#75Hard Week 1 Done

- November 25, 2019

In a completely arbitrary way, completely based on the way my Fitbit tracks things, I have decided that Monday is the beginning of the week for this #75HardChallenge.

Now, I know that I started the challenge on a Wednesday and to those out there who are going to be bothered by the oddity of Monday being the beginning of the week but this starting on a Wednesday, I stick my tongue in your general direction.

So, lets go over some of my first week(ish) of stats.

The day I started I weighed in at 244.4 pounds which really wasn't bad considering I haven't been structured for about a month or so. It was essentially 5 pounds above where I left off and when you are fat, like I am, then weight can fluctuate wildly and quickly. Easy come and easy go. Discipline is the hard part.

As the week ended I was down to 238.1 pounds and feeling really good about life. Drinking plenty of water every single day and dedicating myself to fasting has once again triggered my weight loss so that I can keep pushing and hit my long term goals instead of just my short term goals. Not every day will be a loss, I am not stupid enough to think that. There will be gains and there will be stagnation and I am going to keep trucking on my way back to my wedding weight.

As my goal is to hit 1 million steps I did some rough math and came to the conclusion that over the course of 75 days I would have to average 13,333.3333333333 steps every single day to hit that million mark. My first thought was to set myself a goal of 10k steps a day but I felt I would not be pushing myself hard enough if I did that. So I took the 750,000 steps and rounded it up to a cold million. I will hit this step goal and finish this #75Hard challenge in 75 days and I feel like the hardest part will be getting in those steps. The days I am not working are the ones I worry about the most. Thanksgiving and Xmas are the two days that worry me the most out of all of them but if I can be committed then I will knock this out and come up with new challenges for the next time.

While the first week looks impressive I do not believe that over 15k steps is a pace that I will be able to keep up the entire time and I will have many days closer to the minimum of 10k steps to help balance things out. However, 5 days in I am over 100k steps into my challenge which means with 70 days left I only have to average 12,729.343 steps every single day for the rest of it to hit. See, already making things easier on myself.

Today being one of my normally lazy days I needed to go for a walk in order to achieve my steps goal for the day. So I put on my hoodie, slapped in my earbuds and headed out there door vowing not to return until I met my goal. Shortly into my walk I realized that I left my water at home and kind of whimpered a little bit but decided to just keep on trucking and go where the wind blows.

As I started into my journey I decided to go to the concrete structure that is located close to my housing complex and see what it involved. Of course I decided that I must climb up it and it proved to be a lot more difficult than I anticipated. Being fat and having asthma make going up structures like this more difficult and even though I only did the short portion I was completely out of breath by the time I made it to the top. I now have a goal of being able to do it multiple times and being able to do the largest part of it multiple times over the course of the next few months (or you know, maybe when the weather gets warmer or something).

I started my fasting up against after my last meal on Weds and as you can see I have gone at least 18 hours every day since then. This is a big reason that my weight loss kicked in again and I am surprised that I haven't had any shorter ones to begin. I gave myself some room to get from 12 hours and up but it looks like my body has already decided to settle into 18 hours plus and that is something I am very happy with. I'd like to push that up to 20 hours so that most days I am doing 20 or more hours of fasting and only eating once with maybe a light snack as well, as that is my long term goal. I feel that within a couple of weeks I should be there. Once again the holiday feasts will prove to be a challenge but it is not a challenge that I cannot overcome. This is one of the big reasons that I decided to start this challenge with the knowledge that some of the hardest days of the year were right in the middle of it.
Mind over matter.
Willpower.
Determination.

The Plan or 75 days
1 - 10k Steps every single day. 1 Million Steps in 75 days
2 - 1 Gallon of water every single day
3 - Read 10 pages of a book every single day
4 - Take a Selfie and tell the world how handsome I am
5 - Intermittent Fasting Every day working my way from 12 to 16 and then 18-20 hours every single day. No Cheat Days

Some pics from my walk: