The Results

I recently finished Anita Herbert’s Untamed Fitness Challenge, focusing on Lean Gains (aka building muscle). Her challenge is a 6 week program that includes 6 workouts a week, a customized meal plan, and a lot of great nutritional content. For the challenge, you can choose to focus on fat-loss or lean gains (she has a great video to help you choose what option is best for you). The workouts are the same regardless of your goal, but the meal plan does differ depending on what you selected. If you do fat loss you are on a calorie deficit, whereas if you do lean gains there is a small caloric surplus. This was my first time focusing on lean gains (I usually try to focus on fat loss) and I was certainly a bit nervous about the calorie intake or bulking up too much. However, I saw some pretty good results in terms of getting more toned and barely gained weight!

The Workouts: The program is geared towards the female body and puts a lot of focus on what Anita calls building “bubble butt”. Spoiler alert, she really does have amazing gym routines that do wonders for glutes and legs! I gained almost an inch in my glutes and certainly saw a lot more perkiness 😉 For the workouts, Anita has an online platform where she includes videos with instructions and you can choose to do either gym or at home workouts. You could easily switch between gym and at home workouts any day of the week, which provided a lot of flexibility. The 6 week program is divided into 3 phases, weeks 1-2, weeks 3-4, weeks 5-6. Every phase she releases new workouts. The structure of the workouts is as follows: Day 1 (Legs and Glutes), Day 2 (Shoulders and Abs), Day 3 (Glutes and Arms), Day 4 (Tabata + Abs), Day 5 (Legs and Glutes), Day 6 (My day, my way). For the “My Day, My Way” you get to pick between Upper Body, Glutes and Abs, or Tabata depending on what you think needs more work for your body. Although the routines were a beast, they were a tad long. It took anywhere from 1 hr and 15 mins to an 1 hr and 30 mins to complete each day, and this does not include a 5 min cardio that I added to warm up. My only other complaint is that she also incorporated some pretty complicated movements which felt like they could lead to injury if not done right.

The Meal Plan: Although the program says you get a personalized meal plan, you are technically only getting a meal plan for one day (see example below). I was a bit surprised since I was expecting a meal plan for at least an entire week. However, the way Anita explains it is that she gives you a food swap table which includes alternatives so that you don’t eat the same thing every single day. The downside is that, even if you use this table, it takes time to come up with alternatives that fit the macros and calories she has set up for you. What was cool is that you get a check-in on week 3 where you can send her pictures and she adjusts your macros accordingly.

Other Stuff: Something I really appreciated is that Anita has a wealth of information around nutrition, gym techniques, and other great stuff on her platform. She also had a Facebook group which was helpful since people often posted questions and kept each other motivated. The only downside of the group is that it is the same FB group for all challenges, so information can get a bit dated and the audience is so large it didn’t feel as  tight knit of a group as it has felt with other challenges that I’ve done.

Net net: I don’t know that I would recommend this challenge to everyone. If your sole mission is to build glutes, then this is probably a good program. However, I’ve done other challenges which are a bit more comprehensive that I would recommend over this one.

Sample Meal Plan