75 Medium challenge: rules and daily tracker
75 Medium is a 75-day challenge with one 45-minute workout, 90/10 nutrition, body-weight water intake, 10 pages of reading, and daily mindfulness.
The 75 Medium challenge is a 75-day lifestyle program built around five daily habits: one 45-minute workout, following a chosen nutrition plan 90% of the time with zero alcohol, drinking half your body weight in ounces of water, reading 10 pages of personal development, and practicing 5 to 10 minutes of mindfulness. Unlike 75 Hard, missing a single task does not force you to restart from day one.
The challenge emerged across fitness communities as a structured middle ground between Andy Frisella's extreme 75 Hard and the more relaxed 75 Soft Challenge. Where 75 Hard demands 90 minutes of daily exercise and absolute perfection, 75 Medium keeps the sobriety, non-fiction reading, and daily training discipline while scaling the physical volume to fit a normal work and family schedule.
What are the rules of the 75 Medium challenge?
Because 75 Medium grew organically from community trackers rather than a single trademarked rulebook, minor variations exist, but Marathon Handbook and Cleveland Clinic sports medicine physician Dr. Michael Dakkak outline six core daily pillars:
- Complete one 45-to-60-minute workout every day. You only need one daily training session rather than two, and you can train indoors or outdoors. Lifting weights, running, cycling, swimming, or taking a brisk walk all count. Dropping the mandatory second workout gives your muscles, tendons, and central nervous system 23 hours between sessions to replenish glycogen and repair micro-tears.
- Follow a structured nutrition plan 90% of the time (with zero alcohol). Pick a diet that matches your goals, such as high-protein whole foods, a Mediterranean diet, or a moderate calorie deficit, and stick to it for 90% of your meals. Most 75 Medium trackers keep 75 Hard's complete ban on alcohol for the full 75 days so evening drinks do not fragment REM sleep or blunt muscle protein synthesis.
- Drink half your body weight in ounces of water daily. Instead of forcing every participant to chug a full gallon (128 fluid ounces) regardless of body size, 75 Medium scales hydration to your frame. A 160-pound person targets 80 fluid ounces (about 2.4 liters) per day, maintaining blood volume and joint lubrication without flushing out electrolytes.
- Read 10 pages of non-fiction or personal development. Spend about 10 to 15 minutes reading a book focused on skill building, psychology, biography, or personal growth. Reading sustained prose trains visual attention away from algorithmic feeds and gives your mind a quiet anchor in the morning or before bed.
- Practice 5 to 10 minutes of daily mindfulness. Unique to 75 Medium is a dedicated mental recovery habit—such as quiet meditation, box breathing, prayer, or reflective journaling. As Dr. Dakkak notes at the Cleveland Clinic, lowering daily anxiety and mental chaos directly improves sleep quality and physical recovery between workouts.
- Track progress with photos or check-ins. Standard 75 Medium templates include a daily progress photo (or comparison photos on Day 1 and Day 75). However, Dr. Dakkak emphasizes that photos should serve as an optional tool rather than a rigid requirement; if daily body photos trigger body-image stress, tracking how you feel in a habit log is healthier.
75 Hard vs. 75 Medium vs. 75 Soft
Choosing between the three 75-day variations comes down to your recovery capacity, schedule flexibility, and how much structure keeps you accountable.
| Rule | 75 Hard | 75 Medium | 75 Soft |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily workouts | Two 45-min (1 outdoors) | One 45-min (in or out) | One 45-min (1 recovery/wk) |
| Water intake | 1 gallon (128 fl oz) | Half body weight in oz | 3 liters (~100 fl oz) |
| Diet & alcohol | Zero cheats, no alcohol | 90/10 diet, no alcohol | Mindful eating, social drinks |
| Daily reading | 10 pages non-fiction | 10 pages non-fiction | 10 pages any genre |
| Mindfulness | Not required | 5–10 min meditation | Not required |
| Progress photos | Mandatory daily | Daily or Day 1 & 75 | Optional |
| Missed task | Restart at Day 1 | Keep going (90% target) | Keep going tomorrow |
75 Medium is built for people who find 75 Soft a little too permissive—especially around social drinking or fiction reading—but know that two 45-minute workouts a day on 75 Hard will wreck their joints or conflict with a full-time job. It also adds the 5-to-10-minute mindfulness requirement that neither 75 Hard nor 75 Soft includes, making it closer in spirit to a monk mode focus cycle or a fourth-quarter Winter Arc challenge.
How the 90/10 diet and hydration math works
The two biggest reasons people quit 75 Hard are dietary perfectionism and unscaled water quotas. 75 Medium replaces both with simple proportional math.
The 90/10 nutrition buffer
On a strict zero-tolerance diet, eating one slice of birthday cake on day 50 counts as a total failure. Psychologists have long documented how this all-or-nothing framing triggers a binge response: once a streak is broken, people abandon their nutrition plan completely for weeks.
