Anyone Completed 75 hard?

Best wishes!

Theoldguy1 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Theoldguy1 wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Not me, but there have been some threads about it recently: Maybe those are people you could connect with?

For example:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10831409/hard-75
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10827842/75-hard-april-1

Me, I don't like hard things. Slacker li'l ol' lady that I am, I like things that are as easy and enjoyable as possible yet that still produce results. 😆 But we're all different, and that's part of what makes life fun.

I hope you find it very successful, sincerely. 🙂

As soon as there is a "75 Easy" challenge, consider me signed up.

janejellyroll wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Not me, but there have been some threads about it recently: Maybe those are people you could connect with?

For example:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10831409/hard-75
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10827842/75-hard-april-1

Me, I don't like hard things. Slacker li'l ol' lady that I am, I like things that are as easy and enjoyable as possible yet that still produce results. 😆 But we're all different, and that's part of what makes life fun.

I hope you find it very successful, sincerely. 🙂

As soon as there is a "75 Easy" challenge, consider me signed up.

It's my understanding 75 Hard is suppose to be a mental challenge to help one expand their comfort zone. Doing the same things one always does or finding "easy" things doesn't accomplish that.

There's a vast expanse between taking on well-targeted challenges aimed at self-improvement, and doing a list of arbitrary "hard" things to make oneself "mentally tough". 75 Hard doesn't take it this far, but somewhere further to the extreme of this same concept are things like G. Gordon Liddy holding a candle to his hand until his flesh burned, to toughen himself up (I grant that there may have been some reason in his case, as an FBI guy, to train tolerance of physical pain, but it's still extreme).

I get that some people are highly motivated by an intense "take that hill, no matter what" approach, and like strict rules-based strategies. Only a few of the 75 Hard rules seem to to me to have the potential for meaningful risk (and that fairly mild), so if people want to do it and think they'll benefit, that's great. (I do think it has high potential, given the overall sales pitch, to leave people feeling like abject failures if it doesn't hold together for them for a whole 75 days of doing pretty-arbitrary stuff with no exceptions - to blame themselves rather than the program.)

Personally, I think there are plenty of ways to intentionally expand one's comfort zone, accept mental/physical challenges, and make better progress in life . . . that have useful end-points, and that are at least as likely to build mental toughness and other psychological/cognitive skills that are useful in the rest of life. (Patience? Flexibility? Adaptive planning? . . . .)

I do think that a well-formulated challenge can be pretty fun. Accomplishing stuff generally is fun, and sure, it's maybe more fun if the difficulty score is up there a ways. That's different from doing stuff just because it's hard, to (theoretically) build character. The latter is not my jam. (Plus, if I can find things that are productive, and reasonably "easy", that's kinda excellent. Picking good routes is also a life skill.)

But I assumed Jane was joking. She has, after all, done some challenging stuff herself, IMU.

And I still wish the OP huge success on this route she's chosen. Day 8 is great - over a tenth of the way through, good stuff.

Guess we will have to agree to disagree.

Sure one can challenge one's self doing something that is fun. I was a recreational runner and decided to train for a run a marathon. Was it a personal challenge sure, did it expand my comfort zone? Not really, it was just an expansion of what I was already doing.

If we look at actives our military go through during training (not saying Hard 75 is anything close to that) it's not what many would personally choose a challenge, but I'm pretty sure most would agree the "forced challenge" really expanded their comfort zone.

I also think failure and recognizing the role one played in failing is good. We all have failed at something in the past and will fail at something in the future. How we react to failure defines us.

I think the framing here is off (and to be fair, it mirrors the framing of the challenge itself). The choices aren't "Do 75 Hard or coast through life without every challenging yourself."

People who don't do this particular program are doing hard stuff all the time. They're just not forcing down a gallon of water each day. If someone finds growth from this program, that's great. But I don't think it compares at all to going through basic training. And I personally think running a 50K was way harder for me than it would be to read 15 minutes a day. For someone else, it might be flipped and that's cool.

wunderkindking wrote: »

I do a lot of hard things. Some of the hard things are because I enjoy them. Some of the hard things are because they will improve my life/quality of life. Some of the hard things are just necessary. All of those are pretty individual.

