I’ve been a longtime yoga lover. I love the feeling of stretching my body. I love the challenge of holding the poses. I love the time for my mind to wander. However, since becoming a mother nearly two and a half years ago (how is that possible?!), I’ve fallen out of my routine. Getting myself up out of bed and onto the mat before my baby needs me (at 7 or earlier…) is a struggle. And if I don’t do yoga in the morning, it’s unlikely it’ll happen later in the day.
After making quarterly goals of “do yoga three times a week” and not following through for more quarters than I’d like to admit, I realized I needed a different approach. I decided to adapt the popular 75 Hard challenge to get back on track with doing yoga.
What is 75 Hard?
75 Hard is a “TRANSFORMATIVE MENTAL TOUGHNESS PROGRAM” (yes, all capital). The rules are:
- Follow a diet (no cheat meals, no alcohol).
- Complete two 45-minute workouts (one must be outside).
- Drink one gallon of water.
- Read 10 pages of a non-fiction book (audiobooks don’t count).
- Take a progress picture.
My yoga-focused adaptation
As you may know if you’re a reader of the blog, I like to plan my life in quarters, so a 75 day challenge was appealing to me. The part of this program that I particularly liked was that if you miss a day, you have to start back on day 1. That was highly motivating for me because I did not want to start over. Here’s my version:
- No sugar on weekdays.
- Yoga daily.
- Read daily.
- Get ready for bed at 9:15.
I already read daily, so that was on there just so I knew I’d have something easy to check off. No sugar on weekdays was a challenge, but I gave myself the weekends to enjoy desserts. And by setting an alarm, I was able to drag myself off the couch and actually get ready for bed early.
What I cared about most was yoga consistency. To set myself up for daily yoga success, I did all the things you read about. I created a playlist with all the yoga classes I intended to do so I wouldn’t have decision fatigue. I laid my mat out right next to my bed so I’d have to walk over it to do anything else. And I have to say, all of this worked! While some days I didn’t really want to do it, having the streak on my Loop app (only on Android, but I’m sure there are good iOS habit tracker apps too) was a big motivator.
When it got hard and where I am now
Despite all of that, it started getting hard around the 50- to 60-day mark. Two months of holding strictly to these habits was wearing on me and I wanted a break! I felt the benefits of everything I was doing, including increased strength and flexibility with yoga. And yet, I couldn’t wait for it to end.
I made it to day 75…and I haven’t done yoga for the last three weeks 🙃 I’m eating less sugar than I was before the challenge and I’m going to bed between 9-10 (so not as strict, but still in a range that’s good for me). And, of course, I’m reading daily. But I found I needed a full break from the pressure of daily yoga.
Now that I’ve had my break, I’m getting back to my original goal—yoga three times a week. I had to go to the extreme to prove my own commitment, but doing so helped me realize that a three-day-a-week routine is the sustainable sweet spot to still get those noticeable benefits.
While I’m not jumping on another challenge anytime soon, I am glad that I gave 75 Hard an adaptive try.
Have you done 75 Hard? Would you ever try a version?
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