Why did I do it?
At the beginning of January 2021 in order to put an end to a health problem that I have had for several years I decided to take my mother's suggestion and travel to the city of Cuenca to visit one of our relatives who has experience and knowledge in the area of alternative medicine, in addition, the trip also became the perfect excuse to take a nice family trip and forget about the pandemic for at least a few days.
In short, after being examined, the treatment for my problem basically focused on improving my quality of life and health.
How could I improve my health?
In mid-2020 I had the opportunity to attend an event from one of my greatest mentors “Tony Robbins”, I was part of his first UPW (Unleash the Power Within) online event, which was incredible as suchs as the people that I met, and one one of them was Nataly Constante whom I had the opportunity to meet later in person, we both agreed on various issues related to personal development also we were in Quito-Ecuador, while we were talking one day, Nataly proposed to me to be part of a challenge that she had started and that she was doing at that moment.
What was the challenge about?
The challenge is called "75 HARD Challenge by Andy Frisella" you can even find it as a group on facebook and there are several people around the world supporting each other and doing it too.
The rules of the challenge were as follows:
For 75 days in a row and without pause, the following activities had to be carried out daily and without exception:
1. Follow a certain diet.
2. Drink 1 gallon of water.
3. Zero alcohol.
4. Zero junk food.
5. Perform 45 min of physical activity outdoors.
6. Perform 45 min of physical activity indoors.
7. Read 10 pages of a self-improvement book.
8. Take a daily photo.
And in the case of not complying with any of the challenge rules, then you had to start from scratch.
Anyway, I needed to improve my quality of life and health, so I said to myself.
Why not ?
How did the challenge go?
It is worth mentioning that before starting I already knew that the challenge more than being physical, it was mental, I even thought that it would be easy for me to do it, I was wrong!! however i mention how it went in each one of the activities:
1. Gallon of water
Drinking almost 4 liters of water daily was one of the activities that cost me the most, since I never drank water before and it was SO MUCH water.
Many times I forgot to drink the water in the day so I had to drink it in the afternoon and night and how is it obvious, later I had to spend in the bathroom repeatedly several times at night jaja it was not pleasant.
I drank 3 liters of boiled water in a 750 ml shot, sometimes with some tea. The remaining amount i assumed to ingest it with juices, soups or afternoon coffees.
2. The alcohol
Although I like and enjoy certain alcoholic drinks, I had no problem to stop consuming alcohol, however, on the day of my Master Mentor Coach graduation, I decided to put the challenge aside, as it was my graduation, I allowed myself to take several glasses of champagne and beer.
Additionally, in a couple of meetings i also have some white or red wine.
3. The 45 min of physical activity outdoors.
I had no major problem because my 45 min abroad consisted simply of going for a walk. At times, i chose to run or bike.
I walked 3 to 4 km a day and looked for certain places with a slope to push myself a little more.
Several occasions I took advantage of gping to the nature to fulfill the activity: For example, I went to the Cotopaxi volcano, to the Mica lagoon, I had family walks, trips, among others.
But this activity was complicated for me when the rains began, because when it rained I did not have the opportunity to go for a walk, so I chose to do indoor biking at home.
When I was biking indoors I would use a roller and put the strongest gear on the bike and the strongest resistance on the roller. The roller is a device that is attached to common bicycles to make them static.
The cost of a cheap roller is roughly $ 100 to $ 300.
These activities were carried out between 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m., I decided to do it at that time due to the absence of the sun, in addition to finishing my work activities
According to the clock, it burned between 250 to 300 calories.
4. The 45 min of physical activity outdoors
I had a habit of exercise so I did not have a major complication in complying with this activity, which I did between 20:00 and 23:00.
My 45 min were made up of performing a daily exercise routine for each part of the body using resistance bands:
Saturday - biceps
Sunday - Triceps
Monday - Shoulders
Tuesday - Chest
Wednesday - Back
Thursday - Legs
Friday - Abdomen
Basically I was doing 2 or 3 different exercises, with 4 sets of 7 to 15 repetitions each. In certain days I even used higher resistance and fewer repetitions.
Example:
I was looking on the internet for various arm exercises that I could do with resistance bands, from those exercises I chose 2 or 3 and did 4 sets of 7 to 15 repetitions each.
In addition to those 4 series of each of the 2 or 3 exercises that i chose on the internet, i complemented them with:
- 4 series of plates (30 sec each).
