A recomposition plan — add muscle, let belly fat drift down — designed around a 5-day desk job, 3×/week badminton, a cook twice a day, a corner of a room for equipment, plus the society gym on Sundays. Studies stay the priority.
// athlete26y · 5'8" · 67 kg · BMI 22.5
goalmuscle gain (limbs, overall)+ slow belly-fat loss
Everything else is detail. Hit these consistently and the body composition follows over months.
120–130 g
protein / day — the muscle-building threshold is 1.6 g/kg, benefits flatten by 2.2 g/kg. Your band: 107–145 g.
~2,400 kcal
eat around maintenance. You're lean — do not diet down. Let training reshape, not restriction.
3–4 L
water / day, especially as protein goes up.
3×/wk
structured strength around your badminton — 2 home evenings (Tue/Thu) + a Sunday gym session.
the real gap
Your current intake lands around 65–80 g protein on a good day. The whole job of the diet below is closing a ~50 g gap without turning your life into meal-prep — and the worst offender is the office canteen, which the carried lunchbox now fixes.
// 02 the clock
The day, with times
Five shapes of day. Office is Mon–Fri, so those days carry an evening of badminton (Mon/Wed/Fri), strength (Tue), or rest (Thu). Saturday is a free home day with strength in the evening — no commute — and Sunday is the gym morning. Weekday mornings stay protected for study; the weekend's free mornings are extra study room.
07:00Wake— up by 07:30 latest
07:35Freshen up
08:00Shake— muesli + 250 ml milk + 1 scoop whey. ~37 g.
why evening on Tue/Thu, morning on Sunday
Training time-of-day barely moves the needle on gains, so the slots protect what does: your morning study block stays intact every weekday, you lift fed rather than fasted, dinner becomes the post-workout meal, and Thursday is a full rest day for mid-week recovery. Sunday's gym trip — the only barbell day — gets the unhurried morning it's worth. Full reasoning lives in weekly-plan.html.
// 03 fuel
The plate, locked
Four protein anchors: morning shake → lunch → evening snack → dinner. Everything cooked at home is vegetarian; non-veg and eggs happen only when eaten out, which lands at office lunch 2–3×/week. Portions below land ~120–135 g at roughly maintenance — eat to satisfaction around the carbs/veg; the number you track is protein, not calories. The full 7-day rotation is in weekly-plan.html.
Yogabar muesli (~40 g) + 250 ml milk + 1 full scoop whey+12 g vs your half-scoop
37
08:45–09:05
Breakfast
Besan/moong chilla + curd · paneer paratha · or poha/upma loaded with peanuts + sprouts. skip chowmein except as a treat
18
09:25 / 12:00
Micros
Veg juice + pomegranate — keep both, great micronutrients
3
13:15
Lunch
1 cup dal + soya sabzi (50 g dry soya) or 100 g paneer + 2 roti + 100 g hung curd cook packs it at 07:20or non-veg out 2–3×/wk
45–50
17:00
Snack
Roasted chana / paneer cubes / fruit + nuts. (2 boiled eggs if there's a vendor near the office.)
8–13
20:00–20:45
Dinner
Veg, rotate: 150 g paneer / tofu / soya keema / thick dal + soya. + 1–2 roti + curd.
30
22:45
Optional
250 ml milk before bed (slow casein)
8
Daily total
comfortably inside the 107–145 g band
~126
The 2-week rotation
The table above is the daily template; here's the actual fortnight so dishes don't repeat too soon. Home meals are vegetarian; non-veg is eaten out at lunch (Tue/Thu/Fri); Sunday the cook is off. Dinners rotate through seasonal monsoon sabzis.
Cook off — eat out or light at home. Aim for one solid protein hit.
how to read the rotation
Every dinner = sabzi + dal + curd + roti, so protein holds (~25–30 g) while the sabzi rotates for variety. Seasonal monsoon sabzis: bhindi, lauki, arbi, turai, baingan, gawar, parwal (swap freely — karela, tinda, cucumber, pumpkin). The print-ready cook version with pictures is kitchen-sheet.html; the editable master is health-plan.md.
Your protein toolkit — memorize these
soya chunks (dry) ~52 g/100g · paneer ~18–20 g/100g · whey ~24 g/scoop
chicken breast ~27–31 g/100g · eggs ~6–7 g each · hung curd ~10 g/100g
cooked dal ~8–9 g/cup (thin dal is mostly water — people overestimate this) · milk ~8 g/glass · roasted chana ~7 g/30g
free upgrade
Regular curd is only ~3–4 g/100g; strained hung curd is ~10 g — same dahi, double the protein, zero cost. Have the cook strain it through muslin for a couple of hours.
fruit & hydration — the edge layer
Fruit is micronutrients, fiber, and training energy — not protein. Two adds that earn their place: a banana around training (~30 min before badminton/strength, or with the post-workout shake — energy + potassium for cramps), and guava as the go-to fruit-shop pick (high fiber + vitamin C, low sugar; rotate with papaya, apple, pomegranate). Prefer whole fruit over juice; don't overload the sugary ones. Nariyal pani is electrolyte hydration, not a need — best after sweating, which your Sunday post-gym timing already nails.
