Hard Whole 75 Dry 30 January
My vision board for 2025 is just pictures of raccoons
I started writing this in the liminal space of life that is the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and now it is coming to you all aglow in the terrifying opportunities of 2025. If you have a little email job, the horrors of your inbox are slowly lurching back to life. The kids are still out of school. Grocery stores have already pushed out Santa in favor of heart-shaped chocolate boxes.1
And every advertisement is screaming at you to become an entirely different person now that the calendar arbitrarily rolled over to A Designated Fresh Start.
As a dedicated masochist (a.k.a., runner) who was incredibly bad at running for years until finally getting kind of good at it, I’d like to give you a little unsolicited advice, should you be looking to add healthy new habits to your life:
Pick ONE thing
Make that thing SUSTAINABLE
Be willing to start over multiple times, to get that thing to stick
I cannot emphasize enough how important being a stubborn asshole about it is; I have done Couch-to-5k approximately one billion times. And if I injure myself again, I will do it one-billion-and-one!
“BUT SPARKER,” you might be saying, “I just signed up for an expensive new gym, and I AM GOING TO THE 5AM CLASSES with my partner/friend/coworker/neighbor as part of 75 Hard, and ALSO, WE ARE DOING WHOLE30 AND DRY JANUARY!!!!”
Okay. Great. That’s great. You can do that. I am not stopping you!! What I am telling you, very gently because I’m alarmed by the feverish look in your eyes, is that you do not have to do that. You do not have to become a devotee of Asceticism2 to reach some impossible, optimized version of yourself.
You are a human being, and you cannot be Optimized, despite what the tech bros may tell you (and piss away millions in their own fruitless pursuit of).
You can just aim to go for a walk every day. Or eat more vegetables. That’s it. You can even cook the vegetables in butter and season them with salt so that they are delicious and you actually want to eat them.
You do not have to be miserable to be Good. You do not have to be married to a routine so insane it will immediately be derailed by the first thing the universe lobs at you in the New Year — because it will be something. Work, an illness, your neighbor’s protracted war with the HOA over their desire to put a 12’ purple gorilla statue in their front yard.
The people who come up with programs like Whole30 or 75 Hard usually don’t have any actual credentials3 or expertise either; they’re not registered dieticians or certified physical trainers. They are people who want to sell you something. Their program, sure, but also the idea that if you just work hard enough and learn their little secrets, you can achieve Perfection. An ideal form of yourself, through which all future happiness is possible.
If you don’t? Well, user error, babe! Sorry. No refunds :(
I’m starting to doubt your commitment to sparkle motion
The other thing these programs are selling you (aside from a smug sense of superiority to the fools who say, “No, thank you, I am not doing that”) is a way to center yourself, for once.
That’s the other fantasy element at play: you’re pushing aside everything else to focus on your health, on your new Optimized Self. On the surface, that’s a good thing. But if you’re the person in your home or have the role at work that shoulders most of the responsibility? It’s not sustainable without a real reckoning and redistribution of resources that’s unlikely to happen overnight (say on the night of January 5th to January 6th, specifically, if you’re one of those “Let’s start on Monday” people).
You should make time to center yourself in your life, to focus on things that are meaningful to you. Ideally, those things do not make you miserable.
Ask yourself: even if you make it to the end of Hard Whole 75 Dry 30 January and feel really good and see the results you wanted, are you actually going to live that way long-term? Is that sustainable for you, your family, and your lifestyle?
Or does it set you up for a rollercoaster of “pure” abstaining and then bingeing on The Forbidden Fruits because you’ve denied yourself joy in the name of an arbitrary plan put together by Some Guy Online?
Just go for a fucking walk and eat a vegetable with some cheese on it.
(You don’t have to log every morsel of food that crosses your lips, either. Use something like the Nutrition GPA app to get a basic idea of how you’re feeding yourself day-to-day and pick one thing at a time to work on. It was developed by an actual registered dietician and does not track calories or macros!)
You can do a fun one
Look, the ghosts of our founding Puritans don’t want you to know this, but you can actually set FUN resolutions!!
The next four years are going to be insane enough. Do a fun one!!! (And if you are, please leave a comment about what it is because I want some IDEAS.)
Get Rec’d
What I’m reading, watching, being haunted by.
What I’m reading: I’m almost finished with the audiobook for Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang, and I am LOVING IT. A great example of how fiction — especially fantasy — can illuminate systems you don’t often think about in stark ways.
What I’m watching: I think I am going to take myself to see Babygirl soon because I like to have fun at the movies.
Reality: Infectious and chronic diseases are inextricably linked.
Escapism: In another universe, we are eating Giant Bullfrog Pineapple Salad together.
Wildcard: Here is a great fact about owls.
Until next time.
If you’re so well-prepared that you’re getting Valentine’s Day in order in early January, I’m begging you to do more than buy your object of affection a box of questionable grocery store chocolates
Denying yourself any earthly joys, not following the latest design trends on TikTok or whatever
I’m naming these in particular because their creators do not have any actual credentials!