“I tend to think you’re fearless when you recognize why you should be scared of things, but do them anyway.” – Christian Bale
Right after the New Year in 2021, I set myself a 90 day discipline challenge, just to see what I was capable of. As with many things, the thought just came to me in the shower. I had just finished three back to back to back 30 day challenges in October, November, and December and I was considering what to take on next. The was accepting idea that my alcohol problem had taken hold in my mind and that, coupled with the need to challenge myself pushed me to take on what would become the 90 Day Life Change Challenge…
I love the idea of pushing myself out of my comfort zone, and I had become used to taking on multiple physical challenges at once. Usually I will choose five 30 days challenges simultaneously. This allowed me to get a low rep, easy “rest week” in after the final week in a challenge series which could include 5000 Squats in 30 Days, a Five minute Plank, 1000 Pull-ups Challenge and two more extreme tests of physical fitness.
In addition to the extension to 90 days, I decided to choose a combination of physical, mental and creative challenges that could be broken down into morning, evening and “daily” to foster the strongest level of discipline that I could visualize.
The 90 Day Life Change Challenge hit a milestone today… I am at the halfway point, Day 45 and while I have hinted at the benefits up to this point I would like to take this blog to share some of my findings so far.
So my challenge for 90 days was to follow these 14 things each day:
Morning
1. Wake between 0500 and 0530
2. ½ Murph (100 Burpees, 150 Squats, 100 Push-ups and 50 Pull-ups)
3. P90X3 (Also a 90 Day Program)
4. One Extreme Physical Challenge (So far a Five Minute Plank Series and now 150 V-Ups)
5. Meditation
6. ½ Hour Writing This Blog
7. CBD Oil
Daily
8. Fast from 8:00 PM until Noon the Next Day (16 Hours)
9. Never Overeat
10. Stick to a Strict 100% Plant Based, Whole Food Diet
11. No Drugs
12. No Alcohol
13. Take Vitamins Every Day
Evening
14. Practice Guitar
I should note that none of these is individually that hard for me, and I’ve done most of them before at one time or another for 30 days…. Even putting them all together isn’t crazy hard because although on the surface it sounds insane, it is a moderately difficult morning, the “daily” challenges aren’t hard at all because I have been a vegan for years and it was just a matter of eliminating the garbage food and I have been fasting for a couple of years now. As far as not overeating, that is simply a matter of slowing down and listening to my body say, “that’s enough”. Amusingly enough, my biggest number of failures (six times!) was to fail to take a vitamin… Finally got that under control by using my alarm to remind me at lunch until I developed the habit of taking them… The only true difficulty I had with all of this was the alcohol… That persisted for about 21 days until the screaming need to take a drink of vodka finally calmed. The last few weeks, the desire has been mild, if at all… I am beginning to believe that I can put down alcohol for the remainder of this life. Seems like the more information I take in, “eliminating alcohol” shows up on every single study done on longevity… The two true challenges that I have met so far are the daily grind of all of it combined and the extension to 90 days and what that has done to my mind.
I have lost weight; taken two inches off my waist (I have my high school waist size again!),)added muscle and if I may brag just a little, I have eight pack abs… All of that is just a given though, because put a human body under the conditions I have subjected it to, and the organism has no choice but to react in the way it has. As it has unfolded, surprisingly, it has been my mind and not my body that has had the biggest changes. I expected some of what has happened. A heightened sense of pride in myself, a sharper mind, and better focus were all expected and delivered. All that said, I had no idea the psychological, intellectual and emotional changes that were about to occur.
I seem to relish taking on difficult, if not impossible challenges. The first few days were a lot of fun. I get excited at the start of a new challenge, and that initial rush of soreness, pain and overwhelming sense of doubt is like being in a new relationship with yourself. The pep talks, the “so sore I cannot sit down on the toilet” days and that feeling of starting a long journey are some of the greatest experiences in my life.
I started waking at 0521, snoozing once until 0530, with the intention to slowly move it to 0500, and, over time, I have accomplished this. I really enjoy that silent morning time and getting more of that has been healing for me.
