We truly love a challenge – there’s an odd level of comfort in a new routine that feels testing. The perfect feeling of a reset when life feels slightly unaligned. A new physical and mental structure when routine begins to slip and we don’t feel like our healthiest selves feels like the ideal solution. The problem is, it’s easy to focus completely on the physical side of your new habits, and accidentally idolise the physical transformation.
Leading up to Lent, we were thinking about how a structured challenge could honour the true purpose of Lent. 75 Hard has become a familiar reset for many of us craving a little extra discipline – but this time the intention felt different, honouring God rather than simply chasing change. Here are the habits we’ll be following over the next 40 days. Created to honour faith, reflect on sacrifice, and practise gratitude for the body we’ve been given.
The Lent 40 Framework
- Two daily movement blocks
- Two litres of water
- Daily Bible reading (a minimum of ten minutes each morning).
- Intentional time with God through prayer.
- No Refined Sugar
- Two weekly services (online or in person).
Setting Yourself Up For Success
There are a few simple structures that make new habits feel easier to sustain – our Sunday planning is truly a keystone habit here. It’s not about setting up intense to-do lists, but really down to the details of elements like meal planning, which workout you’ll be doing (we even schedule the workout in our calendar with a link to the video if it’s a home workout – we love Pilates by Izzy). Reducing decision fatigue can prevent willpower from being spent too early in the day, it makes the biggest difference.
Environment matters more than motivation most days, creating dedicated areas for parts of your routine can make a huge difference. When your environment is set up intentionally, you don’t have to rely on motivation alone – visual cues begin to do the work for you. If you tend to scroll in the same spot each morning, place your Bible nearby so you remind yourself of what you could be doing instead.
On sugar specifically: most people find they don’t actually crave it unless they’ve let themselves get too hungry or too dehydrated. Staying on top of your water and having nourishing food prepped and accessible removes the conditions in which those cravings tend to appear. It’s less about restriction and more about not giving the craving a foothold. (We have a no-refined-sugar blueberry muffin recipe that’s simple to prep ahead of the week.)
If Lent 40 feels like something that could give you the structure you’ve been looking for, we’d love to hear how it goes. We’ll be sharing our own reflections when the season comes to a close.
The Model Habit team x
