My Experience (So Far) with RP Strength - Part 1

Whoa! It's been a hot minute since I've posted anything on my blog, so let me see if I can quickly get everyone up to speed since I've last written a post (which was in March 2017).

But First, Let’s Talk Motos

I finished my first year as an expert AFM racer by getting third in the 250 Superstock championship. Not bad by any means, but when it comes to my personal goals I set myself for that year, I fell short. I wanted to become a better racer, but each round I kept losing the desire and determination that I had my first two years of racing. I crashed twice this past season, which didn’t help with my confidence.

On top of that, I had other things preoccupying my mind and time (fitness), so it was hard to have my cake and eat it, too. Even though this racing season wasn’t what I totally envisioned, I’m so proud of everything I’ve accomplished. I’ve decided to take a break from racing to reset my mind, time, and money (it’s really expensive to race). I hope to get back into it once I can have those things better aligned.

Disordered Eating

A few weeks after writing my last blog post, I was introduced to Renaissance Periodization (aka, RP Strength) by a thread post in the Barbella Box Facebook group page. Folks were raving about this diet as if it was the next best thing since sliced bread.

Now, when it comes to diets, I’ve done my fair share. And what I’m about to write is a bit difficult; however, I feel it’s important to share with those reading this. I used to have an eating disorder in my teens and briefly in my 20's—I struggled with anorexia and bulimia. The way I viewed my body was always disordered, and I used to think that no matter what I did to improve it, it was never good enough. Thankfully, I kicked this disordered eating out of my life, but the way I looked at myself didn’t change: I never felt I was society’s definition of thin, therefore, my body was unsatisfactory.

So, when it came to keeping my weight down, I’ve done veganism (that lasted for two weeks), clean eating, paleo, cabbage soup diet, and Whole 30. I eventually stuck with clean eating since I had more food options to choose from. This eventually turned into a high fat, low carb diet (since, you know, carbs are bad for you) and it was fine for roughly two years. I did feel a little deprived at times, but I was keeping my weight down. At one point, I hit 139 lbs., but I couldn’t maintain that, so I hovered around 142-144 lbs. for a while.

When it came to my workouts these past three years, I started off being a hardcore runner. I got into CrossFit to help me with my strength so that I could be a faster runner. Well, that turned into me picking up CrossFit, scaling back on running, and now I’m a full-time CrossFitter that also competes in local comps because they’re fun.

When I fully transitioned into CrossFit, I started gaining muscle mass, and I really liked it. I started following CrossFit Games athletes on social media, and admired both their strength and physique. I always wondered how I could get to half the level they were at? I mean, I loved being strong, but I didn’t know how to properly get stronger. Initially, I tried picking up my workout regimen to twice a day some days/doing to more days a week. But I immediately noticed that my progress was slow, and my body did not look as strong as I felt. At this point in my life—and for the first time ever in my life—I wasn’t too concerned about my appearance, but I wanted something to be done about my performance.

Getting into RP

After reading all the comments about RP Strength, I looked deeper into it. RP has two main diet templates: one for losing weight and one to put on weight to gain muscle. Of course, I researched the weight loss templates because that’s what I always felt I needed to do—lose fat. The program is designed to be done in a 12-week period, which at face value, doesn’t seem like a long time. Okay—so far, so good.

However, I didn’t immediately get on board with RP because the process looked a bit aggressive. It doesn’t require you to count calories, but you do need to eat according to the macro count they give you. Not only that, your macros are determined by your gender, current weight, time of day you work out, and your workout’s intensity. There’s a “How-to” guide and FAQ that’s given out once you purchase the templates, which is great. But what really got me questioning if I could do this was whether I could keep track of macros and weigh it out every single day. At the time, I felt that too much time was going to be spent on that, so I shelved the idea…

Then proceeded to take it off the shelf thanks to Barbella Box. This monthly subscription box for gals who like to CrossFit and lift offered a discount on the RP diet templates and a free copy of the Renaissance Woman e-book, which explains the “why” behind RP’s methodology. I figured, what the hell, and took advantage of that month’s box and RP.

Trimming Off the Ends

I started RP at the highest weight I’ve been at in a while: 151 lbs. After reading all the materials that came with the fat-loss template, joining as many RP FaceBook groups, and scouring the internet for reviews/tips, I was ready to do a trial run of it. I did a trial because I wanted to see if I could even do it before I fully committed. I kept it super simple: I just ate what they recommended on the templates.

This is the older 2.0 templates. If you want to see RP's 3.0 templates, head over to their website. 

Once I got the ball rolling, I realized that it was a bit less food than I was used to—mainly it was less fat and more carbs. Not only that, but I had to drink a protein/carb mixture during my workouts, which took a bit to get used to since I like working out on an empty stomach. Weekends were very VERY hard, I tried to adhere as closely as I could to the templates, and sometimes I did and sometimes I did not. I did have a few cheat meals (mainly wine) and hoped that I could still get results. But I was prepared if things slowed-down or didn’t change since it’s recommended that you stay strict for the whole 12 weeks.

Around week six, I started seeing results. Overall, I felt better: I slept better, I was getting stronger, and for the first time in my life, I could see abs trying to poke their way through. I started tightening up the diet by meal prepping for weekends, especially when I went to the track. Doing RP Strength when you race motorcycles is insanely hard, and even though I wasn’t 100%, I feel like I did a pretty damn good job with what I had to work with.

I only did RP for 10.5 weeks since I planned to do a 230-mile bicycle ride the following week. But honestly, that’s really all I needed. I was floored by my results.

On the left: 151 lbs. On the right: 146 lbs. 

I didn’t even lose that much weight. I ended at 146 lbs., but the body composition changes were insane! I did a BodySpec scan two weeks after this photo was taken and I clocked in at 14.9% body fat. At that moment, it was clear to me that RP Strength works and it was something that I could see myself doing for the rest of my life. Meal prepping and weighing my food became second nature, and being on maintenance on RP is not bad at all since you can have a few “cheat” meals here and there and just hop right back onto the program afterward.

I Know I Said Quickly…  

So, I unsuccessfully didn’t quickly get you up to speed, but I hope you liked reading what I focused on this past year. Oh, and by the way, I’m not finished yet because I still need to talk about doing RP’s Muscle Gain template! Stay tuned for part two…