Running a 75-Day Challenge Through Ramadan
Ramadan will land inside your 75-day challenge. Here is where it falls on the calendar, how to rework the water rule, and when to train around the fast.
You are somewhere around day 30, feeling good, and then you check the calendar and realize Ramadan starts in a week. Or you are picking a start date for a new 75-day challenge and the math puts a month of fasting right in the middle of it.
Either way the question is the same, and it is a scheduling question, not a motivation question. A gallon of water a day does not fit inside the hours between iftar and suhoor. Two workouts do not fit either, at least not without wrecking your sleep.
This guide maps Ramadan onto the challenge calendar, then rewrites the rules that break. The goal is to keep the streak going with a ruleset you chose on purpose.
One note before anything else. Reset75 is a habit tracker, not a religious authority, and nothing here is a ruling on observance. Talk to your doctor before combining fasting with a demanding training program, especially if you take medication or manage a condition like diabetes, and follow your own scholarly guidance on every question of fiqh.
Where Ramadan lands in your 75 days
Ramadan 1448 AH is expected to begin around Monday 8 February 2027 and end around Monday 8 March 2027, with Eid al-Fitr expected on Tuesday 9 March. Treat every one of those dates as tentative. The start depends on local sighting of the crescent moon, so it can land a day later in some countries than others, and your local authority is the one that decides.
With that caveat in place, the arithmetic is useful. Here is what a 1 January 2027 start looks like.
| Milestone | Expected date | Challenge day |
|---|---|---|
| Challenge day 1 | 1 January 2027 | 1 |
| First day of Ramadan (expected) | 8 February 2027 | 39 |
| Last day of Ramadan (expected) | 8 March 2027 | 67 |
| Eid al-Fitr (expected) | 9 March 2027 | 68 |
| Challenge day 75 | 16 March 2027 | 75 |
Roughly 29 of your 75 days are fasted days, and they sit in the back half, after the habit is already built. That is the good version of this overlap. You arrive at Ramadan with 38 days of momentum behind you, and you finish the challenge a week after Eid.
Now compare a start on 8 February 2027. Ramadan occupies days 1 through 29, which puts the hardest month directly on top of the fragile early phase where most people quit. If you have any flexibility at all, that is the version to avoid. Our 75-day challenge calculator will show you the end date and the milestone days for any start date you plug in, which makes this easy to check before you commit.
The third option is to start after Eid. A 10 March 2027 start puts day 75 on 23 May 2027, with the standard ruleset untouched from beginning to end. If you have been waiting for a clean run, that is it.
Adapt, delay, or split
Three real choices, each with a cost.
Adapt. Keep going through Ramadan on a modified ruleset. You keep the streak and the momentum. You accept a month that looks different from the other two.
Delay. Push the start until after Eid. The ruleset stays pure and you never negotiate with yourself mid-challenge. You wait, and waiting has its own failure rate. Our guide on picking a start date covers the tradeoffs.
Split. Run a shorter block before Ramadan, take the month at a deliberately lighter intensity, then run a fresh 75 days after Eid. This suits people who would rather have two honest efforts than one blended one.
None of these is the correct answer. What matters is picking one before Ramadan starts rather than improvising at 11pm on day 42.
One more piece of context: Ramadan moves about 10 to 11 days earlier each Gregorian year. A February and March Ramadan means comparatively short daylight fasts across most of the Northern Hemisphere, far shorter than the summer Ramadans of a decade ago. Readers in the Southern Hemisphere get the reverse, with longer daylight hours to work around.
Why the gallon-of-water rule breaks
In the original 75 Hard program created by Andy Frisella, the water rule is a gallon a day, no negotiation. That rule assumes you can drink across all your waking hours. During Ramadan you cannot.
Every milliliter has to fit between iftar and suhoor. A US gallon is about 3.8 liters. For scale, the National Academy of Medicine’s daily total fluid figures are roughly 2.7 liters for women and 3.7 liters for men, and those cover a full day including fluid from food. A gallon is at or above the male figure, squeezed into a partial day.
What actually happens is well documented. A cross-sectional study of Indonesian adults recorded total water and beverage intake of about 1,670 ml per day during Ramadan, below the reference recommendation. Intake falls. Pretending otherwise on a tracker does not change it.
The stakes are not imaginary either. Research on hydration and performance during Ramadan reports that large body-water deficits impair both physical and cognitive performance, and that water loss may begin to affect performance at as little as 1 to 2 percent of body mass. That is the argument for planning the overnight window properly, not for chasing a number that was never designed for a fast.
The rule was never really “a gallon.” The rule is hydrate deliberately and track it. Keep the intent, change the number.
A realistic overnight hydration plan
Do not try to solve this at iftar. Drinking a liter in ten minutes mostly produces a bathroom trip, not hydration. Split the window into three anchors instead.
