One sure-fire way to get me motivated: Tell me I can't do something

New Mexico

When my wife Christine first floated the idea of doing the 75 Hard challenge, I was immediately resistant. I hate rules, and doing somebody else's "challenge" with 7 rules or things to check off every day seemed, on the surface, to be antithetical to what I'm all about.

But I decided to think about it before making a snap decision, so I began to do a bit more research.

I stumbled on an article in Runner's World that seemed to outline all of the problems with the challenge. But as I read through the supposed reasons why the challenge was flawed, I reached this section of the article:

"It takes an extreme amount of discipline for a person to successfully complete this challenge. Most who try 75 Hard will likely fail, 'as the program has not been set up for success. It’s only set up for a person who has an intense amount of discipline. It’s also not realistic, what person has time to do two 45-minute workouts per day? Most people can barely get in one workout,' [said Roxana Ehsani, RD, CSSD, a Miami-based board certified sports dietitian]."

If you've been reading my work for any length of time, you know exactly what happened next: I was all in.

The contrarian shines through

I've written several articles about how time is not the obstacle to getting outside, so when this "expert" asked, "what person has time to do two 45-minute workouts per day?" I knew that they were definitely full of shit.

While doing two separate workouts in a day is an intriguing challenge, dedicating an hour and a half per day to moving my body seems like child's play. I rarely swing my leg over a bike unless I'm going to ride it for over an hour. And if I'm going to ride for an hour, I might as well ride for two or three... at a minimum.

I also inherently hate when other people — and especially supposed experts — don't believe in the capacity of what human beings can accomplish. While I outline the problems here on Outside 365 — that people aren't going outside often enough, and that moving your body in nature is countercultural — it's not because I don't think you (or anybody) can do it. It's because I know that you can do it, which is precisely why I'm sharing this message.

So yeah, if you tell me I can't do something, just you fucking wait: I'm going to make it happen.

New Mexico

Looking for a challenge — is this really it?

One of my biggest hesitations about committing to this "hard" "challenge" is that it already sounded an awful lot like daily life. Ok, you've gotta do two 45-minute workouts, and one of them has to be outside — does that sound familiar?

Over the winter, I generally work on additional strength training to prepare for the season, so I resolved to add a healthy dose of cross-training to my 75 Hard regimen. Target: 3 days per week minimum.

The other "challenges" include:

Read 10 pages of nonfiction per day — please, those are rookie numbers.

Follow a diet (no cheat meals allowed) and don't drink alcohol — again, I've written about my choice to go vegan and cut alcohol out of my diet. However, this one felt like it might be the most difficult, as I'd have to get really honest about how I'd been fudging it in the past — and adhere to what I said I was going to do for 75 days without fail. Personally, this means cutting out all non-vegan food that I let pass before and all vegan junk food. I defined junk food to include, at a minimum: french fries, baked goods, non-dairy ice cream, potato chips, candy, and candy bars.

Drink 1 gallon of water — of all the rules, this is one of the most arbitrary and lacking in scientific evidence. Solely drinking a ton of water and not taking in enough electrolytes can quickly lead to suboptimal athletic performance and can even be dangerous (hyponatremia). So for my purposes, I'm counting all drinks that are not diuretics toward this goal. After spot-checking for a few days, I found that I generally take in between 1 and 1.5 gallons per day without trying.

Take a status picture — again, not at all difficult to do.

Many of these "challenges" seem like basic human things: take care of your body, feed your mind, etc. To make 75 Hard more difficult, I added a goal I've been working on for years: daily meditation.

Meditating is one of the most difficult things I've ever tried to do. If you really want a hard challenge, try watching your breath for 10 minutes per day without getting distracted. It's insane how fucking hard it can be.

Crucially, according to the 75 Hard rules, if you miss even one of these challenges on one day, you have to start back over on Day 1.

45 days in

At the time of publication, I'm 45 days in — over halfway through the challenge. So far, I've found it to add a welcome dose of structure and accountability through the cold, dark winter months, which are always inherently more difficult to soldier through. Stay tuned for my concluding thoughts on 75 Hard in 30-some days!