'll want to use a digital food scale to track food consumption along with thi
s website: http://www.acaloriecounter.com/
I sprang for a premium account so I could have unlimited custom foods, but a lot
of stuff is already in the database.
The scale doesn't have to be fancy - you just want a big display so it's easy to
read. I use this one, and it works great: http://tinyurl.com/o7ppqzc
You'll want to be sure to track everything. For meats and things like that, it's
easier to weigh it and log it as raw before cooking it. For stuff like oils, ho
ney, and peanut butter, it's easier to weigh the entire container, tare it to 0
grams, then reweigh it after taking out what you need. It will come up like this
: -27g, which is how much you just used.

5. Track and log weight change over time to make sure you're on track.
If all of this is going according to plan, you should be losing 1-2 pounds per w
eek, or 4-8 pounds per month. For every 5-10 pounds you lose, you'll want to rec
alculate your macros, since your caloric needs will drop along with your weight.
If you're not losing this quickly, drop 100 calories a day (and 25g of carbs) f
rom your macros. If you're losing too quickly, add 100 calories a day (and 25g o
f carbs). Weight can fluctuate by up to 2lbs in either direction due to water we
ight, so don't take the day to day fluctuations too seriously - you're looking f
or progress week by week and month by month.
Here's a breakdown of the top 20 foods by frequency I ate while cutting weight:
http://imgur.com/GNklXL7

And here's a few days of example meal plans:

Day 1 (2119 kcal, 149g protein, 83g fat, 189g carbs)
Breakfast - Protein shake (32g powder + 1 cup skim milk) + Banana
Breakfast 2 - 1 cup lowfat cottage cheese with 3/4 cup cereal and cranberries
Lunch - Grilled chicken salad (1/2 cup chopped roasted chicken breast, veggies,
1oz dressing)
Dinner - 2 roasted chicken thighs, brown rice (1/2 cup uncooked), asparagus (12
spears + 1 tsp olive oil).
Dessert - ~20g dark chocolate

Day 2 (2077 kcal, 155g protein, 81g fat, 189g carbs)

Breakfast - Protein shake (32g powder + 1 cup skim milk) + Banana
Breakfast 2 - 1 egg scrambled with 1/2 cup egg whites, sweet potato hash with on
ion, ham, feta cheese, hot sauce (320g sweet potato, 150g onion, 3 slices of ham
, 20g feta cheese).
Lunch - Cheeseburger from CookOut or King's.
Dinner - 8oz New York Strip w/ baked kale (2 cups kale, 1 tbsp olive oil)
Dessert - 1oz dark chocolate

Addendum: Exercise!
Once you run the numbers on this, it becomes really clear that regular exercise
is a pretty necessary component to make it actually work. It takes eating only 1
600-1800 calories a day for me to lose weight while staying sedentary, while I c
an accomplish the same on 2100-2300 calories with only moderate exercise. Eating
below TDEE without exercise will also decimate muscle along with fat, which is
counterproductive - this makes your energy needs drop, which makes it more likel
y that you'll just regain the weight when you move back to maintenance calories.
Exercise signals to your body that muscle is still important and necessary, so
it's more likely to dip into your fat stores in order to maintain/repair/build i
t. I don't want to preach my personal preferences here too much because 'enjoyin
g it' makes exercise a lot more palatable, and it's likely people don't share my
preferences there. There's a good resource on choosing a plan that works for yo
u here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/getting_started#wiki_adding_exerci
se