I have consistently exercised and meditated before work and most of the time, gotten the lion’s share of the blog done before my shower, then I try to finish the blog on my lunch hour and polish and publish after work. By far, the daily blog has been the most difficult thing about my Life Change Challenge. I will blog about blogging one of these days to explain for those who aspire to write and need a little push. People ask me a lot of questions about where my ideas come from, how long it takes me, writer’s block, etc and I haven’t been moved to write but the idea has tickled my cerebellum a few times and I will eventually get to it.
I often see and hear my mind coming up with excuses why I should stop, or reasons I could take a day off. I see them as what they are though, excuses, and I simply ignore them. Interestingly, when I voice them to my wife they seem to fade in their rate of recurrence. During the first few weeks, every single time I did a half Murph, my mind would tell me, “you aren’t going to finish today” and “this is too much”… I would always finish. In fact, I have only failed to do it a couple of times and both of those were because injuries that occurred during the execution of the series. When I verbalized it, my wife said, “you don’t fail…” and since that time, I laugh in between sets and just count down until I am done with no serious thoughts of failure. Okay, truth time, I wink and point, and smile at myself in the mirror between sets now… I have developed this sense of self confidence that is simply fucking amazing… I keep asking myself just how much I am capable of… Yeah, the kid who grew up doubting every single move he ever made suddenly has this unbreakable sense of self worth… Self-aggrandizement? No… Just a therapeutic and curative assessment…
Being a vegan is not new to me, I have been doing it for a while. In fact, my phone tells me that I have been a vegan for 1,364 days… I have been on an off and on strict whole food diet since last January. That adjustment was difficult because I love tortillas… Right before I began The 90 Life Change Challenge, I went on a tortilla bender and ate Taco Bell bean and rice tortillas for a week straight… I admit I have a tortilla problem… Almost had to get on a 12 step program but I avoided Tortillas Anonymous. Fasting was also not new to me, but it is still challenging. I’ve been eating my first meal at noon for about a year, but since I added a huge, calorie burning, body destroying exercise regiment I drink a protein shake before I go to work so I do not die until it is time to eat… Amusingly, I have learned to hate the word “hangry”… Hangry is about sugar addiction, not calorie deficiency… A Snickers Bar does not “satisfy” anything more than a sugar craving… If you find yourself getting angry after not eating for two hours, you really should do some soul searching, not look for a candy bar… After 16 hours of not eating, I find myself really wanting to eat at noon, but I don’t turn into a moody teenager if I don’t get to it immediately. Hunger is hard for me, not because it’s painful but because my mind really tries to find a way around fasting. I don’t dwell on it, because I know I will eat lunch eventually…
One last thing about eating… I don’t want to sound like a parent guilting a child, but about 9% of the world’s population goes to bed hungry every day. That is 690 million people with about 35 million of those being right here in the United States with a large proportion of that being children. If you get angry because you haven’t eaten in a couple of hours, you should explore that physical feeling of your “hunger” and consider how it feels to be a child who hasn’t eaten for an entire day going to bed on an empty stomach… Your anger isn’t justified, it’s a marketing tool you bought into to sell candy bars…
*Climbs down off of soapbox*
No alcohol is also not new… I developed the 5-1-5-1 Method years ago to combat the damage of alcohol dependency. I would drink from January until May. Go sober for June and then drink from July to November and sober up in December. Not the best policy but I suspect that it let me partially heal up and the discipline of the system kept control of my alcoholism. Then, everyone who has read my blog over the last few weeks, knows the story of my loss of control… Enough said…
The rest of the stuff was easy — I enjoy meditation… Hell, I wrote a short book about it… Vitamins took a minute to remember daily and the CDB oil solved my pain issues so that was pretty easy to remember… Sometime in the future, I will discuss my marijuana beliefs and use… That is a complicated issue for me… The California Compassionate Use Act allowed me to utilize it for the pain I suffer from my car accident and the subsequent permanent damage to my physical body and Federal Government’s refusal to remove it from the schedule one classification kept me afraid and pissing in a bottle… I refuse to take opiate based drugs because after my accident, I am embarrassed to admit, I became addicted to them and fought a hard battle to recover. Then I used marijuana to manage the pain of multiple surgery, steel implants, incorrectly healed bones and the ache of a deeply damaged body. For years I lived in fear of being exposed, being fired and having to deal with the stigma of marijuana use. Alcohol became a problem and I simply became tired of being scared that I might have to piss in a bottle to prove that I wasn’t a “deviant” drug user. CBD oil takes the edge off of my aches, but mostly I deal with the pain now. As soon as marijuana is removed from the list of drugs that my urine is screened for, then I will return to it for pain management.