At iftar. Break the fast with water, then eat. Keep the volume moderate, because a large slug of fluid on an empty stomach ahead of a full meal tends to come straight back out.
Through the evening, including after taraweeh. This is the biggest and most useful chunk of the window. Sip steadily across two or three hours rather than drinking in bursts. Most people can move more fluid here than anywhere else in the night.
At suhoor. Front-load the pre-dawn meal with water and water-rich foods. This is the fluid that has to carry you through the day.
Treat that as a template, not a prescription. Your split depends on your schedule, your local fasting hours, and what your stomach tolerates.
A few things that help:
- Eat your water. Soups, yogurt, cucumber, watermelon, oranges, and dates at iftar and suhoor all add fluid without adding volume you have to gulp.
- Watch the caffeine. Coffee, tea, and soft drinks increase fluid losses and work directly against your plan. Islamic Relief’s Ramadan hydration guidance flags caffeinated drinks specifically, and the NHS advice for fasting says the same.
- Electrolytes are a conversation with a clinician. Salt and electrolyte needs vary with how much you sweat, what you eat, and what medication you take. This is not the place for a dosing recommendation.
For logging, the important move is to change the target rather than skip the task. If your water task is set to a number you cannot hit during Ramadan, you will start marking it done when it is not, and the whole log stops being worth anything. Lower the target to something you can actually reach across the overnight window and keep checking it honestly. Our gallon of water tips post covers the general habit side of this for the rest of the year.
Re-timing workouts around suhoor and iftar
There are four workable training windows during Ramadan, and each buys you something different.
Before suhoor. You train on the previous night’s food and can drink during and after the session. Good for people who already wake early. Brutal if it costs you sleep you cannot recover.
60 to 90 minutes before iftar. Popular with people chasing fat loss, and convenient because you finish right as the fast ends. You will be at your most depleted. Keep the intensity modest and the session short.
One to two hours after iftar. Generally the best window for strength work and muscle gain. You are rehydrated, you have eaten, and you can drink through the session. The tradeoff is a late finish.
After taraweeh. For night owls. Food has settled, fluid is back on board, and the gym is quiet. Watch the effect on sleep, because sleep is already fragmented this month.
What the research supports is reassuring if you read it properly. A narrative review with a systematic search in Sports Medicine - Open describes daytime exercise in the Ramadan-fasted state as acutely ergolytic, meaning worse acute performance and heightened physiological strain, while reporting that Ramadan-specific training studies have generally shown preserved or improved training-induced outcomes. Translated: your sets will feel worse this month, and that is not the same as losing progress.
Broader intermittent-fasting work lands in a similar place. A meta-analysis of fasting and exercise performance found VO2max enhanced under some time-restricted feeding protocols but reduced under Ramadan-style fasting. Expect the dip. Do not read it as failure.
The two-a-day and the outdoor session
Drop to one workout for the month. That is the default recommendation, and the reasoning is simple: two quality sessions inside the eating window means training on a full stomach or on no fluid, and neither is worth the cost across 29 days. If you want the second session back, make it a walk after iftar rather than a second real workout.
The outdoor requirement can stay, but shorten it. A February and March Ramadan means cold and short daylight for much of the Northern Hemisphere, and the useful daylight often overlaps with work. A post-iftar walk in the dark counts. Our winter workout ideas and the rain and bad weather guide both apply here.
If you have ever run a challenge around an unusual schedule, this will feel familiar. The night shift guide solves a structurally identical problem: the tasks are fine, the clock is the thing that has to move.
Building an adapted ruleset that keeps the streak
The value of a 75-day challenge is unbroken daily action, not one specific water number. Editing the rules on purpose, in advance, and writing them down is a completely different act from quietly failing and calling it a modification. Do the first thing.
This is the table to copy.
| Original rule | Ramadan version | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Two 45-minute workouts | One session, re-timed post-iftar or pre-suhoor | Two quality sessions do not fit the eating window |
| One workout outdoors | Keep, but shorter; a post-iftar walk counts | Short daylight and cold in most of the Northern Hemisphere |
| Gallon of water | Reduced target, split across iftar, evening, suhoor | All intake has to fit the overnight hours |
| Structured diet | Keep, but plan iftar and suhoor deliberately | The default failure mode is fried food and sugar at iftar |
| No alcohol | Unchanged | Nothing about the month changes this |
| Read 10 pages | Re-time to the evening or after suhoor | The slot moves; many readers use it for Qur’an or dhikr and keep a separate book task |
| Progress photo | Keep, re-timed to a consistent post-suhoor slot | Consistent lighting and time matter more than the specific hour |
| Weigh-in | Keep as information only | Fluid shifts make the scale noisy; it is not fat change |
That reading row deserves a line of its own. Plenty of people will want the daily reading slot for Qur’an or dhikr this month, and treating that as the reading task is entirely reasonable. Others keep both, with Qur’an as its own task and a book task alongside it. Both setups are complete challenges, not compromised ones.
