I did it y'all! It's been a long journey, but so good. First, let me remind everyone what I did. While I've been sharing the #75Hard hashtag with all of these journals, I did modify the real #75Hard program a bit to suit my personal goals. The real #75Hard program is pretty simple but here is a summary with my modifications and milestones I've achieved along the journey:
1. do two 45 minute workouts with one being outdoors. - I modified this to do 90 minutes of exercise, with at least 45 minutes outside. This meant I could combine the time together if I wanted to do a long bike ride or something like that. Over the last 75 days I've: Cycled 823 miles over 59 hours and 21 minutes Walked 105 miles over 32 hours and 33 minutes Did multiple 30-45 minute Yoga sessions every week. Did multiple push-up, pull-up and weight training routines about once a week.
2. Drink 1 gallon of water everyday - I did this.
3. Read 10 pages - I did this, though I did allow myself to read one book on a Kindle device. AF requires the books to be read in physical form. I did however avoid listening to audio books. I can definitely attest to the fact that you don't get the same out of listening to a book as you do reading a book. Over the last 75 days I've read the following books: The Intentional Father Radical Candor 12 Rules for Life Bringing up Boys (I'm only part way through this book.)
4. Follow a diet - I did this. My diet wasn't super restrictive, but was just to eat mostly whole foods and limit carb intake except that which was required to fuel my exercise.
5. Take a progress pic. I have 75 photos of myself. I'll include a before and after in this post. It is pretty dramatic. I also did a daily weigh in. I went from about 191 lbs to 180 lbs over the last 75 days. And if you go back to November of last year I was hovering around 195 most of last year. Covid kicked off the first five pounds :D It definitely feels really good being 15 pounds lighter!
6. No alcohol or cheat meals - I've been completely sober and haven't had any junk food for the past 75 days. This was hard, but so good.
As a bonus I added 2 extra rules for my daily habits.
7. Read at least 1 chapter from my bible every day. Over the last 75 days I read the following books from the bible Romans Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah
8. Journal every day about the journey. View all my past journals at my blog here.
So now that I'm done, what will I do going forward? I've been thinking about that a lot. I definitely don't want to just go back to living the way I was before. So I've decided to come up with a list of rules to practice, hopefully for the rest of my life. One thing I've definitely learned in this process is that a well lived life needs constraints. Too much freedom leads to indulgence, excess, and recklessness. I've developed 10 rules that I'll outline below. These will be my guiding light going forward.
1. Pay Attention. It's so easy to go through life drifting. You miss so much when you're not being intentional. This includes paying attention to my diet, to what I'm looking at, to how I'm spending my time and much more. It's really kind of an umbrella for the rest of the rules.
2. Don't drink, but when you do, no more than 2 in a night and 4 in a week. This one needs some explaining. I don't plan to be completely sober. But I want my default to be no alcohol. I often find myself in bad habits where I'm just drinking to drink, or trying to chase a buzz. This just isn't healthy. I do enjoy social drinking from time to time, and I really appreciate quality beer and bourbon. So to that end, I will drink from time to time, but when I do I can't exceed the above limits.
3. Always be learning and don't waste time. I want to keep reading books. I love reading, but I've struggled to prioritize it as I've gotten older. But I've never had trouble prioritizing time for mindless scrolling on my phone. I want to stop this, and make sure I always have a book or class or something I'm working on.
4. Always prioritize God and family. I want to keep prioritizing reading my bible and praying every day. It keeps me grounded and close to God. I also noticed while doing this, that when there are so many demands on my time, it can be easy to not pay attention to my family. I want to make sure they are always prioritized.
5. Speak up, honestly. I've struggled as an introvert to always let my thoughts out of my head. I've been learning that I do actually have things of value that are worth saying. I want to keep doing this. I also want to be brave enough to say something, even when it won't be popular. I don't want to cover up my feelings just to keep the peace.
6. Stay hydrated. I'm not going to keep drinking 1 gallon of water everyday. That's just excessive. But I recently listened to a really good podcast on hydration by Andrew Huberman. He laid out some really good guidelines that I'm going to follow. That is simply to drink 80 oz of water during the first 10 hours of wake time in addition to drinking about 6oz of water every 15-20 minutes during exercise. That is plenty to stay well hydrated.
7. Eat for the work at hand, but have fun in moderation. I want to keep eating well and avoid binge eating. I've struggled with that a lot in the past. I used to view eating as a competition, where winning meant eating more than everyone else. Now I want to eat for utility with the occasional treat here and there. I want to make sure that when I have a treat, I stop after one serving.
8. Real is Best. I want to keep eating whole foods and avoid processed foods and refined sugars. I feel so much better eating real food.
9. Know your roles and play them well. Don't try to be someone else or everything. I've always struggled to know who I am. But over the past few years, I've learned a few roles that I definitely am and am trying my hardest to be the best at those. Those are a follow of Jesus. A husband and father. A software engineer. A cyclist. Those are the areas where I will spend 90% of my energy.
10. Aim at something. I always want to have a specific goal I'm aiming for. Or even a couple. A few I have for this year are to get down to 175lbs, read the bible every day, ride my bike at least 3000 miles, and be as present as possible for my kids and wife.
Those are my rules that I'm going to continue for the rest of my life. I hope y'all will hold me accountable. But before I end, this is the last day and still deserves a recap. So here it is.
Bible Reading Malachi 1 - Malachi is calling out the priests for accepting and offering sacrifices that aren't real sacrifices. Rather they are scraps from people just trying to check a box in their faith life. This is definitely a struggle I can relate to.
Workouts Went for a 47 minute walk and did 44 minutes of yoga.
Reading I read chapter 4 of Bringing up Boys. Dobson talks about the wounding of males in our culture today. Men are under attack on all sides, constantly being accused of toxic masculinity. We are being told that we are evil for being too aggressive or too risky or too dominant. But those are inherit traits of boys and men. It's who we are in our biology. We can't just be retrained to be something else more effeminate and less masculine.
Diet Breakfast: Sourdough bread with peanut butter and strawberry jam. Lunch: egg, ham and cheese scrambled eggs. Dinner: Green beans, 2 cheeseburgers with 2 slices of sourdough bread with onions and tomato. Snacks: Apple, cheese stick, slice of ham, and sunflower seeds.
Water about 130oz.
Progress 180.8
Cheats/Alcohol None
I hope you all enjoyed this journey with me. I appreciate all your support!
Husband and Father are my two favorite titles. I have 4 wonderful children and a beautiful wife. Everything else I do in life is a means to building my family. I'm also a software engineer with a focus on operating web apps on AWS. All the rest of my free time is mainly spent riding bicycles on roads and trails.
