75 Hard is a challenge that is designed to help people improve their fitness and change their lives by leaving our reasons and excuses behind and making a commitment to themselves for 75 days.
We all know the voice within telling us; “didn't have the time”, “I forgot”, “I didn’t know what I was doing”, “X was too much/too hard”. This is a chance to change that for the better.
The challenge outlines 5 key goals to complete each day;
Drink 1 gallon of water (3.7L)
10 pages of non-fiction reading
2 x 45 minute workouts (these can be anything from yoga, sprints or weight training etc.)
Progress photo
Follow a diet
The most important rule however, is that it must be 75 consecutive days. If you miss any of these points on any given day whether that's day 10 or day 74, you must start back at day 1 the following day.
I first started my challenge in Feb of 2023, my plan was to utilise my 1 litre water bottle as a gauge for how much to be drinking each day figuring that if I had completed two bottles by my lunch break (1pm) then I would only need 1.7 bottles in the evening. I followed a ‘diet’ which was a meal plan I had created consisting of 3600kcal and an appropriate protein goal for 180g per day.
By the end of the first week my plan with water was working well until after lunch where I forgot to drink the remaining 1.7l of water. Concurrently I had many conversations with friends about the type of diet I was following to which my friends insisted that this wasn’t a ‘diet’ as it was something that I had created. So after 12 days following this first plan I broke the meal plan binge ate all the things I thought I wanted and felt worse for it after.
I made a second attempt 3 days later after toying with the idea of a carnivore or ketogenic diet I decided to restart with a paleo diet which seemed more balanced than the prior and would still allow me to be able to fuel the twice daily workouts with carbohydrates.
The second attempt was much more successful however after a further 2 weeks I realised some of the ingredients (tomato sauce, corn-starch in the seasonings & rice Based ingredient in coconut milk) I had been consuming were not appropriate for the paleo diet. On my third attempt at the 75 Hard Challenge, I finally completed the full program!
One of the key takeaways was realising that a simple 45-minute walk can be just as effective as a workout, contributing significantly to my fitness routine without over-complication.
Additionally, removing the most common food intolerances from my diet played a major role in my success. By eliminating these, I lost 2kg, gained muscle, and reached an impressive 7% body fat, proving the importance of nutrition in achieving optimal results.
These kind of challenges serve as valuable insights into the type of change we can experience in such a short space of time and whilst we don't all need to commit to a plan exactly like this, just starting with a routine and some regularity can lead us towards building healthy habits, making positive changes and moving closer towards our health goals (sometimes without even realising it!).
~ Conner George
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