After over a month of starts and stops, I crossed the threshold of two weeks on the 75 Hard challenge and felt like I mostly had achieved some kind of equilibrium, as miserable as it was.
I was managing the required two workouts per day, including the workout taken outside. When it rained, including when it was like water being poured out of a boot, I got wet.
On days when my legs ached from running (or when my running shoes were still drying), I dragged a rowing machine outside into the parking lot at CrossFit WV and pulled with some of my might.
To get something like rest, on some days, I did yoga in front of my television, while trying to avoid the sloppy affection of my little dog, Penny.
Yoga was easier on my joints and muscles than lifting weights or swinging from a pullup bar.
So far, I’ve managed to stay on a diet. After careful consideration and a visit to Kanawha County Public Library to look at what they had on the shelves, I opted to go back to what worked for me last time — a food diary on my phone with a built-in calorie counter.
The electronic food diary has an ever-growing database with information about calories and nutrients based on serving sizes.
It is the least-exciting diet plan in America — plain, old calorie counting.
This is exactly how your grandma lost weight, if she needed to lose weight. The older generations didn’t seem to care as much.
Smoking in hospitals, planes and theaters was totally OK and pregnant women could drink, as long as they didn’t drink too much, or try to have a checking account of their own.
With the diet I’m following, I’m supposed to be eating a little over 2,000 calories per day. I pick foods that keep me under that — a lot of chicken and vegetables, some fish and fruit, but very little cheese and almost no bread.
I also stay away from the candy dishes at work and pass on the surprising number of free cookies that come my way.
In a little over a month, I’ve dropped six pounds, which is mostly from lost joy.
The 75 Hard plan calls for you to read 10 pages of a non-fiction book (essentially, self-improvement focused) every day.
Over the past few years, I’ve found it harder and harder to get much reading done. I was in the habit of reading before bed, but that was before I started crawling out of bed at 5 o’clock in the morning.
These days, pulling out a book around bedtime is the quickest way to knock me out. I can barely clear a page.
The solution was simple: I do the required reading before I leave the house in the morning.
At a minimum of 10 pages a day, I’m already through two books (they were short books and not particularly good books, but they still count).
On the 75 Hard Plan, you don’t drink. While I’m (as of this writing) just 17 days into the program, I haven’t had alcohol in 30 days (I’ve had to restart the program twice since beginning March 15).
The loss of beer has been annoying. I miss having an occasional beer after work or having a beer after spending half a day cutting grass, but remember that — like the bamboo in my back yard — it was starting to get out of hand.
Still, there hasn’t been much temptation to break 75 Hard over an ice-cold brew. Mostly, it’s just annoying, but I crave beer less than I crave a chocolate milkshake or a piece of cake.
Historically, I’ve always been more likely to reach for the cake for comfort. I come from a family of people who like to bake. Only a few of us really drank and none were particularly good at it.
No, the toughest part of 75 Hard has been the grind to consume a gallon of water each day.
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This is in addition to anything else you might usually drink — like coffee, tea, diet orange soda or those chemically suspect energy drinks that come in jellybean flavors.
No substitutions. It has to be water — flavorless, flat, unaltered and completely boring water.
I don’t think I really understood how much fluid a gallon was before I started this. Partly, that’s because I haven’t put anything in my fridge that’s sold in the gallon size for years. These days, I’m more of a 12-ounce can kind of guy.
Gallons are what I put into my car.
Also, I’m not great at math.
There was a point, probably in the fourth or fifth grade, where we were all taught how many cups make up a pint, a gallon or whatever is bigger than a gallon, but the day we covered that, I was probably drawing pictures of dinosaurs eating fighter planes.
I drew lots of pictures of dinosaurs eating fighter planes back then. My grades show that I was particularly interested in drawing dinosaurs, reading comic books and otherwise slacking off — particularly during math class.
To help me keep the amounts straight, I have a refrigerator magnet that breaks down cooking measurements.
There are 16 cups in a gallon.
Getting all of that water down each day requires strategy. It took me a few days to come up with a plan that works for me.
For the first couple of days, I tried filling up a gallon jug and hauling it around. I’ve seen some guys at the YMCA doing that, though most of them have ditched plain water in favor of some kind of rehydration mix that looks very much like Kool Aid.
I tried carrying the jug around, but it felt awkward in public — and what was I supposed to do when I had to go to the bathroom?
And going to the bathroom was inevitable.
Drinking a gallon of water in a day guaranteed that.
I tried to regiment when I drank.
After waking, I’d fill a 16-ounce container every few hours and drink it down. That was less conspicuous at least, but you still have to try and get all that water consumed before it gets too late in the day.
Otherwise, after you go to sleep, you’ll be up every few hours, which was what my first week was like.
I never slept more than a couple of hours.
Eventually, I worked out that I needed to drink at least half a gallon before lunch and make sure the rest was long gone before suppertime.
By day 17, I’m mostly there — and the dogs let me go back to sleep.
Usually.
As much as anything, 75 Hard is about embracing change and adapting. I’m trying. I’m really trying, but wishing I was a lot further along.
