75 Hard Restart Day 1: Starting Over With Better Structure
Technically Day 18.
But really… Day 1 again.
So here we go.
Starting over.
And strangely enough, I don’t feel devastated about it anymore.
Because failing yesterday showed me exactly where my weak point was:
leaving too much for the end of the night.
I actually woke up around 1 AM.
And that’s when it hit me.
I had fallen asleep without finishing my reading and my last 16 ounces of water
Which meant I failed my 75 Hard.
And after sitting with it for a minute…
I realized something:
Restarting doesn’t erase the progress.
It just shows you where your structure needs more support.
3 AM Wake-Up Call
The restart started early.
Very early.
My daughter was flying out to go visit her twin and needed to be at San Francisco International Airport by 4 AM.
So at 3 in the morning, we loaded up the car and headed into the city.
Luckily there wasn’t really traffic yet going into San Francisco.
There were still plenty of cars on the road, but traffic itself was smooth.
And as I was leaving the city around 4 AM, you could already see the traffic beginning to build.
That early-morning Bay Area shift where everything suddenly starts waking up.
Coffee, Swimming & A New Morning Routine
By around 4:30, I knew I needed coffee.
So I stopped for my latte with 2 pumps espresso and then headed straight to the gym.
And this morning I swam laps again.
Followed by some time in the hot tub and reading my pages afterward.
And while I was sitting there, tired from:
waking up so early
swimming
mentally replaying the failure from the night before
my brain was going a mile a minute trying to figure out how to support myself better this time.
Not harder.
Smarter.
More supportive.
More aligned.
And I realized something:
I cannot leave important things for later in the day anymore.
Because nighttime me is tired.
Nighttime me negotiates.
Nighttime me falls asleep holding a book.
So for the foreseeable future, my new morning routine is:
progress photos
reading
first workout
first 32 ounces of water
post the blog
before anything else.
No coffee first.
No work first.
No distractions first.
That way, the hardest pieces are already complete before the day even starts.
Which means all I really have left is:
my second workout
following my nutrition plan
finishing the rest of my water
I also decided something else this restart:
If I’m having a latte with 2 pumps espresso during the day…
then I skip the square of dark chocolate that night.
One or the other.
Not both.
Not because either one is “bad.”
But because I’m trying to become more aware of where little extras start stacking up without me noticing.
Lunch + Leftovers That Saved Me
Around 10 AM, I finally ate the other half of my sandwich from Tuesday.
The turkey sandwich from the little country café.
And it filled me up enough that I didn’t eat again until dinner.
Dinner at Midori Teriyaki
Dinner was from Midori Teriyaki in Vallejo.
And I love this place because it genuinely feels untouched by time.
Nothing has changed in over 30 years.
The owners are the same.
The cooks are the same.
The food tastes exactly the same.
I’ve been going there by myself since high school.
And before that, I went there with family.
They were the first local spot to offer boba tea back in the early 1990s.
And when I was pregnant with my first child in 2001, I went there constantly for orders of bean sprouts.
That was my pregnancy craving.
And after all these years…
my order is still exactly the same:
chicken teriyaki
rice
green salad
bean sprouts
No boba today though.
My kids have their orders too.
My son always gets beef teriyaki.
My daughters always get salmon.
They have plenty of other menu items…
but at this point, why fix what isn’t broken?
And the portions are huge.
There’s so much chicken in one meal that I can usually stretch it into two, sometimes even three meals, and still have rice leftover.
So tonight I ate:
the salad
the bean sprouts
about half the chicken
maybe a fourth of the rice
And saved the rest for tomorrow.
Evening Walk + Exhaustion
Later in the evening, I was hanging out with another friend.
So I took my second workout walk through her neighborhood.
And by around 7:30…
I was exhausted.
Completely done.
And I still had 32 ounces of water left to drink.
So I went home, took a shower, slammed the rest of my water, and went straight to bed.
What Restarting Taught Me
The interesting part is…
everybody told me just to keep going.
They said:
“No one would know.”
“Just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Don’t restart.”
But I would know.
And for me, this challenge was never really about proving something to other people anyway.
It was about rebuilding trust with myself.
Keeping my word to myself.
Creating structure that supports the life and body I actually want to live in.
And the more I sat with it, the more it reminded me of something I talk about all the time when it comes to feminine and masculine energy.
We all have both energies.
Healthy masculine energy is structure.
It’s leadership.
Consistency.
Containment.
Keeping your word.
Creating systems that protect your future self.
And healthy feminine energy is flow.
Listening to your body.
Adjusting when something isn’t working.
Softness.
Intuition.
Receiving support instead of forcing everything.
Most people swing too far into one side or the other.
Either:
hyper-structured and controlling
orcompletely in flow with no structure at all
But alignment lives somewhere in the middle.
The masculine creates the container.
The feminine moves inside it.
And restarting this challenge instead of pretending I didn’t fail…
that was healthy masculine energy.
Not punishment.
Not shame.
Integrity.
Leadership toward myself.
But I also think there’s power in how you choose to view things.
Because I’m not looking at this as “starting over from zero.”
I’m looking at it as a reset.
A recalibration.
A chance to build more support into the structure.
And changing my routine to make success easier this time?
That’s healthy feminine energy.
Supporting myself instead of trying to dominate myself.
Because if you start making exceptions when nobody’s watching…
eventually your standards become negotiable too.
So yes, restarting is inconvenient.
But deep down, I know it’s the right choice for me.
Because this challenge stopped being about perfection a long time ago.
Now it’s about alignment.
And alignment means being honest with yourself even when it would be easier not to be.
Restart Day 1 Complete
3 AM wake-up.
Swimming laps.
Teriyaki dinner.
Still aligned.
And starting again anyway.
