Renee Maldonado Wants Christian Women to Do Fitness God’s Way. Inside Her Body Stewardship Message

Renee Maldonado did everything a fitness coach is supposed to do. She tracked her macros, trained hard and knew the science. Then, a few years into running an online coaching business, she gained 40 pounds and watched the business slide. “Honestly, God let me fall on my face,” she said on The By Words Show in August 2025.

That season changed how she thinks about fitness. Today Maldonado, who goes by @coach.renee on TikTok, teaches Christian women what she calls body stewardship, and her bio sums up the approach in six words: “Fitness, but make it Biblical.” As of October 29, 2026, her TikTok has more than 53,700 followers and 630,000 likes, and her Instagram has more than 39,000 followers. Her business, Rich Glow, is built on one idea she repeats often: “Your healthiest self is your holiest self.”

Key takeaways

• Renee Maldonado is a faith-based fitness coach and the founder of Rich Glow, known online as @coach.renee.
• She worked as a personal trainer for about three years, then built an online coaching business after the pandemic changed her plans for physician assistant school.
• After a season of striving, weight gain and business struggles, she rebuilt her approach around her identity in Christ and started Rich Glow.
• She teaches three pillars, Identity, Stewardship and Fruit, and a RICH framework of repentance, identity, conviction and becoming your healthiest, holiest self.
• Her daily standard includes strength training three to four times a week, a phone-free morning hour with God, high-protein meals, daily steps and a steady wake-up time.

Who is Renee Maldonado?

Renee Maldonado is a Christian fitness coach who helps women connect their faith with how they eat, train and care for their bodies. She founded Rich Glow, which runs her online programs, and she teaches on @coach.renee on TikTok, Instagram and her YouTube channel. Her Stan Store bio is short and direct: “Jesus is my everything.”

On the Rich Glow website, she describes the mission plainly: “Women are not lacking motivation. They are lacking alignment.” She writes that she watched women “love God deeply but remain inconsistent in their discipline,” and that their body “was the place they kept negotiating.” Her conclusion: “the issue wasn’t knowledge. It was identity.”

How did Renee Maldonado start Rich Glow?

Maldonado told podcast host Hannah Hughes on The By Words Show that she worked as a personal trainer for about three years and planned to go to physician assistant school. She started online coaching on the side. When COVID hit, she changed course, and after she gave notice at her job, she was let go instead. She went on unemployment and built her online coaching business from there, which she called “such a God thing.”

About three and a half years in, she said, she was living in “a very big striving mentality.” She came to faith during that time and felt growing friction between the business she had built and the woman she wanted to be. She gained 40 pounds, the business went downhill, and she could not figure out how to talk about her work anymore because it felt “so unauthentically me.”

“I’m doing all the right things,” she remembered thinking. “I know the science. I know I’m doing it right. And it’s still not working.” That is when she decided it was an identity issue. She looked for a coach who offered a truly faith-based approach to fitness, not “a workout video with a Bible verse over it,” and could not find one. So she prayed, applied biblical principles to her own health, and later dissolved her old business to start Rich Glow.

What does “your healthiest self is your holiest self” mean?

For Maldonado, the body is not separate from spiritual life. She often points to Scripture that treats the body as sacred, such as Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6:19 (NIV): “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” and Romans 12:1 (NIV), which urges believers “to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.”

In her podcast interview, she tied health to integrity and confidence. Confidence, she said, comes from trusting yourself, and you trust yourself when you keep the promises you make. When a woman’s habits match what she says she values, she can walk into her calling with clarity instead of insecurity. Her Instagram bio puts it this way: “Your body isn’t the goal, it’s the fruit and it needs to be repaired at the root.”

She is also clear that this is not about a certain look. “You have to totally surrender how you want your body to look,” she said, because the goal is being “your best for God” and having a body that can carry the mission He gives you.

A prayer for the woman struggling on her fitness journey

What is Renee Maldonado’s fitness framework?

Rich Glow is built on three pillars, which Maldonado lays out on richglow.org:

• Identity: “the becoming part,” learning how God calls you to steward your body.
• Stewardship: “the doing part of the framework and obedience.”
• Fruit: hearing God, walking in your calling, and having a body that is “not only willing, but able to carry the weight.”

She also teaches what she calls the RICH framework: repentance, learning your identity in Christ, conviction, and becoming your healthiest, holiest self. She draws a “be, do, have” order from Genesis 1:28, where God tells humanity to “be fruitful,” fill the earth and rule over it. In fitness, that means focusing first on who you are becoming, then on daily obedience, and letting results follow.

