I love January. It’s such a fresh start and a great time to refocus on wellness. After the holiday season, I’m always ready to eat cleaner and reinvest in fitness. And after the holidays of 2020, where we spent so much time inside and spent a lot of time baking for Christmas gifts – double chocolate crinkle cookies, plantain bread, sweet potato cookies, the whole nine – I was especially ready for lighter menus and more sweat.

So I’m doing a couple of things to kick-start a healthy start to this year, including starting the year with a 5-day detox and spending the month of January avoiding added sugars and fats, alcohol and caffeine and drinking more water. I also decided to up my workout game to hone in on that extra 10 pounds I’ve been carrying around since my first pregnancy.

I first found Millionaire Hoy on YouTube (Thanks YT algorithm!) during his 12 Days of Christmas 2020 challenge. Before I started that challenge, I’d been working out consistently since quarantine began – mostly centering on cardio and dance workouts, yoga and walking. I was doing a fair amount of high-intensity workouts, but there were also days where I’d do shorter 10 or 15 minutes videos – sometimes because I was crunched for time, but others because I was phoning it in. #RealTalk The exercise that I was doing was helping me maintain my weight, but I knew if weight loss was a goal, I’d need to step it up. This challenge definitely got me in the habit of pushing harder each day while consistently sticking to 30-minute routines. So when Hoy announced he’d be doing a 100-day Breakthrough challenge, I decided to give it a try.

Hoy’s workouts remind me a lot of the boot camp classes I used to go to at the gym years ago. We’d do a variety of callisthenic-style exercises, some body weight, some with weights or other props. Even though I’m not always a huge fan of these exercises, they really let you see your progress. With repetition, I could do a lot more push ups. I could lift heavier weights. My cardiovascular endurance increased. And, so far, the same has been true of Hoy’s challenges. For the Breakthrough 100, he starts off with a warm up week then will do several weeks of beginner, intermediate and advanced workouts as the challenge continues.

What I Love about the Millionaire Hoy and the Breakthrough Challenge

His creativity. Hoy gets big props from me for creativity. It’s really evident that he loves fitness. He comes up with such inventive moves. Half the fun of the 12 Days of Christmas series was seeing what exercises he’d come up with, like Gift Grabber Sprints, Gingerbread Runs and Side-to-side Stocking Stuffers. He also did every one of the workouts with either a Santa hat or reindeer antlers. It was a lot of fun.

That sweat is guaranteed. Nuff said.

The variety. I don’t know what’s coming each day in terms of the type of workout or the moves that will be included. Not knowing makes it easier to just do it. There’s no dreading or skipping the “hard” workouts…you never knew what you were going to get.

Each week, we’re getting a combination of high-intensity interval training, cardio, upper and lower body strength and stretching. Most of his workouts are no repeats, so if there’s a particularly tough move, you know you’ll do it for 20 or 40 seconds and be done with it for the day. I can do just about anything for 40 seconds 🙂 I also like the variety of using weights for some workouts and body weight for others and the deep stretch workouts on Sundays which brings great balance and reminds you of the importance of rest.

His positive reinforcement. At the end of each workout, he shows his menu for the day. That’s always nice to see. He sets a great example of how you can put together a balanced, sustaining diets full of whole foods. On some days, when my boys get up early, they’ll catch the end of the workout. My 3-year old loves to identify all the fruits and vegetables that he recognizes in the pictures. And the moves are simple enough that sometimes the boys spontaneously jump in and start working out with me. A cute bonus!

He’s also seems to be a super devoted family man. He often talks about his wife and five kids. It’s sweet and it’s always beautiful to see strong Black family units like theirs.

The hardest part of any workout is to press play. But we’re already on day 20 and the time is flying by. With the combination of cleaning up my food intake and doing these workouts, I’ve dropped five pounds so far. I’m definitely happy to see those results. I’m also looking forward to seeing how much stronger I get over the course of these next 80 days. I’m already seeing range-of-motion improvement with my pushups and I’ve inched up to using heavier weights (I started with 5-, 8- and 10-pound weights and now use 8-, 10- and 15-pounders). Clothes are fitting better and I’m feeling fine 🙂

So I definitely recommend this workout challenge. (His YouTube content is free, but if you’re looking for more workouts including longer length programs, check out his website.) Whether you get through a week, a month or the full 100 days, you’ll be moving in the right direction in setting up healthy habits and building strength.