Seventy-five days ago, I started what, I thought then, would be the hardest thing I had ever attempted. And to be fair, before you begin, it certainly sounds insurmountable. Drinking almost four litres of water, spending 90 minutes a day exercising and if you fail a day, you’re back to Day One – all sound like impossible or extremely challenging tasks in our self-created hectic lives.
But many people have completed it. And many people have had to start again. So, it’s not completely impossible. What is interesting is the things we tell ourselves (or get told by others – more on that in another post) before we start out.
“That amount of water is unhealthy”, “I can’t commit to 90 minutes a day working out” and many other such excuses. And that’s exactly what they are – excuses. Even I told myself many times before I started that I could never do it. I could not drink that much water without being sick. I didn’t have time to work out every day. And even the reading seemed like an arduous task.
Then on February 1st, 2024, I kicked those excuses to the curb. And 75 days later, on April 16th, I was able to say I completed 75 Hard without a single day missed. While I am super proud of myself, I really couldn’t have done it without the support from family and friends along the way. My family made sure to feed me keto meals, Simone made sure I had lunch to eat and books to read. And some friends helped me stick to my guns with their doubting and teasing.
While I have a lot of thoughts about 75 Hard and the challenge of it, this post is purely for the completion stats. This time, my musings will be relegated to another post. Because that’s what you’re really here for – graphs! And pretty pictures! For a refresher on my halfway progress, check out this post. It has more graphs and pictures. And for where I started – check out my first post about 75 Hard.
The Exercise
This will mainly be focused on March, with some bits of April sprinkled in. Simply because it’s a whole lot easier to do a monthly recap in the apps I use than a month plus a half. All these screenshots are from Gentler Streak. I may have written about my love for this app before, but I will reiterate – this is the workout app to get if you have an Apple Watch. I can wax lyrical on the many benefits of it, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.
In March, I did 55 hours of exercise (up from 49 – which is to be expected, with February being a short month and all), burned over 19 million calories, and walked over 125 km. All these are up from February, so that’s a fantastic start! As Gentler Streak got a bit of an update halfway through March, it changed the way it’s metrics were displayed – hence the difference in stats from February, so we have way more detail to show here. I hope you find these stats as interesting as I do.
During February, the app caught up with my new activity level and in March it was telling me I was constantly under-achieving. Rude! I was working as hard as I could! But algorithms and apps don’t really know about life, and we still have no way to tell them. So, for now, we just have to train the machine, slowly slowly. Even now, Gentler Streak is trying to get me to do stuff, and I have just come back from gym…
The Weight
Pretty pictures of burgers you didn’t eat are good, but not as good as graphs! Everyone loves a good graph. It displays info in a no-nonsense type of way. You can’t argue with a graph. You can only sit back and appreciate its black and white view of the world – whether you like what it says or not. And spoiler alert – I like what these graphs are saying. A lot, a lot.
February ended with me hovering between 65 and 66 kg – down from my initial weight of 71 kgs. Not a bad start to the month. As I wrote in my halfway point post, I noticed a plateau of weight loss, and it’s become much more apparent now. Hovering around the 63 to 64 kg mark for most of the month as my body adapted to the new level of activity.
Another thing I changed during this month was when I drank my protein shake. I went from drinking it at the end of the day as one of the last things I did, to right after my gym session. This impacted how much weight I lost, but also increased how much muscle I was building (ever so slightly). This also slowed my body fat loss right down, as I touched on 14% body fat briefly, before hovering around the 16% mark.
Now I present to you all the graphs your little heart could desire. Enjoy responsibly!
The Water
This became easier and easier. I even found myself waking up thirsty, drinking more during the average day and being able to even add drinks to my normal day. If I counted all the liquid I drank on a normal day, it would sit around 4.9 litre mark easily. Now that it’s over, I am trying to cut back on my water drinking to around the 3-litre mark per day so I can fit more yummy stuff in. Let’s see how it goes…
This graph is about as exciting as last time. Here’s my water. It’s all pretty consistent. But if you like graphs and data, then don’t let me stand in the way of a good time.
