Renaissance Periodization : RP

So, in my last 2 posts I talked about my journey out of and then back into fitness and shared some initial before and after photos.

While I said my wife and I used RP  I wanted to share a few more specifics on why we chose RP, what it is, and what we used of theirs, specifically, as well as what we're doing now.

What is RP?

They're a company who is made up of a large board of PhDs, RDs, and current college professors, which is cool.  What's more cool is that they largely agree on everything (which is shocking) and the things they don't all agree on (alcohol consumption, for example) they're open about.  What's even cooler than that is that they are all Olympic lifters, power lifters, endurance athletes, and/or CrossFitters so they understand the needs of athletes and they are not here for your starvation diets (yay carbs!).

Who uses RP?

I mean, other than the super famous me and my wife.... you can go look through the "RP Transformations" group on instagram.  Oh, and they have a few no-name clients too, like Annie Thorisdottir and Rich Froning jr.

What do they offer?

They have nutrition templates as well as workout templates.
They have mass and cut programs, including plans for athletes, non athletes, vegan, gender specific, hypertrophy, etc. 
For nutrition they have a Standard Template, for serious athletes, which is macro counting
A new app that is macro calculating
Then they have what my wife and I used:  The Simplified Template

The simplified template is macro based, but RP has done all the macro counting for you and all you see is a list of foods from each category (protein, fruits and grains, veggies, and fats) and how many ounces (or tbsp) you are to each of each for each meal.  All the meals are the same so you don't have to think about which day it is, which type of meal, or calculate workout times or intensity.  It's.... simple.

For us, the Simple plan worked well for our cut, which is what we were using it for!  I lost 30 pounds in ~90 days and my wife (who weighed much, _much_ less than I did) lost 12 pounds.

It got us back down to fighting weight, got us exposed to thinking about how macros look, disciplined our food choices, and let us practice meal prep.

We are now nearly 7 weeks past completion of our RP simplified template cut and here we are
(the photo was taken on August 3rd, ~4 1/2 weeks post RP):

In the next blog I'll share what macros we are focusing on now, how you can incorporate that into your life, whether you are wanting to cut, mass, or maintain and whether you are a distance runner or a CrossFitter!

Stay tuned!

Transformation Tuesday: Coach Dodd edition, 2019

*Before and after photos at the bottom*

So, in my last blog I introduced my journey over the last few years....

The tale of the tape:
I come in at a towering 5' 6"
I didn't break 100 pounds until I was a freshman in high school.  I graduated high school at somewhere between 120 pounds and 130 pounds.  Yes.. yes... I know... a monster.  "Mammoth of a man" I think is the name you're looking for *flex* #bodybysoccer

Throughout my 20's I stayed between 140 and 165.
31-33 I stayed right at 180.
34 I hit 200 pounds for the first time.
At 36 I was a sloppy 205.

A few things to hear me out on:
1.  Weight alone is a terrible indicator
2.  I despise BMI.  It's stupid.  No, I do get it.  Yes, I still think it's 90% useless at best, detrimental more often.

I could be 205 if I was a powerlifter, CrossFit games athlete, body builder, etc.  But I wasn't... I was just an out of shape 205.  You can be cut up at what BMI says is "morbidly obese".  You can also be obese at that same weight.  The scale is not a good primary indicator of health.  It can be a tool, but just one small tool in a very large tool chest... full of tools... other tools.... better tools.

My wife:  over the last 25 years my wife has been a 4 1/2 foot tall 160 pound overweight adolescent, a competitive gymnast, an anorexic madly in love with "Ed" at 87 pounds (zero muscle mass, hair falling out in clumps, digestive issues, hiatal hernias, faint, etc), and she has birthed 2 children that included gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and emergency c-section.  She has tried every crash diet, fad diet, pill diet, starvation diet, and pay-for-pounds diet you have ever heard of.  All the bad ones, that is.  She has believed what most girls are taught:  All food is bad, carbs are bad, fat is bad, calories are bad, it's all bad, and the only way to lose weight is to starve your body to the point of misery. 

We both were fed up.  We both got "done" at the same time.  So, we tried what some good friends suggested.  A crazy program that we had never heard of:  Renaissance Periodization.  Crazy name, but we liked what we saw.  I'll do another post specifically about RP in the next few days (what it is, what it isn't, who it's for, why we chose it, what we thought, how we did it, tips and tricks, etc.), so look for that.  Also, I'll detail what we're doing now and how things are going!

In the meantime, here were our before and after photos (before photos taken the first day of our cut and the after photos taken on the last day of our cut, which was 7 weeks ago):

30 pounds down

12 pounds down

My weight loss numbers each week (notice the up and down)