All those who know me, know how deeply in love with F45 training I am. I love the structure of the classes, the wonderful coaches and friendships I’ve made, I love that I don’t have to worry about putting together my own training schedule and all the equipment is set up and packed away for us. It’s in and out in 45 minutes, and done for the day. Even better is that my sister is a member of the same studio, and when the stars align, we get to workout together!
One of the best things about F45 is they do regular challenges. The aim of these challenges isn’t to lose the most amount of weight by starving yourself, or being absolutely shredded with no body fat. It’s about making healthy choices and learning how to properly fuel your body for success. In order to do well in or even win a challenge, you have to eat plenty of food in order to both put ON muscle, and lose body fat (if that is your goal). The training remains the same, but there’s the extra support, coaching and nutritional support during the 6 weeks to keep you on track. It’s a great way to reset some bad habits that have crept in (snacking on the kids leftovers and ritz crackers with peanut butter are my kryptonite).
To start with you do a pre challenge ‘before’ photos, and weigh in using the InBody scales which measure a whole range of things within your physique such as visceral fat, body fat percentage, muscle mass, water ratio etc and gives you an overall score out of 100 (the higher, the better). These stats might not make much sense at first, but the coaches go through it all with you and explain things in detail. In essence what you are trying to achieve over time is a greater muscle mass to body fat percentage ratio.
For this 6 week challenge I was also training for Hyrox, so I needed to make sure I wasn’t losing muscle and strength. I set my daily calories at 2000 for a slight deficit and focussed on making sure I hit my protein targets each day, and had plenty of carbohydrates included to keep my training fuelled. This equated to quite a lot of food and I didn’t often feel hungry. A typical day would include a protein and oat smoothie for breakfast, an almond milk coffee in the morning, Mexican chicken rice or Korean pork with rice and vegetables for lunch with a kiwifruit, a wholemeal english muffin with vegemite in the afternoon before training, protein shake and two hard boiled eggs after training, a beef and pork bolognese with vegetables and wholemeal pasta, or grilled fish with low carb potatoes and vegetables for dinner, and a chobani fit yoghurt tub with a cup of tea for dessert. I was stuffed most days!
I tracked my calories using MyFitnessPal (the free version is fine!) but there is also the option of following the meal plan set out in the F45 app which has recipes for every single day of the challenge, and works out your calories once you record your stats into the app. You can also use the extremely vast recipe library on the app to create your own meal plan using the recipes that appeal to you the most. You can do full vegetarian too if needed!
This challenge our studio decided to divide into 3 teams, with a group chat on Facebook messenger keep us motivated and accountable. Our assigned coach also did a weekly check in with us to see how we were tracking and answer any questions that we might have. The group chat worked so well for us to share meal ideas, motivation and tips for eating out / eating while away for work etc.
The 6 weeks flew by, with the excitement of my upcoming hyrox race and the team support. I stayed focussed and on track, threw in a couple of cheat meals when I felt like I needed a break or just for when life happened, and before I knew it, it was time to weigh in again for the end of challenge scans and ‘after’ photos.
My results this challenge were fantastic. I put on 500g of muscle, lost 4.2kg, down 5.7% body fat. I came runner up in the overall female results for my studio, and my sister, who has worked so hard this challenge, and every day for months and months lost an impressive 7.2% body fat and gained a whopping 1.1kg of muscle. She claimed the top prize and won herself a $1000 travel voucher! We both put in so much this 6 weeks and we are feeling strong and fit. Our end of challenge party was a ‘fluro disco’ themed workout with drinks and snacks afterwards!