Under 75 Medium's 90/10 rule, you aim for 90% dietary compliance across the 75-day window. If you eat three meals a day, you will eat 225 total meals over the challenge (75 days × 3 meals = 225 meals). Hitting 90% adherence means eating roughly 203 meals strictly on your nutrition plan while leaving a buffer of 22 flexible meals—about two meals per week (225 × 0.10 = 22.5 meals).
As Dr. Dakkak points out in the Cleveland Clinic guide, building planned rewards into a 75-day commitment removes the guilt of "failing" when you attend a wedding or dinner out. That aligns with landmark research on how long it takes to form a habit: habits reach automaticity around a 66-day median through long-term repetition, and an isolated deviation does not erase the neural pathways you have already built.
Body-weight hydration targets
Drinking 128 fluid ounces (3.78 liters) of water every day makes sense for a 220-pound athlete sweating through two summer workouts, but it can cause constant nighttime waking and diluted electrolytes for a 125-pound office worker training indoors. Scaling water intake to half your body weight in fluid ounces keeps hydration proportional to your metabolic mass.
| Body weight | Daily water target | Metric volume | 24-oz bottles |
|---|---|---|---|
| 120 lbs (54 kg) | 60 fl oz | 1.8 liters | 2.5 bottles |
| 150 lbs (68 kg) | 75 fl oz | 2.2 liters | 3.1 bottles |
| 180 lbs (82 kg) | 90 fl oz | 2.7 liters | 3.75 bottles |
| 210 lbs (95 kg) | 105 fl oz | 3.1 liters | 4.4 bottles |
If your 45-minute workout involves heavy sweating in warm weather, add 12 to 16 fluid ounces on top of your baseline target to replace sweat losses.
How to track the 75 Medium challenge
You can run your entire challenge in timespent without relying on paper printouts or rigid apps that wipe out your progress after one late flight. Because 75 Medium has no official single-purpose app, setting up your five daily pillars inside an Unscripted Arc gives you a single dashboard showing your total days active, cumulative workout hours, and completion history across all 75 days without fragile streak anxiety. (If you want a daily streak counter to hold yourself to the 90% threshold, you can create a Habit Arc instead.)
Instead of forcing every rule into an identical checkbox, you can match each pillar to how you actually measure it:
- Daily Workout (Timed Activity): Set a 45-minute daily Do More goal. Because timespent syncs with Apple Health workouts, any run, strength session, or yoga flow recorded on your Apple Watch or phone logs automatically as a completed Session.
- Mindfulness (Timed Activity): Set a 5-to-10-minute daily goal and use the built-in Interval Timer or Lock Screen count-up timer for silent meditation or breathwork.
- Hydration (Measured Tally): Set your exact half-body-weight target in fluid ounces or liters (for example,
80 fl ozor2.4 L) and log each bottle or glass with automatic unit conversion. - Read 10 Pages & 90/10 Nutrition (Simple Tallies): Tap once each evening when you finish your 10 pages of non-fiction and complete an on-plan nutrition day.
- Daily Check-In (Mood & Reflections): If you prefer not to take daily body photos, use Mood & Reflections in My Space to log a quick 1-to-5 mood rating and a short note on your energy and recovery, or set weekday reminders in My Day so evening reading never slips past bedtime.
Common questions
Do you have to restart 75 Medium if you miss a day?
No, you do not reset your calendar to day one after a missed task. Most participants follow the same 90% consistency standard for the overall calendar as they do for nutrition, aiming to complete all daily tasks on at least 68 out of the 75 days (75 × 0.90 = 67.5 days). If an illness or travel emergency disrupts your workout on day 29, you log what you completed and resume your full schedule the next morning.
Can you drink alcohol on the 75 Medium challenge?
Most standard 75 Medium rule sets keep 75 Hard's zero-alcohol rule for the entire 75 days, reserving the 90/10 flexibility buffer strictly for food and social meals. Cutting out alcohol completely for two and a half months eliminates empty liquid calories and protects slow-wave sleep. If your primary goal is a gentler lifestyle shift that includes a glass of wine at a wedding, the 75 Soft Challenge explicitly allows social drinks.
Do audiobooks count for the 10 pages of reading?
Yes, in many 75 Medium variations, listening to 10 to 15 minutes of a non-fiction audiobook or educational podcast counts toward your daily personal development goal, according to Cleveland Clinic guidelines. However, if your personal goal is reducing screen fatigue and rebuilding visual focus before sleep, reading 10 physical or e-ink pages is the better choice.
How much time does 75 Medium take per day?
Completing all five daily habits takes roughly 65 to 85 minutes per day, which is less than half the time required by 75 Hard's double workouts and outdoor prep.
| Daily pillar | Typical duration | Best time block | Total over 75 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 45-min workout | 45–60 min | Morning or after work | 56.25–75 hours |
| 10 pages reading | 12–15 min | Bedtime wind-down | 15–18.75 hours |
| Mindfulness | 5–10 min | Morning or post-work | 6.25–12.5 hours |
| Hydration & log | 2–3 min | Throughout the day | ~3 hours |