75HARD, and the illusion of separating art from artist?

I’ve been thinking about doing the 75HARD challenge.

If you’re not familiar with 75HARD, it’s a fitness challenge that first did the rounds years ago and has had a bit of a resurgence this year. The rules stipulate that every day, you must:

• Drink 1 gallon of plain water
• Perform 2 workouts of at least 45 minutes in length, at least 3 hours apart, one of which must be outside
• Read 10 pages of a non-fiction book
• Follow a diet (any diet, no cheats)
• No alcohol
• Take a progress photo

This isn’t a new thing, I’ve considered it several times, and even went so far as putting it on my 40tbif list last year before changing my mind and swapping it out for something else.

I love a challenge, this kind of thing keeps me focused, motivated and moving in the ‘right’ direction. Ollllld readers will recall me completing previous challenges like the whole30 and Dry January. To be honest, I don’t even think 75HARD sounds that hard (as someone who is already working out at least once daily, drinks plenty of water, eats a good diet etc) So why did I remove it from my list?

Because the creator of 75HARD is a fucking bellend. A MAGA-supporting, woman-hating, “I’m so rich and you could be too” hustle bro who makes my skin crawl.

When I’ve talked about this with other fitness enthusiasts, the general impression is that it’s ok, because He doesn’t benefit financially from people participating in the challenge, and “everyone knows” it’s 100% possible to separate someone’s art from the artist themself. Except I’m not so sure about that personally, and I really don’t want to appear — even for one minute — to be supporting a person like that.

I could recreate the challenge under my own terms, but if it’s the rigid rules of the original that appeal to me then I would effectively just be renaming it, which is pointless as it’d be instantly recogniseable as the original challenge.

I could do it privately and not tell a soul, and then nobody would know to make the connection in the first place, but I get the feeling that I would be a whole lot less successful if I didn’t share it to gather support to keep me going. (And this post rather undoes the “not tell a soul” part.)

Who knew that taking part in stupid online challenges came with a side order of ethical dilemma, eh.