Lean bulk meal plan: 2,700 calories, 160 g protein

The short answer: 2,700 is a lean bulk if your maintenance is about 2,500

Two numbers decide whether a day of eating is a lean bulk: your estimated maintenance and the size of the step above it. The rules we used, in the order we applied them:

• Calories: estimated maintenance plus a modest surplus. For our example man that is about 2,500 plus 200, so 2,700 (an 8% surplus, estimated).
• Protein: 1.6 to 2.2 g per kg of body weight. For 75 kg that is 120 to 165 g, and we aimed at 160 g, or 2.1 g per kg (estimated).
• Fat: about 25% of calories, which is 75 g, or 1.0 g per kg (estimated).
• Carbs: everything else at 4 calories per gram, which is 346 g, or 4.6 g per kg (estimated).

If your maintenance is higher or lower than 2,500, your lean bulk number moves with it, and the table in the next section shows how. The arithmetic behind each step is in our guide to calculating macros, and the three-goal comparison is in macro split for muscle gain, cutting and maintenance.

How big should the surplus be?

Nobody knows exactly, and the research says so. A 2019 review by Slater and colleagues in Frontiers in Nutrition states that the specific energy surplus required to facilitate muscle hypertrophy is unknown, and that the usual estimates have never been validated in people doing resistance training (Slater and colleagues, 2019). So any number is a starting point you adjust from your own results.

The most practical range comes from a narrative review of off-season nutrition for bodybuilders. It suggests a surplus of about 10% to 20% above maintenance, aiming at a weight gain of about 0.25% to 0.5% of body weight per week for novice and intermediate lifters, and a more conservative surplus and rate for advanced ones (Iraki and colleagues, 2019). It is a review of an evidence base the authors describe as thin, written about bodybuilders, so read it as a reasonable range and not a rule.

Here is the part the typical "2,700 calorie lean bulk" page leaves out: the maintenance that would make 2,700 a lean bulk. We worked it backwards from the review's range.

If your maintenance is already near 2,700, then 2,700 calories is maintenance, not a bulk. If it is 2,900, 2,700 is below maintenance, which is a deficit, not a bulk. That is why a calorie number copied from a plan can fail in either direction. For each maintenance level, this is where the range lands:

The example: one 75 kg man

Our example is a 30-year-old man, 180 cm and 75 kg (5 ft 11 in, 165 lb), who lifts three or four days a week. The Mifflin-St Jeor equation, derived from 498 healthy adults (Mifflin and colleagues, 1990), gives him 10 × 75 + 6.25 × 180 − 5 × 30 + 5 = 1,730 calories at rest. We multiplied by 1.45, our own choice between the usual "lightly active" and "moderately active" factors, which gives 2,508 and rounds to a maintenance estimate of 2,500. That estimate can easily be off by a tenth either way, so a real person would adjust it after a few weeks.

His step above maintenance is 200 calories, 8%. For a man of his weight, 0.25% to 0.5% of body weight per week is 0.19 to 0.38 kg, or about 0.4 to 0.8 lb. That is a target to watch, not a forecast of what will happen to him.

Is 160 g of protein right for you?

Two sources frame it. A meta-analysis of 49 studies and 1,863 healthy adults found that protein beyond about 1.6 g per kg a day gave no further gain in fat-free mass in people doing resistance training (Morton and colleagues, 2018). The International Society of Sports Nutrition puts the range for building or maintaining muscle at 1.4 to 2.0 g per kg a day (Jäger and colleagues, 2017). The off-season review above says 1.6 to 2.2 g per kg. Taken together, 1.6 g per kg is the point most of the evidence agrees on, and the higher numbers are a margin.

The catch is that 160 g is a body-weight number, not a universal one. We divided it by different body weights:

So 160 g sits inside the 1.6 to 2.2 g per kg range for anyone from about 73 kg to 100 kg. If you weigh 60 kg, 160 g is 2.7 g per kg, above every range quoted here, and you would be eating protein calories that the sources do not tie to extra muscle. Use your own weight. Our guide to how much protein per day goes through it with more examples.

The day: 17 foods, four meals

Targets are only arithmetic, so we composed a day from ordinary food: oats and eggs for breakfast, a chicken burrito bowl for lunch, yogurt, almonds and an apple as a snack, and beef pasta for dinner. The portions were fitted in 5 to 50 g steps by a small search that minimizes the distance to the calorie, protein, fat and carb targets, then summed line by line. It is one example, not a recommendation to eat exactly this, and we did not cook or weigh it in a kitchen.

Two things about the shape of the day. First, the carbohydrate is carried by ordinary starches: oats, rice, pasta and fruit. There is nothing in it that a normal grocery run cannot supply. Second, the day is generous in volume: 275 g of cooked rice and 275 g of cooked pasta are big plates, and that is typical of a 2,700-calorie day at this much protein. If you struggle to finish plates, the add-on table below shows compact ways to add calories.