The Reading
I read two vastly different books, and even managed to finish the second book on the very last day! Almost like I planned it…
The first (or third, depending how you count it) book I read was Marriage Takes More Than Love by Jack and Carole Mayhall. This book was bought for me by our pastor – Costa, who took us through the fantastic marriage course by Nicky and Sila Gumbel. So, when he recommended it, I added it to my TBR list straight away. I didn’t have to wait long, as Costa then proceeded to buy it for me anyways. 75Hard was a good excuse to actually get into this book. I must say, its a good book to have and re-read every so often. I encourage all married couples and even those thinking of marriage to give it a read. While I did find it pretty simple, sometimes the best reminders are the simplest ones.
The second (or fourth) book I read was Raising Boys in the 21st Century by Steve Biddulph – another recommendation. This time by one of the guys in my Dadfit group. To him, it explained a lot of his own behaviour growing up, and helped him understand why boys do dumb s*#t. And oh boy… I rated this one 2 out of 5 stars. Which if you know the rating system is like a F.
It sets the tone straight away by mixing “modern” social science with real science in the foreword. The real science is fantastic – boys have different testosterone levels at different ages, and then explains why their behaviour changes during those times. Like a baby boy gets a ton of testosterone into their system when they’re born. Then again at 4, 6, 14 and so on, and how this causes changes in their relations to their mother, father and then the outside world. You don’t need to have a PhD in biology to understand why this makes them jump of the ledge when a pretty girl dares them to…
And then it goes fully “modern” and tells you that “gender doesn’t matter” all the while the real world science is showing you it does. I suspect this book was written from a completely scientific stand point at one stage, and then through the vocal minority imposing their beliefs, was edited so as to not upset someone’s sensitivities. Read the first two chapters – that’s where all the interesting and applicable learnings and science is found. Ignore the rest.
The Progress Photos
This is now a weekly task for me after finishing #75Hard. I will be using these to make sure I don’t balloon again and it’s a sneaky way to keep visual track of my gym progress. And no – you’re still not going to see them on this website. If you want a side-by-side comparison, you’ll have to ask me directly…
Personal Achievements
Yet again this is a chance for me to brag a little. I mean finishing 75 Hard is no mean feat, with a lot of people having fallen off at least day. So, the fact that I did it all the way through, first try, is something I think I can be proud of. All of these personal achievements get backed up by my Apple Watch, and as far as I know there’s no way to cheese these badges.
So, look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair. Or be impressed. Either way – I earned this.
First up is my move streak. Unbroken since I started 75 Hard! And as of writing this – still going strong. This is where you reach your move goal every day. As of writing this, I have just ticked over to 89 days of closing my rings.
Then I have a 200% move goal achievement, which I have three of them for this month with the goal to get to at least four before the month is done. I am sure you can guess what it means, but I’ll explain anyways. This is where you double your move goal in a single day. So, if it’s set to 2,500KJ, you end up burning 5,000.
The others, in order are, perfect week for completing my move (pink), exercise (green) and stand (teal) goals every day for a week. Which then results in the Perfect Week achievement. I have a lot of these badges now due to 75 Hard.
And then the trends – all looking up. Once thing I have noticed is that my Vo2Max started off on 33 and is now 35. So, while it has gone up, it does take ages to reverse this trend. I believe it takes 12 weeks to change the arrow from pointing down to pointing up, so maybe by the end of May I may see some improvement? Or maybe my Apple Watch is just too old to measure this effectively 😉
The Learnings
These will be covered in a more in-depth post. One where I can really dive into the whole endeavor and cover everything I want to talk about – things like social outings, planning ahead, friend and family reactions, and just everything I thought about during those 45-minute walks at 10 PM at night…
For now, I will say – I have learnt that I can do things I thought either impossible or very difficult. That when I break it down, hard things aren’t really hard, but require effort to plan ahead. You can’t just wing it. I will tell you, dear reader, that I did go see Dune Part 2 twice while doing 75 Hard, and that took a lot of pre-planning around the water drinking to make sure I could sit for 3 hours without a toilet break.
All in all – I am glad I did it. It was great for my physical health and helping me turn gym back into a habit. But for now, the one thing I have learnt through all of this is that I look very much forward to the next time I do 75 Hard, and all the things I will change.
So, thank you for reading. Thanks for coming with on this minor journey with me. Thanks to everyone who supported me, and a big thanks to all those who doubted. While support goes far, I find that when someone tells me what to do, not to do, or can’t do, my stubbornness kicks in.
And that stubbornness is a great motivator.
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