I recently finished an 8 week VeganFitness challenge from Nimai Delgado. I had always been curious about doing a vegan diet but had never quite gotten myself to try it since I wasn’t sure about how to make the macros work and how to keep my meals healthy and hit my protein targets. However, after watching The Game Changers and learning about all of the health benefits from going Vegan, I decided to give it a shot. Nimai’s Plant Power Challenge is one of the best challenges I have ever done. The program provides customized macros, 5 workouts per week, vegan recipes with daily meal plans, weekly check-ins with coaches who tweak your macros, an app to access all of the content, and a great support community. For the challenge, you can choose between the shredding program or the bulking program. They adjust both the workouts and the meal plans depending on your goal. I participated in the shredding program, which aims to burn body fat and increase definition.

The Workouts: For the workouts, Nimai has both an app and online platform from where you can access the workouts. For each workout there are videos with instructions and you can choose to do either the gym or at home workouts. I was really impressed by how well these workouts were designed and how much they varied the training styles. Some weeks you focused on strength, other weeks you focused on tempo, one week we even practiced de-loading. Every week the workout was somewhat different. The structure of the workouts is as follows: Day 1 Push (Chest and Arms), Day 2 Full Body, Day 3 Rest, Day 4 Pull (Back and Shoulders), Day 5 Circuit Day, Day 6 Lower Body, Day 7 Rest. What I also really enjoyed is that 3 times a week Nimai also added a circuit finisher, which was a fun way to add some cardio into the mix. I did end up buying a leg add-on, though I’m not sure I would recommend the add-on too much. Overall it took me anywhere from 1 hr and 15 mins to an 1 hr and 30 mins to complete each day’s workouts, and this included the leg add-on time.

The Meal Plan: This is probably one of the best value adds from the program. Based on your macros, the app provides suggestions for a daily meal plan for 4 days. The meal plans include 4 meals per day, which I broke down into Breakfast, Lunch, an Afternoon Snack, and Dinner. What is super cool is that the app allows you to swap out meals for other recipes that are automatically filtered to fit your macros. I loved using this feature since I could pick my favorite recipes from the program to build my daily meal plan. The other major plus is that the recipes were pretty delicious and the app had a functionality where you could create a shopping list off of your meal plans. The meal plans would also get adjusted every week after you had your check-in and your coach adjusted your macros. Hands down the meal plans and guidance alone made the program worth it. 

Other Stuff: In addition to the workouts and the meal plans, something I loved from the challenge were the weekly check-ins with our coaches. Every week you could upload photos and check in with your coach so that they could help evaluate your progress and make any adjustments to help you meet your goals. Each week the coach provides feedback on whether you need to adjust your macros for the next week. This was also a great chance to ask the coaches any questions you may have. I had Kiley as my coach for most of my check-ins and really loved her. Lastly, the challenge also had a Facebook group which was helpful since people often posted questions and kept each other motivated.

Net net: I would 100% recommend this challenge. It is one of the best fitness challenges I have ever done. Moreover, it is such a great way to get introduced to a vegan lifestyle. Nimai has a challenge starting up on Monday, August 30th (sign ups end August 29th). If you click on the following link you will get a $10 discount when you sign up.