Martin's Recomp Kitchen

The maintenance figure is an estimate, and it can be off by 10% or more for any one person. Your scale over the first three weeks is the real measurement. Treat 2,300 as the opening bid.

On protein: a meta-analysis of 49 trials found that muscle gain from lifting stops improving at around 1.6 g/kg a day, with the uncertainty reaching up to 2.2 g/kg. Those trials were not run in a deficit. When you are eating below maintenance the body is quicker to break muscle down, so the plan sits near the top of that range. High protein also keeps you fuller than the same calories from carbs or fat.

You cannot buy 230 g of tenderloin, so the plan never asks for it. Each meat or fish is one whole pack, split over two or three days in a row, as two different dishes or as one pot eaten twice.

• Type in what the pack weighs. On the shopping list, enter the real weight of each pack. If the tenderloin is 580 g, each portion becomes 290 g and the potatoes and rice shrink a little so the day still lands on target.
• Look for the "Prep ahead" note. It tells you what to cook or set aside today for the days that follow.
• Check use-by dates in the shop. The second shop holds pork and turkey breast until the weekend. Whole vacuum-packed cuts usually allow that. If the date falls short, freeze the pack on shopping day and move it to the fridge the night before.
• Mince and fish go first. That is why they sit at the start of each shop. Cooked meat keeps three days in a closed box in the fridge.
• A pack much bigger than planned? Cut off the extra and freeze it raw, rather than eating 400 g portions.
• Cans are used whole. One can of beans and a can and a half of tomatoes go into the chilli; the spare half can goes into Wednesday's curry. Half-used jars of sauerkraut keep for weeks.

• Weigh food raw. Meat and fish before cooking, rice, pasta, lentils and grains dry, cans drained. 100 g of dry rice becomes about 280 g cooked, so mixing the two up is the most common way a plan fails.
• Weigh the oil. Put the pan on the scale, zero it, pour. A free-poured "splash" is often 15–20 g, which is 130–180 kcal.
• Move pairs, not single meals. A pack's two or three days belong together, so swap the whole pair with another pair (pork with turkey, say) and the totals barely shift. Do not drop the evening bowl; it carries 30–45 g of the day's protein.
• No breakfast is fine. Total protein and calories across the day are what count, not when the first meal lands. The plan splits protein over four sittings of roughly 30–70 g each. Black coffee, tea and water in the morning change nothing. If you train before lunch, move the shake to right after the session.
• Vegetables are a floor. If you are still hungry, add more broccoli, cucumber, tomatoes, salad leaves or sauerkraut. They cost almost nothing in calories.
• Drink 2.5–3 litres of water a day. More on training days. Coffee and tea without sugar are free.

Weigh yourself every morning after the toilet and before eating, and compare weekly averages, never single days. Measure your waist at the navel once a week as a second signal.

• Aim for 0.5–0.8 kg a week. Studies of athletes cutting weight found that losing about 0.7% of body weight a week kept or even added lean mass, while faster losses did not.
• No change for two weeks in a row: move down to 2,100.
• Losing more than 1 kg a week after week three, or your reps are dropping: move up to 2,500.
• Expect the scale to rise 1–2 kg in the first weeks of creatine. That is water held inside muscle, not fat. Judge progress from week three onward, and by the waist measurement.
• Recalculate every 5 kg lost. A lighter body burns less, so the same food becomes a smaller deficit.

Every food in this plan is naturally free of gluten. The risk is in what gets added during processing. These are the labels to read:

• Your oat milk. Oats contain no gluten themselves, but most are grown and milled alongside wheat and barley. Many oat drinks sold in Europe are not gluten-free. Buy one that says "gluten-free" on the carton, or switch the shake to lactose-free milk, soy or almond drink.
• Rolled oats. Same problem. Only buy oats labelled gluten-free.
• Whey powder. Whey is gluten-free, but flavoured powders, especially cookie and biscuit flavours, can contain it. Check the allergen line on your tub.
• Soy sauce. It is brewed with wheat. Use tamari labelled gluten-free.
• Stock cubes, mustard, curry powder and spice blends. Wheat flour is a common filler and thickener.
• Processed meat. Sausages, burgers, meatballs, breaded or marinated meat and some ham contain breadcrumbs or wheat starch. The plan uses plain cuts for this reason.
• Rice cakes and gluten-free pasta. Some multigrain rice cakes include barley or spelt.
• Beer, and anything with barley malt extract, including some chocolate and cornflakes.

In the EU, "gluten-free" on a label means under 20 mg of gluten per kg, and cereals containing gluten must be highlighted in the ingredients list.

• Creatine: 5 g every day, training or not. Timing does not matter; the shake is just an easy place to remember it.
• Whey: 30 g a day is already counted in the plan, with 300 ml of oat milk. If your scoop is a different size, weigh it once.
• Oat milk adds about 140 kcal and only 3 g of protein to each shake. Mixing with water instead saves those calories; you could spend them on 40 g more dry rice.

Food decides whether you lose weight. Training decides whether that weight is fat or muscle. Three or four sessions a week that work every major muscle, taken close to failure, with reps or load going up over time, is what makes the protein count.

The bands are a good buy. Looped over the pull-up bar they take some of your weight, so you can do full pull-ups for more reps at 100 kg, and they add rows, face pulls and resisted push-ups that dumbbells do not cover well.

This plan assumes healthy kidneys and no medication that affects diet. If either is in question, show the numbers to your doctor first.