The rules compared
| Version | Diet | Alcohol | Cheat meals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 75 Hard | Any structured diet, followed exactly | None for 75 days | None |
| 75 Soft | Roughly 90% healthy eating | Social occasions only | Not framed as cheats |
| 75 Medium | Your plan, on 90% of days | Usually limited, not banned | Absorbed by the 90% rule |
This is where the three versions differ most, and it is the single best predictor of which one you will finish.
75 Hard does not tell you what to eat
A common misreading is that 75 Hard prescribes a diet. It does not. You choose one — keto, high protein, Mediterranean, plant-based, whatever your doctor or dietitian supports — and the rule is that you follow it exactly, with no cheat meals and no alcohol, for all 75 days.
That shifts the difficulty somewhere unexpected. The hard part is not the diet's content; it is that you must pick one you can hold on a bad Tuesday, at an airport, at your mother's birthday. An impressive plan you abandon in week two costs you the whole challenge under the restart rule.
Choose the boring plan. The diet you can eat when tired, travelling and out of ingredients beats the optimal one every time — because on 75 Hard, one deviation is not a setback, it is day one again.
Alcohol is the rule that ends most attempts
On 75 Hard, alcohol is banned outright and one drink means restarting. Over eleven weeks that will collide with something: a wedding, a work dinner, a birthday, a holiday you booked before you had heard of the challenge.
Two honest options exist, and quietly making an exception is neither of them:
- Plan the 75 days around the calendar. Check what falls in the window before choosing a start date. This is the entire reason to look at dates first.
- Run 75 Soft instead. Its rule is explicitly alcohol on social occasions — the same behaviour, but as a rule you are keeping rather than a rule you are breaking.
Making “90 percent” mean something
75 Soft's roughly-90-percent framing and 75 Medium's 68-of-75-days target are more livable than an absolute ban, and much easier to fool yourself about. Percentages negotiate; counts do not.
- Define a compliant day before day one. Write down what it contains and what breaks it. Two sentences is enough — but write them while you are calm, not at 9pm on day 41 with a takeaway menu open.
- Score days, not meals. A day is compliant or it is not. Half-credit is how 68 days quietly becomes 50.
- Track the misses. You have seven. Knowing you have spent four by day 30 is information; a wall of green ticks is decoration.
What none of these versions include
No version requires calorie counting, macro tracking or weighing yourself. If you add those on top of a rigid rule set and a daily progress photo, you have built something considerably more intense than the challenge you signed up for — and for anyone with a history of disordered eating, that specific combination is a genuine risk rather than a disclaimer. Talk to a professional before starting, not after.
Our own plans, labelled honestly
The free Glow75 plans are Home Edition adaptations: 75 Soft and 75 Hard restructured for training at home, with the meals and the daily checklist already built. They are adaptations rather than the original programs, and we label them that way wherever they appear.