I Tried this Guided Gym Workout & Meal Plan for 45 Days — Here’s What I Learned
Is it possible to drastically improve your health and fitness in just 6 weeks? That’s the premise of the F45 Challenge — a 45-day guided transformation program designed to help you make a sustainable change to your health and fitness with plenty of high fives and new friendships along the way.
Full disclosure, I’m already a sworn-in F45 loyalist. I’ve been a member at F45 Woodstock in Cape Town for over 6 years and during that time the F45 programme and the people I’ve met have changed my life. Before joining F45 I was a cardio queen, playing netball 3 times a week with the occasional run thrown in. But, when a devastating knee injury put me on the sidelines, unable to exercise for over 18 months I found myself having to start my fitness journey from scratch.
Joining F45 reignited my love for being active and introduced me to the wonders of resistance training while giving me a new outlook on cardio workouts. This approach, along with the incredible coaches at F45 Woodstock helped me to transform not only my body, but my entire mindset around what it means to be strong and healthy.
Now, over 6 years on, I was facing a whole new challenge. While I’ve benefitted tremendously from being consistent with my training at F45, some recent health and hormonal changes left me dealing with fatigue, increased visceral fat, and poor sleep health. I was feeling burnt out and frustrated, but I knew I needed to make some changes to help my body cope and keep doing what I loved — being active!
So, when the opportunity came up to sign up for the F45 Challenge again, I jumped at the chance to see if a new approach to my fitness journey would help improve my symptoms. I jumped in with both feet — working out consistently for 45 days, prioritising active recovery, and making healthier meal choices. Here’s how I got on.
What is the F45 Challenge?
F45 studios host the 45-day F45 Challenge a few times throughout the year. The F45 Challenge is free for F45 members, the only cost involved is your pre- and post-Challenge scans. The 6.5-week challenge consists of week-long comprehensive training and nutrition blocks that you can approach as ferociously or casually as you wish. Signing up for the Challenge gets you unlimited classes at the F45 studio you’ve signed up with and access to the F45 Challenge app, which offers free home workouts, resources to support you through the process, a customised meal plan, and thousands of healthy recipes. Members are encouraged to take part in F45 classes each week, with a combination of trainer-led cardio, resistance, and hybrid training classes available.
You also get the added benefit of community encouragement — both at your studio and globally. F45 gyms around the world are on the same schedule, so you’re all in this challenge together. When signing up for the challenge you’ll be assigned to a ‘team’ within your studio environment and an F45 trainer. You can connect with fellow team members through a Whatsapp group and seek guidance from your assigned trainer in person when you’re at the studio as well as in the Whatsapp group outside of training times.
The Challenge is book-ended by two InBody scans, which measure your baseline and progress with a few body composition markers such as BMI, lean muscle mass, and body fat percentage. These scans are a great tangible way to track your progress before and after the Challenge. Each member is also given a digital daily tracking sheet to record their calories, steps, workouts, and more each week. This allows your trainer to keep track of how you’re getting on, advise you in real-time and help you make adjustments where necessary.
You also have the option to do a mid-way scan and check in with your assigned trainer to reassess your progress and adjust your meal plan, workout routine, or recovery protocols to reach your goals. I found the mid-way scan super helpful. My scan revealed that while I was successfully decreasing my body fat percentage, I was also losing more lean muscle than I’d planned. For the second half of the Challenge, my trainer suggested a different approach to resistance training days with heavier weights and fewer reps and adjusted my meal plan with an increased daily protein intake.
What to expect from the F45 classes
The “F” in F45 stands for “functional fitness,” a style of training that uses movements that support you in your daily life. The “45” is for 45 minutes, the length of the weekday and Sunday classes. Saturday classes are slightly longer at an hour.
The workouts involve high-intensity circuit-style training that includes everything from lifting heavy stuff to squatting, jumping, rowing, cycling and a whole lot of burpees. Every class is different, and you can opt for high-energy cardio classes, muscle-quivering strength training sessions, or combination workouts with a little bit of both. Each day’s programs are drawn from a pool of over 3,500 exercises, which means your chances of doing the same workout twice are extremely slim.
