What 75 Hard taught me about discipline

There's a point in every health story where knowing what to do stops being the problem. You know you should train. You know you should eat better and drink more water. The problem is doing it on the days you don't feel like it. For me, the thing that finally closed that gap was 75 Hard.

What 75 Hard is

75 Hard is a program created by Andy Frisella, an entrepreneur and host of the Real AF podcast. He's clear that it isn't a fitness challenge. He calls it a mental toughness program, and that's the right way to think about it. For 75 days in a row, you do every one of these, every day:

• Two workouts of at least 45 minutes each, and one of them has to be outdoors
• Follow a diet of your choice, with no cheat meals and no alcohol
• Drink a gallon of water, about 3.8 liters
• Read 10 pages of a nonfiction, self-development or business book
• Take a progress photo

Miss any one of them, on any day, and you start over at Day 1. No substitutions, no "I'll make it up tomorrow." That rule is the whole point. The full official rules are on Andy Frisella's site, and they're worth reading straight from the source before you start.

What it actually changed for me

Yes, I lost weight. But that's not the part that stuck with me. What 75 Hard really did was change how I treat habits and discipline. Before it, my consistency depended on my mood. After it, I took habits seriously in a way I never had, and that changed the trajectory of how I move through life, not just how I eat and train.

I also learned more during those 75 days than in years of starting and stopping. When you have to show up every single day, you start paying attention: what you eat, how you recover, what works and what doesn't. A lot of what ended up in my book came from that kind of daily, forced attention.

Sheer perseverance and being accountable to myself taught me more than any plan ever did.

The biggest shift was accountability. Nobody was checking on me. The only person who would know if I skipped a task was me. Learning to keep a promise when the only witness is yourself is a skill, and it carries into everything: work, relationships, all of it.

It's not for the faint of heart

I've coached quite a few people through 75 Hard, and I'll be straight with you: it's hard. That's in the name for a reason. Around the middle, the novelty is gone, the end is still far away, and that's where most people quit or start negotiating with themselves.

A few things I tell everyone I coach through it:

• Plan the day before it starts. Know when both workouts happen and what you're eating. Deciding in the moment is where days get missed.
• Get the outdoor workout in early when you can. Weather and evenings have a way of eating it.
• Pick a diet you can actually follow for 75 days. The program says "a diet," not "a crash diet." A sensible calorie target with real food works. My book walks you through setting one.
• Don't look at Day 75. Look at today. Seventy-five days is just today, done 75 times.

A different person at the end of the tunnel

I owe a lot to Andy Frisella for putting this out there. He has a lot of great material, and if 75 Hard sounds like something you need, go to the source and learn it from him.

If you decide to do it, I promise you this: you will be a different person at the end of that tunnel. Not because of the photos or the scale, but because you'll have 75 days of proof that you do what you say you're going to do.