I will say this… I despise the “Cheech and Chong” movies, the songs glorifying marijuana as the drug of the stupid, and the giggling halfwit pot smokers who unknowingly gave marijuana the bad name it currently has… The marijuana culture is the dumbest movement that has time and time again shot itself in the foot and literally stigmatized itself for the glorification of “being fucked up…” Had they treated marijuana differently, people would not be incarcerated because of it. Please unfuck yourselves, giggling about your “munchies” and acting like a fucking stoned idiot isn’t furthering your cause…
*Climbs down off of soapbox*
I’ve still been very consistent with The 90 Day Life Change Challenge… I’ve missed a few things in the first few weeks but as I stated before, it was a missed vitamin or overslept and nothing more than that. I am unswerving with meditation every day. In order to see progress I have kept the data that was important. The first five week, I was at a steady 83% success rate. The last two I am consistently 100% and will do my best to maintain it barring unforeseen disaster or injury… Overall, I’ve been focused and consistent. It’s interesting because my mind is so interested and excited in this challenge and I have gone from consumed with it, obsessed with it to not thinking about it much. It is simply what I do every day. My sharing is mostly this blog. There are aspects that I share with people like my co-worker who plays the guitar, I talk about my progress and get tips and pointers from him. I share my weight, physical changes and altered mental states with my wife… Occasionally, someone who knows what I am doing will ask questions, I always answer them as honestly and compassionately as possible. By compassionately, I mean without arrogance or conceit, because I know what I am doing sounds like utter lunacy and I want people to improve themselves but I do not want to be used as a example. This isn’t normal, I know that. I want to be a teacher to help people attain a healthier, happier, more positive lifestyle and so I push myself to limits that appear unattainable to better understand the plausibility of personal life changes. Perhaps by gaining the understanding of insurmountable, seemingly impossible change, I will have a greater understanding of the mechanics of how it is done.
In the end, that’s what this challenge is about. It’s about learning. It’s about my mind, and I’ve definitely altered myself. I think if people chose a single thing to focus on each day in their personal challenge journey, they would be much more focused and better off, so it has been interesting to see myself try, and succeed to manage 14 things at once. It has taken a monumental effort, discipline, motivation and rising above my emotions and desire to quit. Again, I think if I can pull off 14 challenges simultaneously for 90 days, maybe I will have the knowledge to help people start with one.
Writing this blog has been good, because it has helped me retain my focus, overcome my laziness, held me accountable and shamed me into succeeding more than once. Many times, I have thought I wanted take a day off, skip a segment or just fucking quit altogether, but how could I when I have people out there watching, waiting to see if I can pull this off… I have motivated many of you to make small changes in your life and I accept that not only as a compliment, but a huge responsibility. You started because I sparked something in you, and that is amazing… With that in mind, I keep my promise to blog daily because I hope it helps you reflect on how things are going and you can find ways to re-commit , re-focus yourself and continue your journey.
So I’m devoted to my challenge… I am halfway home and although I cannot see the sun rising yet, I know it’s coming. Inevitability is one of my favorite words. 45 days will elapse regardless of my actions and I want to celebrate the end of this with a victory lap, nothing else will suffice. I calculate somewhere around April 10, 2021 will mark the end… With Sundays off, that’s only about 3600 Burpees away…
I really do love most of the things I’ve challenged myself to do. For now, I face them as a test but I hope to retain many of them for the duration of my life. Healthy things aren’t always the most pleasurable in the moment, but they are, over time, the best things you can do….
Love ya, mean it… Is the doubt about that shrinking yet?
See you tomorrow at least until mid April… : )
The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update is unnecessary today, I think I just did it…
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