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If you’re on TikTok, it’s highly likely your feed has served up a friend or influencer doing something called the 75 Hard Challenge. The hashtags #75HardChallenge and #75Hard have more than 31 million views, collectively.*
And while questionable weight loss trends are not new (sup, Keto diet, Whole30 recipes, and intermittent fasting?), this 75-day plan created by motivational speaker, podcaster, author, and supplement company owner Andy Frisella is going viral for all of the wrong reasons.
What is the 75 Hard Challenge?
In March 2019, Frisella, who is not a certified trainer, dietitian, or licensed clinical therapist, introduced the concept of the 75 Hard Challenge on his podcast, Real AF, suggesting that it’s a way to change your life for the better and lose weight “I’ve spent more than twenty years figuring out how to master mental toughness (sic) and I’m putting everything I’ve learned into a program I call 75HARD,” he writes in the episode notes.
On his website, Frisella writes that 75 Hard is “NOT A REGULAR FITNESS PROGRAM (sic),” Rather, it’s a “MENTAL TOUGHNESS PROGRAM,” which he is qualified to teach based on his “20 years of intensive study and real-life experience.” He does not reference any health, fitness, or therapy courses.
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The basic principles of his challenge include:
- Follow a diet. Though he doesn’t specify which foods this includes, he doesn’t allow alcohol or “cheat meals.” It’s unclear what qualifies as a cheat meal.
- Work out twice a day for at least 45 minutes. One of these workouts must be with an outdoor session, though it’s not explained why.
- Drink four liters of water per day.
- Read 10 pages of non-fiction a day.
- Take a five-minute cold shower.
- Take progress photos every day.
- Perform other unrelated tasks like a random act of kindness or talk to someone in person daily.
But is it dangerous?
Honestly, yes. Besides the seemingly arbitrary rules, there are many other reasons to be worried about the impact Frisella’s challenge can have on your physical and mental health.
For starters, following a “diet” for 75 days can mean different things to different people. While some may decide that their “diet” is limiting how much takeout they order, others might take it upon themselves to cut out entire food groups—especially if their motivation to do the challenge is to lose weight.
That can completely eff with a person’s relationship with food, says licensed clinical social worker and therapist, Ayana Ali
“Diets that severely restrict food often result in the creation of a negative relationship between individuals and how they nourish themselves,” says Ali. It works like this: When you categorize foods as “bad” or “cheat foods” and avoid them, you may crave those foods more intensely. And once you eat them, “you will likely overindulge and subsequently drown in guilt and shame for having consumed so much of it,” says Ali. That can set you up for a disordered cycle of bingeing and restriction.
What’s worse: “Extremely restrictive eating means you may never actually learn healthy eating habits or honor your body’s desires,” says Ali.
Then there are the fitness rules that don’t take into account your underlying health conditions, previous injuries, or current fitness levels. Exercising for 90 minutes a day, with 45 minutes spent outside regardless of the temp, is not safe for everyone.
And, like the diet rules, the fitness recommendations are basically a choose your own adventure. That means some might take it upon themselves to go HAM with burpees, cardio, strength, or workouts they’ve never tried before. Which, yeah, is super problematic.
“The workout plan is so non-specific that you’re at great risk for injury,” confirms Albert R. Matheny, registered dietitian, certified strength and conditioning specialist, and owner of the SoHo Strength Lab in New York City. And, for a lot of people, working out twice a day is too much too fast.
Before starting any fitness plan, you should get a physical from your doctor and an assessment from an actual certified personal trainer. This ensures you develop a plan that is safe, effective, and personally aligned toward your goals, says Matheny.
Oh, and it’s also not sustainable, says Matheny. Workout routines are best when you can gradually increase what you’re doing every week. But doing the same thing every day for 75 days can get extremely monotonous and you may lose motivation fast or just burn out, says Matheny. If the only thing that’s motivating you is your daily “progress” picture, that’s a major problem too.
Though the plan is meant to improve your “mental toughness,” this challenge is more detrimental to your mental health than it is helpful, says Ali.
“Being extremely regimented can damage your mental health,” she says. If you believe (as Frisella suggests) that success only looks like completing a laundry list of random, time-consuming activities, when you can’t complete them, you might see yourself as a failure. But succeeding isn’t so cut and dry—and it has literally nothing to do with what you eat or how much you work out.
“If the ability, or lack thereof, to stick to a highly prescriptive plan for 75 days is held out as a measure of mental health, anyone following this diet who does anything less than what the plan details may inaccurately believe that she is weak or that her mental health quotient is low,” says Ali. “This can lead to feelings of self deprecation and an inability to appreciate other measures of progress towards better emotional health.”
So what’s the point of this?
In a 2017 interview with Forbes covering Frisella‘s use of social media to earn 100 million dollars in sales for his supplement company, he told reporters: “When I first started posting things [for my company] online, I looked at all our competitors and all they were posting were pictures of protein powder. I thought that was so boring, and I wanted to do something different, so I catered our content around motivation instead, the lifestyle our customers wanted to live,” said Frisella.
And this may be just another non-boring, motivational way Frisella aims to gain more sales, even if the plan is totally free.
“He’s trying to sell you something,” says Matheny. The goal of the 75 Hard Challenge isn’t to improve your mental toughness, it’s to motivate you to unconsciously spread his name, his brand, and his supplement company to your friends. TL;DR: He’s pyramid scheming us, fam.
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For more information on eating disorders and resources that can help, visit the National Eating Disorders Association or the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. If you need to talk to someone right now, call NEDA’s hotline at 800-931-2237 or text “NEDA” to 741-741 to connect with a trained volunteer at Crisis Text Line.
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