Setting it up in Reset75
The practical version in Reset75 takes about five minutes. Build the month from the Custom template, or open the Challenge Editor on your existing challenge and edit it in place so your history stays intact.
- Edit targets, do not delete tasks. The library water task is a counter with an 8-glass default, so the number is yours to set. Lower it for the month and raise it again after Eid.
- Re-time the per-task reminders. Reminders are set by hour and minute with quiet days, so the water nudge can fire at iftar and again at suhoor instead of mid-afternoon. This is the single highest-value change on the list.
- Set the required flag deliberately. A task you have decided to pause should be marked optional rather than left required and missed.
- Choose your strictness before day one of Ramadan. Strictness is a challenge-level setting. Strict mode enforces the restart; forgiving mode lets a missed day pass without penalty. If you are running strict and want the streak to survive the month, decide that now, not on the night it breaks. The restart rules guide covers what a restart actually costs.
Everything stays on the device with no account needed, which some people care about a lot when the log includes daily photos.
If you would rather change templates than edit rules, that is also fine. The easier alternatives guide compares the lighter formats, and the build your own challenge guide walks through designing a ruleset from scratch. There is also a custom challenge tracker if you want to sketch the month in a browser before committing to it.
Plan for Eid
A ruleset with no answer for Eid al-Fitr is a ruleset that breaks on Eid. It is a feast day with family, food, and a schedule that belongs to other people.
Decide in advance. Mark it as a planned rest day, or drop to a single walk and the reading task, or keep everything and accept that the diet rule is not surviving lunch. Any of those is a decision. Arriving at Eid with a strict ruleset and no plan is not.
The same goes for the last few days of Ramadan, when sleep is shortest and energy is lowest. Lower the bar on purpose and keep showing up.
The short version
Find where Ramadan falls in your 75 days. Pick adapt, delay, or split, and pick it early. Cut the water target and move it into the overnight window. Drop to one workout and re-time it around iftar or suhoor. Write the modified ruleset down before day one of the month, including what happens on Eid.
A challenge that accounts for the month you are actually in is still the whole challenge.
Last reminder, because it matters more than any of the scheduling above: speak with your doctor before combining fasting with hard training, particularly if you have diabetes or take medication that needs food, and take all questions of observance to your own scholarly guidance rather than to a fitness article. Diabetes UK has specific advice on fasting with diabetes, including when to break a fast. Reset75 tracks your days. The rest is yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you do a 75-day challenge during Ramadan?
Yes, with a modified ruleset written down in advance. The daily water target is the main incompatibility, because all of your fluid intake has to fit between iftar and suhoor. Decide before the month starts whether you are adapting the rules, delaying your start date, or splitting the challenge into two blocks.
How do you drink a gallon of water while fasting?
You do not, and it is not a sensible goal to chase. A US gallon is roughly 3.8 liters, which is at or above the daily total fluid figure the National Academy of Medicine gives for men, compressed into a partial day. Lower the target and spread it across iftar, the evening after taraweeh, and suhoor.
When is the best time to work out during Ramadan?
There are four workable windows: before suhoor, 60 to 90 minutes before iftar, one to two hours after iftar, and late at night after taraweeh. Post-iftar is generally the strongest option for lifting because you are rehydrated and fueled. The honest answer is whichever window you can repeat every day without wrecking your sleep.
Should you pause a 75-day challenge for Ramadan or adapt it?
Both work. Adapting keeps your streak and your momentum but requires you to accept a modified month. Delaying the start until after Eid al-Fitr keeps the original ruleset intact but costs you weeks of waiting. Splitting the challenge into a block before Ramadan and a block after is a third option if you prefer a clean break.
Do you have to restart if you cannot hit the water target while fasting?
Only if you set your challenge up that way. In a strict setup a missed required task forces a restart, so the fix is to edit the water target down or switch to a forgiving setting before Ramadan begins. Making that decision in advance is very different from quietly missing days.
Can you build muscle while fasting during Ramadan?
Acute performance dips during daylight training are well documented, but Ramadan training studies have generally reported preserved or improved training outcomes over the month. Train after iftar, get protein at both iftar and suhoor, and treat maintenance rather than personal bests as the win.
Is it safe to exercise while fasting?
For most healthy adults, moderate activity during Ramadan is fine, and NHS guidance suggests keeping active with some light exercise such as walking, and resting when you need to. Anyone with diabetes or another medical condition should speak with their doctor or diabetes team before fasting or training, because medication may need adjusting.
When is Ramadan 2027?
Ramadan 1448 AH is expected to run from roughly 8 February to 8 March 2027, with Eid al-Fitr expected around 9 March 2027. These are estimates. The actual start and end are confirmed by local moon sighting and can differ by a day between countries.