Trying to dial in my diet. I’ve been lifting consistently for a little over a year. I’m 34 yrs old, 6’ and about 190-195 lbs right now. My diet has been all over the place. I’m weighing/counting everything right now and doing about 2,000 kcal per day trying to lose fat. My BMR is around 2,900 kcal. Once I lose the amount of fat that I want, I plan on adding more food back in to try and put on some muscle.

My question is: how much extra is it recommended to consume for building muscle? I’m not trying to be a body builder for whom eating is a full time job and I don’t want to gain a bunch of unnecessary body fat.  Just trying to build some muscle and look good with my shirt off. Would 500 excess calories be enough? Is that too much?

I am aware that I need to be hitting a protein goal and I’ll dial my macros accordingly. Just wondering what the overall calorie number should be.

As few as possible to hit about 1.5gram/lb of body weight of protein.

Let's say that's 250g/day.   1 lean chicken breast is 40g, and about 250kcal. So just eating pure chicken and nothing else you're already at 1,500kcal. Throw in cooking oil, fruits, veggies, some sauces, cheese, some carbs, other less lean meats, and you'll get all the calories you need.

Unless you're cutting, I wouldn't worry about anything else other than 1) getting the protein, and 2) making sure everything is healthy and unprocessed. My only suggestion would be avoid carbs before bedtime and at dinner. Stick with veggies and protein for dinner.

200-500 calories a daily over maintenance for bulking. I'd start at 200 for a few weeks and adjust from there.

This.

I'd also recommend ramping up your calories slowly after stopping your cut. BMR is a generic guide. Your metabolism could have adjusted during your cut and your BMR may be different after losing bodyfat.

It's best to figure out your maintenance over a week or two before starting a bulk or a cut. I eat roughly the same amount of calories every day and my weight stays roughly the same plus or minus a couple pounds so when I go to cut after my upcoming meet, I already know how much to cut out and when.

IMO I think 500 calories a day over maintenance is not only old school, but outdated.  Except for powerlifting where strength is the ultimate goal and not so much physique or health.  

500 calories a day over maintenance is a pound a week, most of which is gonna be fat which is harder to work off.  I have forgotten where, but from what I read more recent studies have shown you don't need much in the way of excess intake to build muscle.  Spend at least a few weeks figuring out what your maintenance is, IMO then start at the low end there a few hundred a day over.

how did you come up with your BMR?

250cal over maintenance as determined by a TDEE calculator.
1-1.5 gram Protein per lb of weight.
Progressive overload.
7+ hours of sleep a night.

The most common recommendation is TDEE+10% to start. So if you're TDEE is actually 2900 for maintenance, then 2900+290=3190 for a bulk.

Bulk until you're unhappy with your physique or go higher than 20% body fat, whichever comes first.

I plugged my info into every online BMR calculator that I could find and then took the average of all of those.

Been listening to "Bigger, Leaner, Stronger" audiobook and he says 5-10% over maintenance for bulking, so right in line with this.

It gets confusing when all over social media and the bodybuilding world you see guys eating 5k calories per day on a bulk. I just have to remember that most of those guys are on serious gear and their workouts and calorie demands are much different than mine.

Your BMR or your RMR (probably mean RMR).  Hypertrophy is an adaption that take 8 weeks to start but if you’re not changing your volume or modality no amount of eating will help. Do you want the hypertrophy or simple strength?

I would start at 500 calories for 4 weeks and see how you feel and adjust as needed.

The first thing to is stop listening to social media influencers. If you have a local university with an Exercise Physiology program call and see if they do VO2 max tests and pay to have it done. I say this because you can then finesse your way into a free exercise prescription.

Also for 4 weeks try cutting your gym time down to 2 days and increase volume.  See what increasing volume but decreasing frequency does for you.

What would be the point of cramming everything into 2 days per week?

That's a good starting point.  What you really want to do is do that for a few weeks and confirm your maintenance first.  You'll want to track your weight daily and take the average vs. a specific day to help mitigate differences in water weight.

Volume>frequency. When you increase volume hit decrease frequency you see more efficient and faster progression. Volume equates to better maximal strength adaptation and hyper trophy. In part because you’re not truly recovered from a workout for 7-10 days. That’s why someone can say their max squat for instance today is 87 pounds and squat it. But three days from now they may only be able to squat 57 pounds.

If you're willing to spend a little bit of $$ (like $50), I highly suggest checking out the MacroFactor app. It's run by Greg Nuckols and Erix Trexler, both respected writers and researchers in the this space. It gets promoted by a few influencers with affiliate deals, but don't let that deter you.

It's like My Fitness Pal, but way better IMO. As long as you're diligent about logging food and your weight, it calculates your rolling TDEE for you. Then you can set goals like cutting/bulking, and it offers suggest rates to aim for. Once per week it calculates what you need to change and adjusts your calorie and macro targets for you.

Unless you are sitting on 225lbs+ of lean muscle like Ronnie Coleman or something…I’m going out on a limb here and saying that BMR is pretty high.  Like, way high.

ETA:  That number is likely your total caloric burn per day, which would include your BMR + NEAT + Active Burn

1000% agree I'm a macro factor convert for the reasons mentioned.  Logging food is so easy. It takes away the biggest hurdles to effective tracking.  It's managing a cut for me right now and I'm perfectly down the predicted range.

Watching Jeff Nipperd (who I think is a part owner) is how I discover it. It was created by actual power lifters not a venture capital group.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Not the minimum amount of calories just to stay alive, but total expended per day. Sorry, there's too much terminology to keep up with.

I lift weights 4-5 days a week and I have a pretty active job and home life (2 small boys). My TDEE is 2800-2900 on all of the online calculators.

Just roll with 2800 or 2900 for a few weeks and see how it goes.  

I ain't gonna lie I've just winged it with the calculators before.  

No biggie if you're under, but if you're over then you just have a really high surplus and get fat really fast.  Best practice is to confirm your baseline first before cutting or bulking.  There are way too many variables involved for any one calculator to be right except by luck.

ETA: Just re-read your OP, and if you're 34, weighing everything, and 800-900 under maintenance how have things gone?  You should be getting hungry as hell with that deficit and be at least a pound lighter after over a week.

So, first off, I hope you are using MyFitnessPal or a comparable App to track your macro-nutrients and calorie intake.

The Macronutrient break down is more important than just the raw calorie consumption, especially for a bulk.

Second, you must recognize that without PEDs you are very unlikely to gain just muscle and very little fat.  In a bulk, you are going to add on fat in addition to muscle and there is no avoiding that fact.  The key is to try to get the ratio of muscle to fat to favor that muscle and that can be done.  

In terms of Macronutrient break down, you want to establish you maintenance calories.  There are calculators online that will help you do this, but keep in mind that everyone is VERY different in how their bodies process nutrients.  So the online calculators are just a guestimate and start point.  You take that online calculator guestimate and you treat the next two week like just a start point to get on an even keel.  You Do NOT change your workout routine at all during that two week period, you keep your workout routine as consistent and steady as possible. So, you don't add weight or reps to your lifts and you sure as shit don't add cardio or go more intense with your cardio, just nice and steady like you've been doing.  That will get you your base, if you gain weight or drop weight than you adjust very slightly until you're dialed in and staying at a weight that is consistent.

Now, what is consistent weight?  A lot of guys measure their weight daily, but although you need to weight yourself daily you don't measure your weight loss or gain daily.  You measure your weight loss or gain by weekly weight averages.  What was your average weight after one week of weight ins?  That's your week one weight that you will then measure against your second week's average weight ins.  Always weight yourself first thing in the morning before you eat anything, after you've used the bathroom and before you shower and get wet.   In other words, your empty stomach, empty bladder, naked dry weight each morning.  

For your macronutrient break down, after you have your maintenance calories and macronutrient break down you're going to want to adjust it slightly.   In weight loss, we're looking to do about a 500 calorie deficit, but weight/muscle gain is going to be much more gradual than weight loss if you're doing it right.  So, with weight loss you're looking to drop no more than 1.5 to at most 3 lbs, a week (again measured by week 1 average vs. week 2 average, and so forth).   With weight gain you're going to want to be at around 1.5 lbs every three weeks or so, a much smaller gain and controlled bulk that is looking to keep your body fat as low as possible.   So, while in a 12 week cut period you might be able to lose anywhere from 12 to 36 lbs, in a 12 week bulk period you're maybe going to gain 6 lbs of muscle if you're dialed in right.  Your first bulk is your educational bulk and not likely to be the most successful bulk if you're doing this alone without an experienced nutrition coach.  

Here is the thing, any muscle you put on in a bulk will increase, even if done properly, your body fat percentage.  So, it's basically two steps forward and one step back as once you go into a cut it will lose some muscle in that cut to get back to the lower body percentage, but if you do the cut correctly than you should retain at least half of the muscle you put on during your bulk while stripping more of the fat.  This is a cycle you do and do again over the course of years and that's how you slowly over a period of years become a natural beast.  

Keep in mind throughout this process how skewed all of our images are of what is "reasonable" to expect in the gym.  Guys on PEDs who are on social media can achieve 20 lbs of muscle with very little fat gain in months, but for those going the natural route it will take years and years and even then you'll never be as lean and yet large as some guy taking PEDs.  I state this, because it's really easy to get discouraged when you realize just how long it takes to pack on muscle and still stay lean.  It is a very difficult balance to achieve and because everyone is just a tiny bit different it's something that take a lot of trial and error to dial in for everyone, especially if they're doing it without help on the cheap.  

If you're damn serious about gaining muscle and being shredded then you really should look into a nutrition coach that gives you personal one on one attention and recalculates your macro numbers based on your reports daily numbers (macs, cals, cardio burn, etc.).  That's pricey, but if you want the best results and especially if your new to this macro thing that's the best way to get started.  Guys will spend tens of thousands on guns, night vision, and so forth and still be fat, because they will not spend a couple grand a year on a nutrition coach...that's crazy to me.  Not saying that's you, but it amazes me how so many guys like including myself years ago will avoid spending money on any help when it comes to their physique.  

Good luck.

Then I will co-sign everything talked about here in this thread .

No need to be in a super calorie surplus, just enough that your body isn't stressing during recovery.  A few hundred extra calories, mostly protein excess, but some carbs excess (carbs are super anabolic promoting growth/recovery).  

You can "bulk" faster, but I take it to mean you are just trying to maximize lean mass additions and don't want or need to just "bulk" up with extra layers of fat.

Yeah, I want to echo the dude above that said avoid social media "influencers" and YT talking heads man.

There are some good things to learn, but you've got to remember so many of those guys are on gear.  Gear really skews everything in a massive way in terms of metabolism and recovery.  I spent my 20's and 30's trying to workout o'natural while also measuring myself against those types of guys and that was a massive mistake.