What is the #75Hard Challenge and Why Am I Doing It?
Hello hello hello! Happy Thursday! Or Friday – or whatever day you are listening to this. Happy Day! I hope you are having a fantastic day – I am. I got a new planner recently and I am loving it. I know, I know. We just wrapped up a whole month of talking about time and time management and planners. Well if you listened to that series, you know that I was having a bit of a love/hate relationship with my daily planner from Next Level. Well last week, I went back to a planner I used last year that I really loved – the Day Designer. They have a collaboration with Target and while shopping for something else, I saw this planner. Isn’t that always the way with Target? Has there ever been a time when you went in for 1 thing and left with JUST that one thing? If so, then you are my hero and I have a lot to learn from you! Because that is not me. I have started walking to my local Target in order to control what I buy. I can only buy what I can carry home.
Anyway, I saw the Day Designer planner – by the way, this is a great time of year to get a planner because they release all the school year versions. I usually like to use the calendar year versions but I made an exception this time and I am glad I did!. The Day Designer is a daily planner has an hourly schedule section, a to-do section AND a notes section all on one page. It also has an area to list the 3 priorities for the day. It’s basically the holy grail of planners for me. Even Saturday and Sunday have hourly schedule areas- this is SO helpful now that all 3 kids are in activities and I need to track practices and class times.
Here is a picture of the planner pages, if you are interested in the layout. OK, done with planner talk! Although if you have any questions, I will happily answer them.
Now let’s get to today’s topic. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen me posting in my stories about the #75Hard Challenge. If you aren’t following me on Instagram – you should! You can find me at @mslizheron. Anyway, I’ve gotten a lot of messages from folks asking for more info on the challenge or saying they could never do something like this challenge. So I wanted to do an episode where I talk about what the challenge is, who it is for, why I decided to do it and a bit about what it’s been like so far.
So, what is the 75Hard challenge?
It is a mental strength challenge, created by Andy Frisella, host of the MFCEO podcast. This is not a weight loss or fitness challenge, though there is a fitness aspect to it.
The challenge is 75 days long and there are 5 tasks that you need to complete every day for 75 consecutive days. Consecutive is the key word here. If you fall off, you have to start over, no matter what day you are on. If you are on day 74 and you miss a task, you are back to square one. If you make it day 10, 23, day 5 – you have to start over. Which is what I had to do – which I will talk about more later in the show.
Here are the tasks you have to do each day
Exercise twice each day for 45 minutes — it doesn’t matter what the exercise is but one of these sessions must to be outdoors.
Drink a gallon of water.
Pick a diet or eating plan and stick to that plan. I am doing a macro-based eating plan but if calorie counting or macros isn’t your thing, that’s ok! If you are someone who prefers Weight Watchers or keto or Bright Line Eating or Whole30 or maybe you want to do No Sugar No Flour for the challenge. It’s up to you. The only no no that goes for everyone is no alcohol for the 75 days.
Read a minimum of 10 pages every day of growth mindset material or personal development book. Think non-fiction, think self-help. The point is to work on your mindset.
Take one progress photo each day — even though this is more of a mental challenge, there will be a physical change at the end of the 75 days and this is a great way to see the progression.
As I went through the list, I bet your brain was either saying “I can totally do that, that would be easy!” or it was say “I could never do that” depending on the task. If you thought “I could never do that” for certain tasks, I want you to get curious about why that is. What are the reasons? What is the story that you are telling yourself about your own abilities? I want you to look at what your brain tells you and know that everything it says is neither true or false, unless you believe it.
Before you come up with a lot of excuses about why you can’t do this challenge, I just want to say that I think anyone that’s listening to this show right now can do this. 100% I believe you are capable of doing it. But, like anything else, you have to want to do it. You have to want to push yourself out of your comfort zone. This challenge is for people who want to blow their own mind and show themselves what they are capable of when they just DECIDE.
With this challenge, you get to decide what books to read, you get to decide what your food protocol is. You get to decide what the workouts are. You can make the workouts a walk with a friend, it can be a video from youtube, it can be a workout class, it can be a bike ride. The workouts can be whatever you want – because this isn’t a fitness challenge. You aren’t doing this to lose weight, necessarily. It’s a challenge to put yourself first. To be mindful about what you put into your body and your mind. It’s about making a commitment. And we can all do that!