What the day adds up to

Every food was multiplied by its USDA value per 100 g and the lines summed. Against the targets:

The calories land within 1% of the target and the three macros within about 2 g. Two honest notes. The fiber is high at about 44.5 g, mostly from oats, beans and fruit, so if you eat much less fiber today, build up toward it over a couple of weeks. And protein per meal is uneven: lunch and dinner carry about 51 g each, the snack 20 g. The International Society of Sports Nutrition gives about 0.25 g per kg, or 20 to 40 g, per meal as a general guide, and the off-season review gives 0.40 to 0.55 g per kg, which is 30 to 41 g at 75 kg. Our lunch and dinner are above that band. Nothing in these sources says that is harmful for a healthy adult, but it is why you may prefer to move some of the beef or chicken into the snack. Our guides to how much protein per meal and high protein dinner ideas cover that.

Swap test: change the chicken, keep the protein

A plan you cannot adjust is not much use, and the most common adjustment is swapping the main protein. We replaced the 100 g of roasted chicken at lunch, which gives 31 g of protein, with six other foods, each in the quantity that keeps protein within 0.5 g, and recalculated the day.

The spread is large. Keeping protein identical, the day moves from 2,655 to 2,867 calories, a gap of 212 (estimated). Tuna, yogurt and chicken keep the day under 2,700; beef, salmon and eggs push it past 2,770, mostly through fat. Fat in the day goes from 73.9 g to 93.6 g with the eggs, which is 1.25 g per kg and still inside the 0.5 to 1.5 g per kg the off-season review gives for fat. This is the practical lesson of protein first: two foods with the same protein can differ by more than 100 calories, so a swap changes the surplus unless you adjust something else, usually the rice or oil.

Small ways to add calories when the plate is too big

If you cannot finish 2,700 calories, or your maintenance turns out higher, you will want to add or remove about 150 calories at a time. Each row below is about 150 calories (estimated), so you can stack them or take one away.

Oil and nuts add the most calories per bite, which helps if you get full early, while rice, banana and oats add carbohydrate you can feel in training. Milk and oats are the two that bring protein along with the calories.

How to run it for a few weeks

Treat the 2,700 as a hypothesis. Weigh yourself under the same conditions a few mornings a week and look at the weekly average, not a single reading. Compare it with the 0.25% to 0.5% a week target, with your training and with how you feel. If the average is flat for two or three weeks, add 150 calories from the table above. If it rises faster than your target, take 150 away, since the review says advanced lifters should be more conservative. Day-to-day precision matters less than the weekly pattern, and a day that is 5% off is an ordinary day.

Two cautions. Your maintenance estimate is a starting point and can be off by a tenth, which is 250 calories at this level, more than the whole surplus. And weighing cooked and dry food against the wrong value can move a meal by hundreds of calories: 100 g of cooked white rice is 130 calories, while 100 g of dry oats is 389 (estimated). Our guide to counting macros raw or cooked explains how to keep one convention, and meal prep for the week shows how to cook these portions in batches.

When to ask a professional instead

This is general information, not medical advice. If you have diabetes, kidney disease or a food allergy, are pregnant or breastfeeding, are under 18, have or have had an eating disorder, or take medication that affects your appetite or blood sugar, ask a doctor or a registered dietitian for your numbers before you follow any of this. If a professional has given you calorie or macro targets, use theirs. Eating above maintenance on purpose can become an unhealthy habit for some people, so stop and talk to someone if counting or eating more than you want causes worry about food.

Doing this every week without the spreadsheet

This part is written by the team behind MacroRecipe, so read it with that in mind. The method above is easy to do once and tedious to repeat: the day needed 17 lines and a search to hit four targets, and a week of different days is more than 100. If you enjoy the arithmetic, a spreadsheet and a kitchen scale are enough, and USDA FoodData Central is where to look values up.

MacroRecipe does the matching step. It plans your week of menus around your macros and the goal you choose, from dishes you pick, with ingredient data from USDA and CIQUAL (ANSES). It sizes portions toward your estimated calorie and protein targets, and when you swap a dish the portions and the grocery list follow, with quantities added up across recipes. That is the swap test above, done for you: keep the three dishes you like and let the app fill in the rest.

Who it isn't for: MacroRecipe runs on iPhone only, not on Android. It has no barcode scanner, no food database to search and no complete daily food diary, though a photo scan of a meal eaten elsewhere comes with the subscription. You can preview your first menu for free, after which it is a paid subscription. If you would rather log everything you eat, see our MacroFactor alternatives guide.

How we calculated

Every food line is the portion in grams multiplied by its value per 100 g in USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy, read from the April 2018 CSV downloaded from the USDA dataset page on 2026-11-02. Calories are USDA's own energy values, not recomputed. Carbohydrate is by difference, as USDA lists it. We used one matching food per item and did not mix brands.

• Equation. Mifflin-St Jeor times 1.45, rounded to the nearest 50 calories (estimated 2,508 to 2,500). The 1.45 factor is our choice.
• Targets. Protein 160 g (2.1 g per kg), fat at 25% of calories, carbs the rest at 4 calories per gram. The 200-calorie step is our illustrative choice, not a recommendation.
• Portions. The day was fitted from 17 foods in steps of 5 to 50 g, to be close to the four targets with protein at 160 g or more, then summed line by line. The fit is ours, so other days are possible.
• Swap test. Each food was scaled to the protein of 100 g of roasted chicken (31.02 g), rounded to 5 g, and the day recomputed from the USDA values.
• Not tested. We did not measure anyone's energy use or results, and the day was not cooked and weighed in a kitchen. This is a recount of a composed menu, not a study.

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