The *That Girl* challenge
Written on October 24th, 2021 by Debashmita Poddar
After a tiresome trip to Sardinia, we finally came back to L’Aquila on Tuesday. Renan and I have not been super productive for quite sometime now. We were getting up late (around 9:30-10:00) so our mornings are gone. The days are getting shorter, and the sunset pushes us to wrap up by 18:00. We prefer working at different times. Renan is an early riser so he prefers the mornings, I’m a night owl so I prefer the evenings. The afternoon for us is the most unproductive part of the day. Renan likes to cook and catch up with his video games, and I have the infamous postprandial slump. I thought maybe the carbs from the lunch are responsible for my brain crash. I tried eating just protein or salad, but my brain just refuses to work for 3 hours after lunch.
Before going to bed everyday, we watch some TikToks, mostly for food and dogs. One trend that we noticed was the That Girl challenge. It is about a girl who gets up super early (around 5:00), drinks water, makes her bed, journals, reads, eats healthy, works out, dresses up, is productive, and has a social life. She takes aesthetically beautiful pictures and posts them on her TikTok, Instagram and/or Pinterest handles. The goal is to motivate other girls to become the best version of herself through a set of routined good habits. The challenge intrigued me, so I decided to watch some videos on YouTube of women documenting their take on the That Girl challenge. Their are some controversies about whether it is a toxic challenge or not (the pressure of being perfect), but leaving that apart I decided to jump on the That Girl bandwagon. Since I don’t care about aesthetics or filming myself, I decided to take pictures of what I felt comfortable with.
The first thing I considered was to make a list of things I needed to do. I heavily customized it according to my lifestyle, and that’s what people should do. So here is my list:
- Get up at 7:00 (It’s autumn and the sunrise is at 7:20 these days)
- Chug down a glass of lemon infused water
- Go for a walk (I sprained my right foot and the gym is far away)
- Make a green smoothie for breakfast and a cold brew
- Freshen up and get dressed
- Make your bed
- Go for work
- Journal
- Work on your day’s goals
- Eat a healthy salad for lunch
The challenge documented the time from waking up in the morning till lunch, so the other half of your day is do as you please. I decided to get a good 8 hours rest on Friday, before attempting the chanllege on Saturday. I woke up at 7:00, went straight to the kitchen and drank my lemon infused water. Renan said he wants to go for a walk with me, so we went for one. It was cloudy and drizzling (also the weekend) so not a lot of people were outside. It was a bit gloomy in the beginning , but the sky started to clear up a little after sometime. After a half an hour walk, we went back to our respective homes.
I went straight to my kitchen to make myself some breakfast. I took out my cold brew, which I prepared following Joshua Weissman’s recipe. In the videos, they prefer using non-dairy milk and creamer, but I don’t like any other milk except for cow’s milk and the half fat version. I added some milk, few ice cubes and some dairy full fat creamer. I tasted it, and it was a bit bitter for me, so I added some locally sourced honey which I bought from Sardinia. I made a green smoothie with some zero-fat greek yogurt, one-fourth of an avocado, few slices of frozen medium ripe mango, one fourth of a red apple and some milk to dilute. I poured it in a bowl and added 10 almonds on top. The coffee was in a mason jar and was too much for me to drink in one go, so I decided to take it with me to work. I drank another huge glass of lemon water after breakfast and packed my lunch in the meantime. The turned on the dishwasher and went ahead to get ready for work. I made my bed and prepared my bag once I was all set to go. The whole thing took me 2 hours, so if I woke up at 5am, I would be ready for work by 7:00.
My workspace is a five minutes walk from my apartment, so I reached around 9:10. It was a Saturday so no one came to work. I had to change my workspace, so I set up my station, and sipped on my cold brew. I did some journaling, but I quickly realized that I don’t really like it. I love cognitive planning, if I have to do something, I will do it anyway. I don’t like manifesting or affirming and then writing them down, so regular journaling is not my cup of tea. I started to work on my planned stuff, but I got distracted quite often. I absolutely hated the cold brew, but I sipped through it because I didn’t wanna feel tired. It took me 4 hours to finish the coffee, along with frequent runs to the toilet. I hate drinking cold beverages, and I really missed my morning cup of tea. If I need a cup of coffee, I would rather have a cappuccino or a latte macchiato. I hated the cold brew and decided on not drinking it again. My supervisor messaged me asking me and Renan to join him for dinner tonight at 21:00 for some Arrosticinis (lamb meat skewers typical from Abruzzo region). I said yes because “that girl” also has a happening social life.
I usually take my lunch around 12:30, so I had some varities of lettuce and a bunch of toppings including some red kidney beans, one full boiled egg, some moderately ripe mango pieces, one-fourth of an avocado, and some grilled chicken which was marinated overnight in salt, pepper, garlic powder, greek yogurt and chilli powder. I don’t like using salad dressings, and generally stick to some lemon and juice and red chilli flakes. After lunch, I had a small piece of 81% dark chocolate. The huge jug of cold brew didn’t help me with the afternoon slump (another reason why I’ll stay away from it), and I wasted 3 hours staring blankly at my computer screen.
At 16:00, I decided to go back home and rest, have some snack and a cup of tea. The weather outside was fantastic, the sun came through with a pleasant temperature. I went home and unloaded the dishwasher. I bought some chicken gyozas and chocolate mochi from the Asian section of the supermarket, so I decided to brew some tea and have them as a snack. Later, I laid on my bed for an hour and watched some YouTube videos. It was starting to get dark, and I realized that if I don’t get up, I’ll fall asleep and miss the dinner, so I decided to come back to my workspace from where my supervisor will pick me up.
I decided to write about the first half of my day while I waited for the dinner at 21:00. The dinner was nice, it has been a long time since I went out with a huge group of people and socialized. I had some sheep meat and liver skewers (Arrosticinis), and a glass of red wine. After the dinner everyone wanted to hangout at a pub and drink some beer, but I decided to call it a day, since it was already past midnight and I woke up earlier than usual.
Conclusion: The That Girl lifestyle is surely a motivating challenge if you are going through a slump. However, one thing to keep in mind while attempting these challenge is to heavily customise it according to your existing lifestyle. Remember, the key here is to become a better version of yourself and not someone else. For example, I don’t like drinking cold brew as a beverage, so I’ll stick to my tea, but I would like to be in a habit of making my bed every morning, because I have been struggling with that for as long as I remember. So is this trend toxic? Well, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve: if you want to get your life on track by having a routine, yes, bus if you are doing it just to post on social media and seeking for approval then, no. It ultimately boils down to the same thing, is social media good or evil? The answer to this question depends on you.