- 4 series of normal sit-ups (30-70 repetitions each) using a pilates ball.
- 4 series of an exercise to correct posture.
Completing all the series took me from 45 min to 1 hour and sometimes a little longer.
There were days that I did the exercises in my room watching TV to make it more pleasant.
The cost of a resistance band kit costs about $ 15 to $ 30 and a Pilates ball about $ 10.
According to the clock, i burned between 300 and 400 calories.
5. Reading the 10 pages a day
I also already had a habit of reading, however, reading became too heavy for me because I did it after finishing the exercises. At times I just wanted to lie down to sleep, at the end.
I read 3 books and listened to 2 audio books in English (while walking):
- Learning from the best.
- How to win friends and influence people.
- 50 classics of psychology.
- Ikigai (Audio book-YouTube)
- Think and grow rich (Audio book-YouTube)
6. The daily photo
Of all the activities of the challenge this one in particular was the one that I failed the most, there were several times that I forgot to take the photo before going to sleep (6 times), however, I took it in the morning when I became aware of not having done it .
I guess I failed several times because I ended up exhausted from reading and only wanted to go to bed and sleep.
7. Diet and junk food
I have never done a diet in my life before even I had no idea about the types of diets that exists i thought there were only 2 or 3 types but there were hundreds and each one with its rules.
I have to admit that when I had to choose the type of diet I thought very seriously about not taking the challenge anymore, it seemed very complicated and a waste of time trying to learn a type of diet.
I had two options, either to leave the challenge or to continue without the diet, so I decided not to complicate myself and choose the second option, but then what was my diet?
It was simple i just tried to eat healthy, basically:
-Zero sodas.
-Zero junk foods, no burgers, pizza, fries, etc.
-Zero cookies and people who know me know that I love cookies, especially love them, oreo and chocochips.
-Less rice and smaller food portions.
-Don't eat at night.
-Zero sugar (I totally changed it for stevia)
-Zero bread
-Zero frying
-Zero milk
-Zero sweets
-Zero ice cream
-Zero tomato sauce and mayonnaise and people who know me also know that I love salchipapas.
-Zero alcohol, including wine and beer.
In conclusion, zero of everything that i thought could make me fat, but did I did it? The truth in the 75 days I did not comply 100%:
1. I once ate a lot of fried potatos.
2. I once had a hamburger with potatoes and some ketchup and mayonnaise.
3. I had pizza twice.
4. Three times I ate tacos.
5. If I drink soda, but only occasionally and in small amounts, I may have had at most 2 large glasses in all.
6. Sometimes I had cake and ice cream.
Additionally, my family did not help, because they prepared delicious things, including desserts, cakes, certain fried foods, roasts, etc ... and on all those occasions, the truth is that I ate everything, but I avoided doing it in large quantities.
At night it was very difficult for me to control my hunger, because before the challenge I always went down to the kitcheb to eat something, such as: cookies, bread, chocolate milk, a sandwich, some candy or even ate something that was left over from lunch.How did I control that hunger?
-Occasionally i ate some fruit.
-A glass of yogurt, which a toast.
-Several times I made my own cookies based on oats, walnuts, blueberries, banana, flaxseed and thanks to my sister's cooking knowledge, later I made a much more delicious and nutritious cookie.
In summary, I ended up designing my own challenge, because I did not follow the original, but regardless, it requires a very great motivation and commitment. Personally, I would not have been able to complete it if I had not use coaching and NLP tools with myself, because the physical and mental exhaustion, especially in the last days, was such that on several occasions I already wanted to leave it.
The results were obtained by the "DAILY COMMITMENT", every day, "ONE DAY AFTER ANOTHER", without pauses, without waiting, without excuses (Except for the day of my graduation).
Also the more I investigated, I found even better strategies than this challenge, but it was useless to have the best strategy if my mind was not prepared, therefore the use of coaching and NLP tools helped me a lot, since there were several limiting beliefs that I had to break, states of mind that I had to change, goals that I had to redesign, among others.
Finally if the motivation is very strong anyone can do it, otherwise, it will become very difficult but not impossible, just start.
Pd: In none of the 75 days I consumed pills, supplements or products of a certain brand or multilevel such as herbalife, fuxion, omnilife or others. Additionally, I did not use gels, spas, electronic equipment, etc.