// 04 the lifts
Training — home build
3 strength sessions a week around your badminton. The day-by-day schedule, the timing (and why), and the Sunday society-gym session live in weekly-plan.html — the sessions and form diagrams below are your exercise library to pull from.
loading — read this, it reinterprets every weight below
Your adjustable set changes the game: each dumbbell loads to ~10 kg (split the 4×3 + 4×2 kg plates across the two handles), and the connecting rod makes a ~20 kg barbell for squats, RDLs, and rows. So wherever a move below says “3 kg,” read it as start ~5–6 kg and progress toward 8–10 kg per hand — pick a load where the last 1–2 reps of every set are genuinely hard. Use barbell mode for the lower-body and row work; that's where real load matters most. Still finish each set with a controlled 2–3 s lowering.
Run them antagonist supersets (do the paired moves back-to-back, rest ~75 s, repeat) to fit ~40 min. Alternate sessions: week 1 = A·B·A, week 2 = B·A·B. Tempo notation 3-1-1 = 3 s down, 1 s pause, 1 s up.
Push, legs & core — move library
Bulgarian split squat
quads, glutes · unilateral — your #1 leg builder with light kit
3 × 10–15 / leg · tempo 3-1-1 · hold 3 kg in each hand
Rear foot on a chair/bed; front foot far enough out that the knee tracks over the ankle, not past the toes.
Drop straight down — chest tall, weight through the front heel.
This burns more than it looks. Bodyweight first; add the dumbbells once 15 reps feel easy.
lats, upper back, biceps · bodyweight far outloads your 3 kg
3 × AMRAP (as many as possible) · tempo X-0-3
Can't do many yet? Use band-assisted pull-ups (loop the band under your feet), or do slow 3–5 s negatives jumping to the top and lowering. Both build the rep fast.
Full hang at the bottom, chin clearly over the bar at the top. Control the descent.
Switch to chin-ups (palms toward you) on some sets — more biceps, your priority.
trusted form references
The links above open YouTube search so you always get current top results. Channels worth trusting for technique: Jeff Nippard (science-based hypertrophy), Hybrid Calisthenics (bodyweight progressions), Athlean-X (form detail). Watch once, then stop watching and start logging.
// 05 the engine
How you actually progress
Your old routine plateaued because nothing forced it to get harder. With your adjustable set you now have every lever, including load. Run double progression — but climb the cheaper rungs (reps, tempo, harder variation) before reaching for more plates, so each load jump lands only once you've earned it:
1 · add reps — hit the top of the range on all sets (e.g. 20/20/20) 2 · slow the negative — push the lowering to 3–4 s before adding anything 3 · harder variation — incline→flat→archer pushup; knee→straight-leg raise; assisted→full pull-up 4 · add the band — extra tension on pushups, rows, presses 5 · add a set — 3 → 4 working sets 6 · add load — you own this rung now: add a 2 kg or 3 kg plate per hand, or load the barbell. This becomes your main driver for legs, back, and presses — use it
double progression, in one line
Pick a rep range. Add reps every session until you hit the top of the range on every set. Then make it harder (rung 2–6) and drop back to the bottom of the range. Repeat forever. The log is the program — without it you're guessing.
// 06 the record
Session log
Since you version everything, the natural home for this is a file in your repo — commit it like code ([train] log session A · wk3). Copy this template, fill weight×reps per set, and the trend tells you when to advance. One glance at last week's numbers is your progression decision.
# training-log.md · beats guessing, every time## Week 3 · Session A · Tue 30-Jun
bulgarian split squat bw | 12,12,10 # → add 3kg next time
pushup (flat) bw | 14,12,10
single-leg RDL 3kg | 12,12,12 # → 3s negative next
pike pushup bw | 10,9,8
lateral raise 3kg | 18,16,15
biceps curl 3kg | 18,15,13 # last set to failure + 3 halves
hanging knee raise bw | 13,11,10
notes: shoulders strong today. sleep 7.5h. felt good.## Week 3 · Session B · Thu 02-Jul
reverse lunge 3kg | 15,15,14
pull-up bw | 6,5,4 # band-assisted set 3
one-arm row 3kg | 15,15,15 # → add band row
band pull-apart band | 20,20,20
hammer curl 3kg | 18,16,15
overhead tri ext 3kg | 20,18,16 # → switch to diamond pushups
plank / carry 3kg | 60s / 45s
notes: grip gave out on carries. forearms cooking.
// 07 read this before you start
The honest caveats
1 · Diet permits muscle; training builds it. The food closes your protein gap, but the growth comes from progressive overload + going near failure. Neither alone is enough.
2 · You now have real load — use it. The adjustable set (up to ~10 kg/hand + a ~20 kg barbell) covers a long runway for every lift. Legs and back hit the ceiling first — pair barbell work with weighted unilateral moves (Bulgarian split squats holding 8–10 kg each hand are brutal). When even the full 20 kg stops being hard for legs, the cheap fix is a few more 2 kg / 3 kg plates; the handles and rod stay.
3 · Belly fat doesn't spot-reduce. No amount of core work burns it directly. It comes off as overall body fat drifts down at maintenance calories while muscle goes up — slow, months-long, sustainable. The RDLs, planks, and hanging raises build what sits underneath so it looks better as it goes.
4 · Protect sleep and study. Recovery happens at night — don't trade the 8 hours for a late study push. Putting strength on Tue/Thu evenings keeps your morning study block intact every weekday; the only training that owns a morning is the Sunday gym trip.
5 · Consider creatine. 3–5 g/day monohydrate — the most evidence-backed, safe, cheap supplement for muscle gain. Any time of day, just be consistent.
6 · I'm not a dietitian or doctor. At a healthy weight with no flagged conditions this is low-risk, but if you get bloodwork or have specific concerns, a registered professional is the right call.