F45 Woodstock offers strength training/resistance days on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays with faster HIIT-style hybrid training and cardio classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
How to tackle the F45 Challenge
Depending on the base you’re starting with, you can tailor your approach to the F45 Challenge. Someone with a more established base who is accustomed to regular high-intensity training might choose to ramp up their efforts by tackling five F45 classes per week, following the meal plan, and focusing on calories and macros for the most dramatic results. On the gentler end of the spectrum, there’s also space for those looking to gradually reintroduce healthy habits in an uplifting community space, and get moving again. This may mean you’ll start with 2 to 3 F45 classes per week, gradually introducing more activity as your fitness increases. Both approaches are welcome, and you’re never encouraged to do too much, too fast and risk injury.
This time around I was starting the Challenge with an established fitness base and I wanted to really focus my efforts to improve my health and tackle my symptoms head-on. So, I decided my approach would be somewhere in the middle. I decided to commit to doing four F45 classes per week, to greatly increase my protein intake, introduce 3 short runs per week, and prioritise active recovery during the Challenge period. My active recovery days included 1 – 2 km walks twice a week as well as two yoga or pilates stretch classes per week.
Focusing on recovery and stretching significantly helped keep my energy levels up and my body feeling great even with the increased training load. I also made sure to stay after each F45 class for the 2-minute post-workout stretch routine, to maximise my recovery efforts.
F45 Challenge results
For the most dramatic results, you need to employ pretty dramatic lifestyle changes. I chose to increase my training load quite substantially but made sure to balance it out with focused recovery. While I was counting calories for the meal plan portion of the Challenge, my main focus was on macros and protein, which helped preserve and build lean muscle. All that being said, I feel amazing after the Challenge.
I am more trim and toned, but more importantly, I feel lightyears better than when I started the Challenge a few weeks ago. Everything from my energy levels to my sleep, and mental health has improved. That to me is worth its weight in gold. After just over 6 weeks my body composition has changed dramatically. My final Challenge scan showed a total loss of 3% body fat and 4kgs. I only lost 700g of lean muscle mass during the Challenge period, which I’m very happy with. Maintaining muscle mass while losing body fat can be extremely tricky to do, so overall I’m calling this result a success.
Overall, I stuck to the challenge meal plan about 90% of the time. There were a few cheat meals here and there, and I still managed to achieve my goals. Most importantly to me though, I have made it a habit to incorporate active recovery and more movement into my daily life.
What are the benefits of the F45 Challenge?
I would highly recommend the F45 Challenge to anyone looking to get back into fitness, who enjoys gym classes and being part of a community, or anyone who wants to start going to the gym, but isn’t sure what exercises to do. F45 offers an excellent framework, providing customised workouts and the motivation necessary to reach your fitness goals.
If you’re still not sure if you’re planning to sign up for the next F45 Challenge here are some of the benefits I noticed:
Your confidence will increase. Not because of any aesthetic changes, but because you’ll start to feel stronger, more capable, and proud of yourself for your ability to stick with the programme and prioritise your health more. Plus, you’ll get stronger and able to lift more weight, which is super satisfying.
Your sleep will drastically improve. If you’re struggling to sleep or stay asleep, then I recommend regularly attending the early evening classes, these will especially help to encourage sleep.
You’ll naturally pay closer attention to what you put in your body. The phrase “food as fuel” will start to make a lot more sense, especially as you become more invested in maximising your efforts in your workouts. I find it hard to eat too much heavy food with a low nutritional value when I know I have a gruelling workout to get through later.
You’ll improve your mental strength. An F45 class is the ultimate stress-busting hack. Not only do the classes have an uplifting vibe to them, but it’s difficult to worry about your daily life struggles when you’re focusing on knocking out 30 seconds of burpees or 3 sets of barbell squats. I walk out of every F45 session feeling tired, but euphoric, and that’s pretty addictive.
Each F45 studio will host the F45 Challenge multiple times a year. The next Challenge is set to start early 2025 (you’re likely looking at early February 2025, although no official dates have been announced yet). If you’re interested in signing up for the next F45 Challenge then you can visit the F45 Challenge info page to get a better understanding of what to expect before you get started.
I’d recommend trying out a few F45 trial classes before signing up for the Challenge, F45 Woodstock offers free trial periods for Cape Town residents looking to try it out before signing up. There’s also a Kickstarter One Month membership at R899 to get you started. There is no additional cost to take part in the F45 Challenge if you’re a member, but you will have to pay for a pre- mid- and post-Challenge InBody scan package at R400 for 3 scans.
For more information about the upcoming challenge, email woodstock.admin@F45training.co.za or visit the website here for membership prices.
