How do you begin to set up a diet?

A 500 Calorie per day deficit will give you 1lb of weight loss per week mathematically (assuming your metabolism is perfectly constant every day).

A 1000 Calorie daily deficit will give you a 2lb weekly weight loss (again, assuming perfectly constant metabolism).

You can assume that you burn somewhere between 200-800 Calories while training. If you’re a freak that squats 600lbs for sets of 10 all day long, it might be higher…but to keep it simple, let’s say you average 500 calories per day training.

So, let’s do some math:
Training day bmr:
3800 Calories
Off day bmr:
3300 Calories

Assuming you train 5x a week that gives us a weekly Calorie total of:
25,600 Calories
To drop 2lb of fat per week we need:
18,600 Calories

BUT--how can you make sure the lost Calories come from FAT and not MUSCLE?  That is where proper macronutrient partitioning comes into play.  

Let’s cut 1100 calories from four your Weight training days and 1300 Calories from your off days
That gives us:
Med day: 2600 Calories
Low day: 2000 Calories
That gives us 14,400 Calories over 6 days, leaving us with one high day of:
High day: 4200 Calories

To hit those numbers with a carb cycling approach you get a rough macro breakdown of:
Med day:
275g protein
250g carbs
50g fat
*When you include incidental calories from fat in your protein sources, etc that will give you around 2800 total calories

Low day:
300g protein
50g carbs
50g fat
*with incidentals, this puts you around 2,000 Calories

High day:
200g protein
800g carbs
0g fat (no added fat)
*with incidentals, this puts you around 4,200 Calories

Now–this is the easy part. The hard part is knowing what ADJUSTMENTS to make to this diet when your metabolism changes, when fat burners are added, when cardio amount/intensity changes, and when your body flattens out and creates an environment where muscle loss can occur from the deficit instead of fat loss. That’s where hiring a diet coach comes into play!