EP 006: The Results of 75 Days of Showing Up For Me

 

Tune in to today’s episode to hear about Morgan’s 75-day health and fitness challenge motivated and encouraged as well as the big takeaways from putting in 75 days of consistent work.

75 Days

My husband and I just finished a 75-day fitness and diet plan. Before we got started, we were feeling that quarantine and knew we needed to do something about it, so we just decided to dive right in.

I’m excited to tell you about all of these things, but before I do I think it’s important to first shine a light on my history with health.

Let me first preface with this: The best takeaway you can ever have is doing what your body needs. No matter your size or where you’re at in your health journey, know that I am here just to be a real-life person and have a conversation around how focusing on my health and fitness has been a gamechanger for who I show up to be as a person in all facets of life. 

My History with Health & Fitness 

I have a horrible family medical history. Every time I go to the doctor, it’s interesting to watch his face as I list the different health issues within my immediate and extended family. It’s just not great. 

When I was in middle school my mom got diagnosed with breast cancer. I am grateful to say she is a breast cancer survivor. 

I have always had an up-close relationship with the impacts of being ill. Whether that’s a terminal illness, cancer, an autoimmune disease, heart disease, diabetes, whatever it is, I feel like I have had a very big awareness of since watching my mom overcome cancer while I was in middle school.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I mostly ate what I wanted, but really greasy foods and fried foods were things that hurt my stomach. I did grow up in the south, though, and I believed that was served at home was good-for-you food. Because what home-cooked meal isn’t delicious? 

My High School Health Episode

Because I grew up hearing this, I never really questioned the actual nutritional value of what I was eating and what that looked like in my life. 

Fast forward into my senior year of high school, I got really sick. I passed out randomly, I sweated profusely and I saw many doctors for it. Most of them said I was stressed with college right around the corner, but I knew it wasn’t stress-induced.

I was sure that it had to do with something that I was eating, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. 

Fast forward and I take gluten out of my diet. It has been years and years and I have yet to pass out since that day. I am truly gluten-free.

This was the first glimpse I had into realizing that food is fuel for your body in how you feel.  And this in comparison with my family history developed a passion within me to make taking care of myself and caring for my body a priority. 

In it For the Long Run

And I’m not in this for the short-term. I don’t just care about the present version of myself. I’m in this for the long-term! I care about where I’ll be 10, 20, 30 years down the road! If anything ever happens to me, I want to know that I did all I could to put in the effort to take care of my body. 

I am the only person running my body. I make the decisions of what goes in it and what’s happening to it, and that’s really important to me that I take care of it- not just for today, not just or this year, but long-term. And this, right here, is where my motivation comes from.

75 Hard Challenge by Andy Frisella

This is a 75-day health and fitness challenge crafted around mental toughness. 

It’s two 45 minute workouts a day (one indoor, one outdoor), a diet of your choice, one gallon of water, a progress photo every single day, 10 pages of a self-development book, and no alcohol. The reason it’s called a challenge instead of a diet because if you don’t do one of the things, your time starts over and you find yourself back at day one. 

The workouts for each day can be anything! Walking, biking, hiking, an exercise class, etc.

The Results of 75 Days of Showing Up For Me

This was not as taxing on my body as I expected it to be because I didn’t feel like it was pushing me in a way that felt unhealthy and stressful on my body. And I don’t know about you, but I have definitely felt this way in other workout routines. 

The diet can be a diet of your choice, but it has to have an end-goal in mind. Matthew and I did gluten-free and dairy-free. Matthew isn’t fully gluten-free, but he is majority gluten-free since I cook a lot of our meals and I am GF. And I gotta tell ya, I really missed my chocolate whole milk.

We also did one gallon of water a day. This was definitely one of the most challenging things we did every day. It’s a LOT of water! I felt like for my body size that I was literally a bathtub. Eventually, I got more used to it and started craving that much water.

The progress photo every day is pretty easy to do, you just have to remember to do it. And this was one of the most impactful parts because it allowed us to see the change that was taking place. 

The no alcohol part of the diet was not a big deal for us at all. Neither Matthew or myself keep it around the house. 

Proactive in Health

If you are blessed enough to show up and workout however and whenever you want, let me give you some tough love for a second: you are REALLY lucky to have this ability because not everyone does. This alone should be enough motivation for you to move your body and be proactive in your health.

For Your Bookshelf

Cookbooks:

Half-Baked Harvest
Laura Lea Balanced

Health Books:

Woman Code
Body Love
How Not to Die

More

To listen to the rest of today’s episode on how to get ahead in life, click HERE! To check out last week’s episode, click HERE!

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