F45 challenge, Week 5: Drowning in meal prep and managing the mundane

Meal prep takes time, a lot of containers and some serious effort as Stacey Hunt found out. Photo / Getty Images

Meet Stacey Hunt. She loves wine, hates protein powder and has zero willpower. How hard could sticking to a gruelling eight-week fitness challenge be?

I've passed the half-way mark of my F45 eight week challenge. You might think that sounds like cause for celebration but week five proved to be pretty mundane and uneventful.

I guess everything had become more routine, more normal, so I found myself just coasting through this week.

And with a holiday booked in for next week, I was also laser-focused on that. It was kind of a case of just getting through the few days ahead then enjoying some freedom from the challenge.

There's no rest for the wicked in F45. Finding the classes easier? Then it's time to pick up the heavier weight. Photo / F45 Training Instagram

The menu for this section is very similar week to week so I feel like it's all sort of blurred together: meat, eggs, greens, protein powder.

The amount of time you need to invest in this challenge was starting to wear me down a bit. You either need to do all your meal prep in bulk over one or two days or, as I did, prep every night for the next day.

You feel like you spend a lot of time in the kitchen and I always seemed to be doing dishes. I was also turning up for work each day laden with containers full of my required assortment of foods.

It takes a lot of forward planning. If I wasn't home at night to prep for the next day I would have to make sure it was done the day before. If you're unorganised you'll easily slip into buying easy, convenient and probably not so healthy food.

I'd definitely become good at not making excuses to skip classes though. Before the challenge I would have dropped a class if I had something on but by week five I was making the classes a priority.

I also found myself able to get through the classes without dying quite as much as I used to. They're still bloody tough and leave you dripping with sweat but I feel like no matter how fit you are the classes will always be challenging. Once you start to feel better about them you either increase your weights or the amount of reps you do per set.

With a break from the challenge while on holiday next week, then just two weeks remaining after that, slowly but surely, there's an end in sight.