75 Hard vs. 75 Soft

 So there is this new thing going around, at least it's relatively new to me, called 75Hard. This is where you do some very hard things for 75 days. It is supposed to make you stronger and change you in profound ways when you realize you can really can do super hard things. That is apparently the trend lately in self-improvement. This is one of the reasons that I left DMSC because of the ridiculous 'hard' things he was prescribing; cold blast in your shower, rucking, things like that. A cold blast at the end of a shower is not 'hard' it's annoying and inconvenient but it's not hard. Rucking is in and of itself not 'hard'. You put some weight in a backpack and you walk. Not that difficult. However it can be dangerous and he didn't really have any guidelines for it. Women who were overweight and out of shape were walking down stairs with weights on their back, rucking in snow and ice, yeah, that is just not safe to me. There should be some qualifier like once you can walk easily for 30 minutes then slowly start adding some weight to your pack. This I felt had the potential to be dangerous and someone would get injured. By the way, I was canceled from DMSC yesterday so I am no longer a member of the group. It feels weird after being around that fire for so long to be out on my own. But I'm also fairly confident that wasn't working anymore so it's time to find something that does work. 

Back to 75Hard. So the premise of this is that you do a couple of hard things and commit to them for 75 days. They are: 

• Workout twice a day for 45 minutes each, one workout must be outside
• Follow a food plan of your choice but stick to it faithfully for the full 75 days
• Drink 1 gallon of water daily
• Read 10 pages of a self help book daily
• Take progress pictures daily
• If you mess up any of these things you have to start back at Day 1

Now when I first read these I thought, okay, this is almost doable. I'm following a meal plan at the moment, no bread or sugar. I try to move or workout every day. I drink lots of water. So I thought this might be almost doable except for the two 45 minute workouts daily, I just cannot do them during the school week. So in the back of my mind I had kind of been toying with changing the rules a little bit. Then I stumbled across 75Soft. The rules of that are as follows: 

• Healthy food choices 90% of the time
• Workout 4x a week for 30 minutes
• Take pictures Day 1 and Day 75
• Drink half your weight in ounces of water per day
• Meditate 5+ minutes per day
• Read or listen to 10 minutes of self-improvement or inspiration per day
• If you mess up any of these things get right back at it

This is more in line with my life however I would tweak this even a little. Mine would look something like this: 

• Stick to eating plan 90% of the time
• Workout most days of the week for at least 30 minutes - some of that being outside
• Drink half my bodyweight in water
• Meditate 10+ minutes a day
• Read 20 minutes a day - anything
• Make this how you live your life on regular basis

I like that. These are completely doable goals and if I make them a lifestyle they will take me a long, long way. So rather than 75 days of anything, I'm going to make these things my weekly habits and I'm going t track them. I want these things to become part of my life and how I live my life.