That is why she pushes back on what she sees as the most common mistake among Christian women: praying over workouts and playing worship music while still trying to control the outcome. “I don’t teach women how to add God into their fitness journey,” she said. “We’re not adding God into anything. We are building it off of him.”

What daily habits does Renee Maldonado teach?

Faith-based does not mean passive. “God blesses forward movement,” Maldonado said. “He’s not going to bless you staying still thinking he’s going to do it for you.” She and her clients still track macros and follow training plans. What changes is the heart behind it. She calls her daily and weekly standard the Rich Glow Standard. As she described it on The By Words Show, it includes:

• Strength training three to four times a week. She stresses weightlifting for women, partly to protect bone health with age.
• A steady wake-up time. She prioritizes a nighttime routine and waking at the same time every day.
• A morning power hour. No phone for at least the first 30 minutes, time in the Word and prayer, a prayer walk with her dog, and a whole-food breakfast. “Your morning routine shows where your priorities lie,” she said.
• Front-loading. Getting protein, water and steps in early in the day, and most workouts early in the week, so she is not “playing catch-up” at night.
• Protein and macros without rigid meal plans. “Macros are not restrictive,” she said. “It’s the perspective you’re putting on it that’s restrictive.” She says macros let her clients eat out with friends and still fuel well.
• Steps and sunlight. She aims for daily walks, ideally at sunrise and sunset, plus a short walk after meals.
• At least 10 minutes of personal development each day, in Scripture or from biblically based teachers.

She is not against treats, either. “If I want a cookie, I’m going to have a cookie,” she said, but in moderation, and without being “emotionally charged” about food.

How does she help women keep going when it gets hard?

Maldonado is honest that discipline is not supposed to feel easy. She often returns to Hebrews 12:11 (NIV): “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” She also cites James 1:2-3 (NIV): “the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”

To her, every meal, walk and last set is a chance to practice the fruit of the Spirit. “You have discipline,” she said. “It’s just an underdeveloped spirit.” She uses Peter stepping out of the boat as her picture of faith: you act first, keeping your eyes on Jesus, before you fully understand how it will work.

Her encouragement to moms is especially direct. Kids, she said, “get to see a mom that is stewarding her body well and knows God so deeply,” and what a mother does will always speak louder than what she says.

Watch Renee Maldonado on TikTok

What programs does Rich Glow offer?

Maldonado’s flagship membership is Fit for the Call, which she describes as “the training ground for women who are ready to be equipped.” It includes structured training and habit building, biblical teaching on identity and authority, live coaching, and a community on the Circle platform. Her site calls it “ongoing refinement, not a 12-week reset.”

For women just starting, she offers a free Doing Fitness God’s Way guide and a free, five-minute Body Alignment Audit on richglow.org, which looks at physical stewardship, mental alignment and whether daily habits match a woman’s calling. Women further along can apply for her Dominion Accelerator, which focuses on leadership and influence.

Her full conversation with Hannah Hughes is a good place to start if you want to hear her heart behind the work:

Frequently asked questions

Who is Renee Maldonado?

Renee Maldonado is a faith-based fitness coach and the founder of Rich Glow. She teaches Christian women body stewardship on TikTok and Instagram as @coach.renee, and through her Fit for the Call membership.

What is Rich Glow?

Rich Glow is Renee Maldonado’s coaching business. It helps women align their body, mind and spirit with biblical standards through training, habit building, biblical teaching and coaching.

What does body stewardship mean?

In Renee Maldonado’s teaching, body stewardship means caring for your body as an act of obedience to God, rooted in your identity in Christ, rather than chasing a certain look.

What is Fit for the Call?

Fit for the Call is Renee Maldonado’s ongoing membership for Christian women. It includes structured workouts, habit building, biblical teaching, live coaching and an online community.

Does Renee Maldonado use meal plans?

No. She teaches macro tracking with a focus on protein, which she says gives structure without rigid meal plans, so women can still eat out and enjoy occasional treats in moderation.

Where can I follow Renee Maldonado?

She posts as @coach.renee on TikTok and Instagram and as @Coach_Renee on YouTube. Her programs are at richglow.org and her free guide is at stan.store/ReneeMaldo.

This profile is based on Renee Maldonado’s public TikTok, Instagram and YouTube accounts, her Rich Glow website and her August 2025 interview on The By Words Show with Hannah Hughes. Authentic Sacrifice did not interview her, and she did not review this article before publication. This article is for general information and is not medical or nutrition advice; talk with your doctor before starting a new exercise or eating plan.