Starting from 24 February 2025, I am starting a 90 Days muscle building challenge with my friend, Pradeep (a vegetarian). The aim is to help him build as much muscle mass as possible in 90 days but with 2 conditions:
- Daily training sessions must be less than 45 minutes
- Daily budget for diet is just Rs. 100
Why these two conditions?
Because generally people think that doing a transformation requires a lot of time and money and with this challenge we want to change that.
We will try to keep things as simple as possible so any newbie can follow them easily without getting overwhelmed.
PRADEED’S BODY STATS
Lets talk about Pradeep and what his body needs. Pradeep has about 2 months of gym experience in the last 6 months.
Pradeep at Day 1 of the challenge
| Stat | Measurement |
|---|---|
| Height | 167 cm |
| Weight | 49.6 |
| Age | 18 |
| Biceps | 10.9″ |
| Forearm | 9.3″ |
| Chest | 31″ |
| Shoulder | 41″ |
| Thigh | 17″ |
| Calf | 12.2″ |
Here are his body composition, measured with a budget scale that uses impedance for measurement. These scales are not very accurate but gives a good ball park estimates which we can use to measure if we are moving in the right direction.
Clearly, Pradeep is underweight that means he is not eating enough calories to gain weight. His bodyfat is also little low which means he can do a bulk and look good in clothes without worrying about getting fat or his stomach sticking out.
CALORIES AND MACROS
By entering Pradeep’s body stats into a TDEE Calculator we found that:
Pradeep’s BMR is about 1350 Calories, BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate is the amount of calories our body burns to keep as alive
Pradeep’s TDEE is 2000 Calories, TDEE or Total Daily Energy Expenditure is the amount of calories we need to eat to maintain our bodyweight.
As we know, To gain 1 kg weight we need to eat 7000 Calories over TDEE, So eating 500 extra calories per day will help us gain 0.5 kg per week or eating 1000 extra calories per day will help us gain 1 kg per week.
For our challenge we will aim to gain 0.5 kg per week but I believe even gaining 0.25 kg per week is a good goal for anyone, this may seem a small gain but thing in terms of months not days or weeks. Life is a marathon, not a sprint.
So, Pradeep needs to eat 2000 (TDEE) + 500 Calories per day that will help him gain around 6.5 Kg weight in 90 days
90 Days = 13 Weeks * 0.5 Kg per week = 6.5 Kg
making his weight around 55 kg after 90 days.
Do we need to count every single calorie that we eat? If you can then yes, do it. Personally I find it nearly impossible to do so with Indian diet.
So we will be a little smart about it. Pradeep’s current weight is 49.6 kg that means he is eating around 2000 calories a day already (Home cooked food), Instead of accounting for all 2500 calories we will just ask him to keep eating that he generally eats and add additional 500 calories which he can track easily.
PROTEIN
As muscle are make up of protein and we want him to gain majority of the weight in muscle mass he needs to eat enough protein, We will go with 1.6g per kg of bodyweight rule. This is the sweet spot to maximize muscle growth as we are on a limited budget of Rs. 100 per day as well.
So Pradeep needs to eat, 49.6 * 1.6 = ~80g gram protein per day. For simplicity we will not be concerning ourselves with tracking fats and carbs as are not necessary (at this stage).
TRAINING PROTOCOL
Pradeep will do resistance training 6 days/week, 6 days a week may seem a little high for people but going to the gym 6 days per week will build a habit as consistency which is very important.
For the first week, Pradeep will do full body workout or what’s called ‘mix workout’ in India everyday and yes training full body everyday is not ideal from recovery stand point but this will serve multiple purposes
- Doing full workout for the whole week will make sure you get do all the general exercises (free weight and machines) multiple times hence learning the correct form and movement patterns for them.
- Get your whole body active, for the first week some people get sore and feel a little pain.
- Learn the names of all machines and exercises and their target muscles.
- Find your current strength on each exercise.
After the first week we will move to bro-split, Doing 1 muscle group per day namely: Chest, Shoulder, Triceps, Bicep, Back and Legs.
Now you may think, why not Push-Pull-Legs as the frequency of training of each muscle is twice per week in PPL. I believe for a newbie PPL can be a overwhelming in the gym as well as from recovery standpoint specially when majority of people don’t eat enough protein and has poor sleep quality.
I’ll write separate post for the training routine, exercise selection and the split as well as for the exact diet Pradeep will be having for the budget of Rs. 100 as a vegetarian who doesn’t even eat eggs.