This is Day 9 of my second round of the #75HardChallenge. I finished the first round last August. If you haven’t heard of it, the challenge was created by @andyfrieslla.
Why I chose to do #75Hard the first time: I had a truly awful week in real estate. 75 Hard is a mental toughness challenge and I decided at that point, I needed some mental toughness. On Day 63 of the first round, I was skewered by a client who also used to be a friend and it devastate me. No mental toughness. But what I did get was radical clarity! The challenge was worth every single minute I devoted to it.
Why I chose to do a second round: I still want mental toughness! LOL! I’m still shooting for the mental toughness aspect the challenge should bring. Additionally, I feel like following the challenge is making me a better person day by day.
Why I love 75 Hard: It’s scalable! That means ANYONE can do it. If you notice in my video, I can’t do push-ups off the floor yet. Yet! So I do them off of the rail and they are tough! But one day, they won’t be tough and I’ll be doing them off the floor. I aspire to this.
At the age of 61,I’m just getting started. There are so many things I still want to do and 75 Hard will be the foundation to those things. Have you done 75 Hard? If not, when are you starting?
I AM DOING THE 75 HARD CHALLENGE! I just finished my seventh day and I wanted to make my experience public for accountability as much as anything else.
The rules for 75 hard are fairly simple to remember:
Drink 1 gallon of water a day
Take a daily progress photo
Work out twice for 45 minutes each, one workout must be outside.
Read 10 pages of a book
Follow a diet
No alcohol or cheat meals
I learned about 75 Hard a year or so ago and thought it sounded interesting. I tried it for the first time in April. I lasted two days.
In 2016 I broke my ankle and haven’t been too active since then. Prior to the break, I was a powerlifter so I tried to do kettlebells and weight training for my first workout and I tried to walk for my second workout. Walking on rural roads with animals, etc. was sort of dangerous. You can’t easily go from nothing to two 45 minute workouts a day. My ankle hurt and I stopped.
Last week I had a really bad week in real estate. I am not one of those people who have bad days. I’m happy and positive and to get slammed with a whole bad week was a tough experience. I decided I needed mental toughness and the next morning I started 75 Hard.
The water is a simple one for me. Drinking it, that is. As a realtor in rural Arkansas it can be difficult to find a place to use the restroom but so far I’m doing it.
The daily photo is easy to remember. I got the app which makes it all easy to remember and I usually take my photo after my first workout session in the morning.
I got my personal trainer certification in 1999 and I remembered that there was a woman who had walking workouts you could do in your home: Leslie Sansone. I looked for her videos and found one I liked that was long enough and I started doing that. Then I found one I like ever better by Up to the Beat Fit. It’s more dancy and fun and it goes by super fast. This program is definitely scalable to your level of fitness, you just need to give it some thought.
Reading is super easy for me. I’m always reading at least three or four books at a time so the reading part is not a problem at all.
Books I’m currently reading that I totally recommend:
You must follow a diet and it’s a diet of your choice. I have been flirting with the carnivore diet for over a year, I’d guess. I feel best when eating that way so that’s what I chose. In the past, sweet things and wine have always pulled me off a strict carnivore diet and so I’m excited to finally do it fully for at least 75 days to see how it really feels when doing it all the way.
The last rule is that you can’t have alcohol or cheat meals. The two things that were throwing me off a great diet plan.
You must do all of these things, daily, for 75 days. If you miss any of the steps, you must start over again at Day 1. I’m not starting over this time!
Because here I am, seven days later, down nine pounds and feeling great! I’ve been sleeping well and I have loads of energy. I feel so excited that I’m actually going to complete is this time.
I used the hashtag #75HardOver60 for the very first time! No one else had ever used it. 🙂
I was in a class last week where the instructor told us that we have to keep the promises we make to ourselves. That hit me right upside the head. I would never in a million years not keep my promise to you but keeping promises to myself have be lacking. I’m excited to be keeping this promise to myself.
After a week, I feel confident enough to put it out into the public view that I’m doing this challenge. I’m a winner and not a quitter. A surprising thing is, the first couple days my ankle was super sore but now? It feels better than it did since I broke it! I’m not sure if I had to work through some scar tissue or what but those are the facts. I used to wonder how people who broke their ankles could go back to running and such. Now I get that I probably needed to push through those couple of sore days instead of being afraid of the soreness.
Thank you, Andy Frisella for creating 75 Hard. Friends, welcome to my journey to mental toughness!
