renaissance periodization — Fitness Blog

I’ve known diet matters when it comes to fitness for a long time. However, for the past few years, while I would say that I’ve been a healthy eater, I still haven’t been able to really meat my goals. As someone who is both a lifter and runner, I want to be gaining mass to make lifting gains, but I need to lose the fat at the same time to not be carrying too much weight while I run. I’ve managed to lose weight in the past, but I wasn’t hitting new gains in the gym. I looked into Renaissance Periodization this past summer, but the templates alone were a little intimidating to me. I decided to signup for coaching in November and it has been going better than I expected.

The gist of RP is basically tracking macros. But not all macros! I effectively can ignore what’s in my vegetables, I just have to have 1-2 cups of vegetables with almost every meal. Depending on the meal, I have a set amount of grams of lean protein, set amount of healthy carbs (my favorite being Dave’s Killer Bread Powerseed), and a small amount of healthy fats. I eat four meals a day, not including whey protein plus gatorade before I workout in the morning and casein at night. I’m generally only hungry when it’s about time for another meal and I’ve been feeling pretty great.

Since I’ve had an injury recently, I can’t really compare how my running has been going. However, Crossfit has been going GREAT! I made a 15lb gain on my split jerk, a 20lb gain on my front squat, a 20lb gain on my deadlift (255lbs YESSS), and a two round increase on Cindy. Obviously, all these gains weren’t entirely completed in this month because I have been working consistently for a long time. However, I will give RP a fair amount of credit because only recently have I been feeling good enough to hit these. Also, with most cut diets, you end up losing muscle. As you will see next, that did not happen!

I did a bod pod test on November 9 to get my base levels and another on December 14. I was not super shocked the first time and SUPER SHOCKED the second time. Here are the numbers (with BMI added for comparison so you can extra see that it is not an accurate indicator if you have a lot of muscle!):

  
    Date
    Weight (lbs) 
    % Fat
    Fat Free Weight (lbs)
    BMI
  

    11/9/18
    141
    27.7
    101.9
    23.49
  

    12/14/18
    137.1
    20.8
    108.6
    22.8
  

    Change
    - 3.9
    - 6.9
    6.7
    - 0.69
  

Date	Weight (lbs)	% Fat	Fat Free Weight (lbs)	BMI
11/9/18	141	27.7	101.9	23.49
12/14/18	137.1	20.8	108.6	22.8
Change	- 3.9	- 6.9	6.7	- 0.69

I had been looking at my scale and been fairly pleased (about 4lbs lost in a month is pretty solid. But when I did the bod pod and found that it was actually about 10.6lbs of fat lost, I was astounded. In the past, when I lost fat, some muscle definitely went away with it, which was not what I wanted. This just absolutely astounded me and I am really pleased and can’t wait to see where I go next! Caveat: definitely not expecting as big a loss this month or next because women shouldn’t go below 15% body fat. I do want to make it into the ultra lean category, but I still need some fat on my body!