In which I get angry at influencers at 3am (or why I’ve decided to do 75HARD after all)

If you read my last post, you’ll know that I’ve been thinking about doing the “75HARD” social media challenge for a while, but have been put off by the creator’s sketchy opinions and general persona (that’s basically the gist of the previous post, no need to read it now)

I went on to Instagram earlier this week to look for hairstyle inspiration as I have a hairdressers appointment this afternoon (thinking ultra short pixie but we’ll see what happens later) and the suggested content / search page was wall to wall fitness influencers trying to sell me — a perimenopausal woman — products and packages that would help me manage my hormones and regain lost fitness etc. They were using FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) techniques to achieve their sales: basically making out that perimenopausal women are all training wrong, that we’re working too hard, cortisol spikes are working against us, we should be doing ~gentle~ workouts in zone 2 only, definitely no HIIT and definitely not working out more than a few times a week.

This pissed me off. I’m not a delicate little flower that needs wrapping in cotton wool lest I accidentally work a little too hard. My “belly fat” (why do all the videos talk about belly fat?!) isn’t because I spiked my cortisol when I did a hyrox class last week. My poor sleep isn’t caused by running hill sprints or accidentally training twice on the same day (someone has to walk the dog).

When I woke at 3 (again) this morning I was — irrationally, perhaps — really bloody angry at these types of videos targeting women who are tired, confused, and dealing with massive hormonal changes (and fucking insomnia) that we don’t talk anywhere near enough about.

So I decided fuck it, I’m going to do 75HARD. I’m going to do it prove to myself and shitty FUD fitness influencers that we can do hard things. We can train at our limits and get up and do it again tomorrow and we won’t die. Yes, we’ll be tired for a while. Yes, our bodies will take time to adapt and overcome, but we’re not suddenly going to gain 10lbs fat and destroy ourselves doing it.

My diet is already decent from an “avoiding junk, eat enough protein” point of view, so I’m committing to eating my ‘5 a day’. No booze, lots of water, 2 workouts, 1 progress pic, read 10 pages. Doesn’t sound so hard?

Today is day 1. Let’s go.