What none of them are, however, is arbitrary. None of them are doing something hard JUST because they are hard.

If the answer to that is 'I enjoy the sense of accomplishment' then you are doing them because you enjoy it. That is not fundamentally different than someone working hard at a recreational hobby. If the answer is 'to improve myself' that is not fundamentally different than someone working hard on their degree, weight loss, or some exercise activity. The answer here cannot be 'I have to/it is necessary' because lol, no, this is a chloe ting butt challenge with extra parts. There are no consequences but emotional ones to not completing it.

My life has plenty of challenges of all categories, INCLUDING 'have to', without me finding other ones filled with silliness just because.

I think I mentioned this in another thread about 75 Hard, but I'm going to bring it up again because even though I would never do it I do think I understand why programs like this exist.

In my church, there's a group of men who undergo a similar though not identical program every Lent (liturgical season of penance). There's also a spiritual component. But it was actually designed for the exact reason you state here - it's for people whose life circumstances are such that they really don't experience major hardship or challenges at all - employed but not in high stress jobs, not much in the way of family responsibilities, physically healthy, in peaceful societies where resources are widely available. It's very easy, when things are easy, to just coast, and I think people correctly identify that growth is very difficult or even nigh impossible when you never encounter anything that's slightly difficult.

My personal opinion, and I'm only 34 so maybe it's a little rich for me to grumble about "kids these days," but I really do think there's something to the idea. The program I'm most familiar with as I said is not this one, and I also belong to a faith tradition that has a rich understanding of penance and a theology of suffering, but even there the consensus is that, for most people, the penitential opportunities we experience in daily life are sufficient if we handle them with grace. Most of us will not really have to seek anything out - trouble will find us all on its own. But I think, maybe, that there is something to this for people who have never really had to practice serious discipline in anything. Just like with my kids, the opportunities they have now for failure are very small and mostly inconsequential, so even if the circumstances are structured and artificial there's going to be some benefit for some people.

That said, I'm definitely one of those "handle my own life circumstances with grace and seek to grow in small ways" type people.

Theoldguy1 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Theoldguy1 wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Not me, but there have been some threads about it recently: Maybe those are people you could connect with?

For example:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10831409/hard-75
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10827842/75-hard-april-1

Me, I don't like hard things. Slacker li'l ol' lady that I am, I like things that are as easy and enjoyable as possible yet that still produce results. 😆 But we're all different, and that's part of what makes life fun.

I hope you find it very successful, sincerely. 🙂

As soon as there is a "75 Easy" challenge, consider me signed up.

janejellyroll wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Not me, but there have been some threads about it recently: Maybe those are people you could connect with?

For example:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10831409/hard-75
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10827842/75-hard-april-1

Me, I don't like hard things. Slacker li'l ol' lady that I am, I like things that are as easy and enjoyable as possible yet that still produce results. 😆 But we're all different, and that's part of what makes life fun.

I hope you find it very successful, sincerely. 🙂

As soon as there is a "75 Easy" challenge, consider me signed up.

It's my understanding 75 Hard is suppose to be a mental challenge to help one expand their comfort zone. Doing the same things one always does or finding "easy" things doesn't accomplish that.

There's a vast expanse between taking on well-targeted challenges aimed at self-improvement, and doing a list of arbitrary "hard" things to make oneself "mentally tough". 75 Hard doesn't take it this far, but somewhere further to the extreme of this same concept are things like G. Gordon Liddy holding a candle to his hand until his flesh burned, to toughen himself up (I grant that there may have been some reason in his case, as an FBI guy, to train tolerance of physical pain, but it's still extreme).

I get that some people are highly motivated by an intense "take that hill, no matter what" approach, and like strict rules-based strategies. Only a few of the 75 Hard rules seem to to me to have the potential for meaningful risk (and that fairly mild), so if people want to do it and think they'll benefit, that's great. (I do think it has high potential, given the overall sales pitch, to leave people feeling like abject failures if it doesn't hold together for them for a whole 75 days of doing pretty-arbitrary stuff with no exceptions - to blame themselves rather than the program.)