That’s a big part of why I am doing this Challenge…
I was introduced to the challenge by the owner of my gym, Corey Enman. Corey started the challenge in the spring of this year and it was so inspiring to see him commit to the program and “lead from the front” because after all, how can Corey motivate his clients to do their best when he wasn’t willing to commit to doing his? As coaches, whether it’s a fitness coach or life coach or heartbreak coach, you are your first client always. Before you can teach someone else, you have to go through the transformation yourself. Which means coaches are always looking to challenge themselves and grow. And while I am not a fitness coach per se, I do help clients with weight loss, and as you know if you listen to the show regularly, one of my goals this summer was to start loving my body more and approaching food and fitness from a place of self-love rather than self-loathing. So a big reason I wanted to do this challenge was so that I could show my clients what happens when you look at your body through a lens of self-love, rather than self-loathing. In the past, I took on fitness challenges or goals because I wanted to change my body and all the things I didn’t like. This time around, I am doing it for reasons that are rooted in self-love and growth.
As I watched Corey and some other members of my gym take on the challenge, I kept wondering what kind of transformation I would see at the end of 75 days. Who would I be? Could I do it? How would it change me? What would I learn? I have been having some mind drama around whether or not I can achieve the goals I have set for myself in my business. And I decided to do this challenge to give my brain evidence that I can do the hard work it takes to reach a goal. That I can stick with it until I reach the finish line. That every day is an opportunity for growth and transformation. I want to see what I am capable of when I commit – really commit to going all in on this. No shortcuts. No cheat days. Just me and my goal.
And lastly, I am doing this challenge because putting myself first is something I struggle with. I will put everyone else’s WANTS before my NEEDS. I think a lot of women do this, a lot of moms do this. Recently, I have been slowly realizing that is ok for me to state my wants and needs and it’s ok to let other people adjust to those. This challenge is another way for me to practice putting myself, my goals first daily. I have to be very planful about workouts and food choices. About making time to do my daily reading. And when I don’t I see the effects.
Which brings me to the struggles. I am currently on day 16 of attempt #2 of the 75 Hard Challenge. Yup, my first attempt lasted 5 days. I jumped into the challenge with little preparation and was winging it each day. I wasn’t telling anyone that I was even doing the challenge because I was scared of failing. At the end of day 5, it’s 11pm, I was tired, I had a pulled muscle and couldn’t walk but I still had to do my outdoor workout. I went to the community pool to swim and it was closed. Because of course it was – it was 11pm and I had put off this swim ALL DAY. And I just melted down. My brain was so tired from white knuckling it for the last 5 days that I just shut down. I couldn’t think of a single thing to do as an outdoor exercise. And I threw in the towel. I cried and started to mentally beat myself up. Then I stopped myself and made my brain evaluate the last 5 days. What worked, what didn’t, what would I need to do differently in attempt 2. And then, looking at that page in my journal, I decided that I was starting over. I gave my pulled muscle a couple of days to heal and I started 75Hard Take 2 on Monday, August 26th.
Here’s what I did differently: I blocked out time on my calendar. No more leaving things up to chance. I take my progress pic every morning before I go to the gym and I do my 10 pages of reading over coffee. I take an evening walk as my outdoor exercise, and I do it either alone or with anyone that wants to join me. If I need to move workouts, I move them once and then commit. So if I have to move my evening walk to the morning because of plans, I move it and do it. I no longer say to myself “oh I’ll do it when I can” or “I’ll figure it out tomorrow”. Nope.
I am still struggling with the food portion. I haven’t been planning my meals ahead of time so I sometimes wind up with some crazy macros at the end of the night and I have eat a bunch of sweet potatoes or yogurt or peanut butter toast before bed. I am also trying to adjust to eating breakfast. I lean more toward intermittent fasting in the morning, so I am still working on that.
The other big struggle is drinking ALL that water! I know we need water, but damn. It’s a lot. And if I don’t keep up with it during the day, I am drinking a whole bunch of water before bedtime, which means I am up and down to the bathroom 5 times a night. I do have this great gallon jug that I cart with me, but it’s still a lot of water when you aren’t used to drinking that much.
The biggest struggle is every day, I have to remind myself to put myself first – to cross off my tasks before jumping to others. I get to practice it every day. Which is good news! Because in 60 days I know I will be leaps and bounds from where I am now. And that’s exciting.
If you are interested in doing this Challenge, you should check out the Andy Frisella podcast episode where he lays it all out.
Warning: There is a lot of cursing in that episode. Even for someone who grew up in Queens, it was A LOT! But Andy is so passionate and lays out his thinking behind the program in a way that only he can so I recommend it. Just a warning if you are not a fan of curse words.
Ok, so I hope that answered your questions about the challenge and why I am doing it. If 75 hard is not your thing, but you do have a goal that you are working toward but feel yourself stalling, let’s chat! A coach could be just what you need! If you are interested in setting up a call with me, just send me an email at hello@lizheron.com
Ok friends! Don’t forget to leave a review for the show if you are enjoying it! And follow me on instagram to follow along with my 75 hard challenge. Have a great rest of your week!