75 Hard Review & Recap

Alcohol is harder on your body than you think. Five years ago, I was a very, very casual social drinker. I’d have a beer or a glass of bourbon at dinners out or at social gatherings. It didn’t even cross my mind to drink beyond that.

When COVID hit and we were confined to our house (thank you, dear government officials, for making that decision for all of us), my social drinking turned into “unsocial drinking” – that is, I’d have a glass or two of bourbon most nights. Even as a not-so-social person, I got bored not having something to do and a glass of bourbon gave me “something to do” in the evenings.

I didn’t realize how much that affected my sleep and energy until it was no longer an option on January 1st. It is one thing to be told about the effects of alcohol, it is another to feel them – and then to feel their absence so starkly.

My alcohol consumption will be going back to something much, much more moderate, consisting of only social occasions and weekends. That will be a huge net positive.

Doing 75 Hard in winter was rough but rewarding. Part of the challenge for me was that I was waking up early (i.e., between 4:45am and 5:30am) to knock out my outdoor workout. January temperatures in St. Louis that time of day ranged from about -3º to about 30ºF (wind chill/”feels like” temps). Not exactly a peaceful morning stroll. My warmest morning ended up being about 48º but that was early March. January and February were just cold.

On the other hand, it was cool being the only person – and I mean the only person – out in the morning, braving the cold and the periodic rain, wind, snow, and ice storms. Based on everybody telling me “You’re crazy”, my sense is that most people would not opt to do this challenge in the dead of winter. I’ll count that as a psychological victory.

New habits are here to stay. Probably the best part about 75 Hard is that I have no intention of dropping several of the habits I’ve developed. For example, I love to read but have made less time for it the last three years because kids tend to take up most of my non-work hours. Forcing myself to sit down and get through 10 pages turned out not to be so hard, even for a relatively slow reader like myself.

I don’t see myself going back to being an occasional binge reader. I see myself making 15 minutes a day to read, no excuses. That is the kind of time investment that compounds.

Additionally, I’ve learned how easy it is to drink a lot of water. I’ll probably set a rule for myself to at least get through a half gallon a day, and perhaps more on days of strenuous exertion.

As I mentioned, “no alcohol” won’t be a rule, but how much and how often I drink will change dramatically.

Everyone could benefit from this program but… Don’t let the strictness of 75 Hard stop you. Let’s say you looked at the 75 Hard rules and said, “There is no way I can make 90 minutes a day of exercise fit my schedule” or “I live in Siberia, working out outside is lethal.”

Well, then don’t do 75 Hard, precisely. Make up your own thing called 75 (Fairly) Hard where you cut alcohol and sweets, follow a diet, workout once per day for 30 minutes, and read 5 pages of a book each day. There is actually something called 75 Medium that some people are doing. You can’t say that you’re doing 75 Hard, but who cares? Are you making progress and improving your life? Absolutely.

People tend to get hung up on perfection when the real goal is progress. The fact that I had time for 75 Hard and you don’t doesn’t mean that we both can’t improve. Fair?

Losing fat and simultaneously building muscle is slow, but not impossible. You’ll sometimes hear that you can’t lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. That may be thermogenically true, in that your body can’t be catabolic (shedding stuff) and anabolic (gaining stuff) at the same moment in time.

But practically speaking, what I did was work to allow for both catabolic and anabolic windows of time each day. I’d intermittent fast (no calories) from 8pm to noon each night/day and get both of my workouts done during that time so I’d be tapping into fat stores as fuel. I’d also supplement with berberine (lowers blood sugar and reduces insulin secretion) and drink Yerba mate (increases GLP-1, a precursor to fat oxidation) during this time to maximize the fat loss the best I could. I was catabolic during this window.

After my lunchtime workout, I’d start consuming calories (lots of protein) and go anabolic. Best I can tell, I was able to use these calories to recover from my workouts and pack on some muscle while limiting how much was tucked away as fat.

While my DEXA scans are certainly not perfect (I did have them done under the same conditions both times) they affirm that my philosophy worked. I dropped my body fat by over 25 pounds (cutting total body fat percentage by almost 50%, from 24.7% down to 12.7%). I did this while increasing lean mass by about 15 pounds. So my total weight dropped by about 10 pounds, but this was actually body recomposition, not just “fat loss.” I know I added muscle, too, because I increased my five-rep squat by about 50 pounds, as well as upping the weight on all of my primary lifts.

Pretty cool.

This is just the beginning. This program has been great for me, but I’m still not physically where I’d like to be (in terms of strength, endurance, and yes, aesthetics). I think in part this is because the relative lack of sleep and the amount of constant exertion of 75 Hard inclined me to consume more calories than I’d have liked just to sustain blood sugar, electrolytes, and necessary energy levels. Granted, they were generally high-quality calories, but probably more than was optimal for some of my fat loss goals.