Personally, I think there are plenty of ways to intentionally expand one's comfort zone, accept mental/physical challenges, and make better progress in life . . . that have useful end-points, and that are at least as likely to build mental toughness and other psychological/cognitive skills that are useful in the rest of life. (Patience? Flexibility? Adaptive planning? . . . .)

I do think that a well-formulated challenge can be pretty fun. Accomplishing stuff generally is fun, and sure, it's maybe more fun if the difficulty score is up there a ways. That's different from doing stuff just because it's hard, to (theoretically) build character. The latter is not my jam. (Plus, if I can find things that are productive, and reasonably "easy", that's kinda excellent. Picking good routes is also a life skill.)

But I assumed Jane was joking. She has, after all, done some challenging stuff herself, IMU.

And I still wish the OP huge success on this route she's chosen. Day 8 is great - over a tenth of the way through, good stuff.

Guess we will have to agree to disagree.

Sure one can challenge one's self doing something that is fun. I was a recreational runner and decided to train for a run a marathon. Was it a personal challenge sure, did it expand my comfort zone? Not really, it was just an expansion of what I was already doing.

If we look at actives our military go through during training (not saying Hard 75 is anything close to that) it's not what many would personally choose a challenge, but I'm pretty sure most would agree the "forced challenge" really expanded their comfort zone.

I also think failure and recognizing the role one played in failing is good. We all have failed at something in the past and will fail at something in the future. How we react to failure defines us.

To the bolded, I guess we will. This is not the Debate part of MFP, after all. (It might be a fun thing to have a debate about there, though I don't plan to start one).

In reality, I doubt that your and my views are hugely far apart.

OP asked about finding people who've done 75 Hard. I made a sincere attempt to help her, having seen a couple of related threads recently, and added what I meant as a mild joke, that I wasn't doing it because I don't enjoy hard things. I intentionally didn't say what I thought of the program, from what I'd read of it, but I'll admit the mild joke headed a little bit in that direction.

@janejellyroll, @wunderkindking, and @penguinmama87 made some points I'd make, in that regard. Sometimes, I think it may be a deficit in our culture that we don't have any common difficult coming of age rituals, as many traditional cultures do. Rather, the more common thing is to coddle young people in a cozy nest for a really long time. (I'm not advocating violence against our youth here, BTW, but something in the realm of a meaningful, well-thought-out, productive, commonly-shared challenge could have benefits.)

As a further aside, like you, I don't think that military training is a full parallel to 75 Hard, and not just when it comes to relative difficulty. I've not been in the military, but my understanding is that the training has a point, for that context: Learning one's physical limits, creating unit cohesion, fostering immediate and (largely) unquestioning following of orders, building physical capabilities (by more challenging routes than might be "best" in a health-promotion sense), and that sort of thing. It may be pointless in some respects from the service member's standpoint (digging and filling holes, or whatever), but I don't think it's pointless from the military's perspective.

If I were the kind of person who was motivated simply by doing hard things, I'd make my own list of hard things, with goals/methods that had some inherent point, for me. (Things like daily cold showers would not be on that list.) It's admittedly a quirk, but I don't like adopting other people's lists of arbitrary rules, generally. Beyond that, I usually prefer to follow recommendations from experts in the specific areas of my goals. While Andy Frisella is an accomplished guy in various ways, he doesn't have the kind of credentials I'd seek for any goals I'm likely to adopt - but that's just me.

VonHocker08 wrote: »

I am on day 8 of 75 hard. Feel free to add me if you’re doing it.
So far everything is going well I just wanted to see what others experiences have been.
What books did you read?
Did you do the same types of workouts throughout?
If you followed a diet other than having a calorie deficit what did you do?

@VonHocker08
I am on day 31.. its been tough at times.. and I believe I could do better especially about the diet (calorie deficit). Workouts are disciplined and 3 hours apart.. Toughest is the water - being disciplined around drinking water throughout the day and not chugging it at night.

It has helped me with my focus and also is a distraction from the personal challenges I am facing.