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Daily Habits: July 2022

I’ve been tracking my health habits on a daily basis for six months now. It’s been so powerful, I can’t imagine ever not doing it.

Here’s a recap of my goals for July:

  • Eat paleo – meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts (50% of the time)
  • Everything else, 80% or over – no alcohol, sleep 6.5 hours, intermittently fast (8 hours eating and 16 hours fasting), maximum of three cups of caffeine before midday, two litres of water and taking my supplements.

And, here are the results:

Overall, I’m really pleased with July. There were quite a few positives and also a few things to focus on improving.

I’ll start with the positives:

  • Not drinking alcohol is hardly a thing for me now. I had a few social catch ups in July and I found it effortless to not drink. I also hit my one year alcohol free in July.
  • Caffeine, Water and Supplements are also now firmly established daily habits. I suspect if I dropped the tracking altogether, I would easily continue to maintain 90% + consistency.
  • Intermittent fasting under new stricter rules (only water and black coffee in my 16 hour fasting period) reached over 80% consistency for the first time. And, it felt easy. When I missed, I made a conscious decision on that day not to fast – it was never the result of me losing concentration or failing due to willpower. I’m confident I can easily maintain 80% + consistency going forward.

Now, for the areas to improve:

  • Paleo came in at 45% consistency – a little shy of my 50%+ goal. That said, there are a few positives to take from that. Firstly, it was pretty close. Secondly, I proved that last month’s 47% wasn’t a fluke. Thirdly, I found a better consistency on weekdays, where I was able to eat paleo for three or four days back to back. And lastly, I managed to eat paleo on a Friday one time! So, even though I fell short of my 50%+ goal, there’s a lot of progress that gives me the confidence I can get into over 50% territory soon.
  • Sleeping 6.5+ hours dropped to 68% consistency – my lowest score since March. This was disappointing, and I need to tighten this up. That said, July had some unusual challenges. It was HOT in the UK and this made it much harder to sleep. I also had a few things going on with my daughter and dog that disrupted my sleep. So, I feel I can tighten up (earlier nights, better night time routine and waking a bit later) over the next few months and soon get to a solid 80%+ consistency.

So, overall, I think I’m in a really strong place. And, I need to keep reminding myself that where I am now compared to 6 months ago is night and day.

That brings me to August and also thinking about where I want to be by the end of the year.

Let’s start with where I want to be by the end of the year. That’s an easy one. I want to be 80% + consistent on all of the above habits I am tracking. To do that, I have to maintain the five habits already at 80% consistency – no alcohol, intermittently fast, caffeine, water and taking my supplements. I don’t think that will be challenging. And then I have to get my sleep and paleo to 80% +. That will be much more challenging and will likely take the rest of the year five months) to achieve.

Now onto my goals for August. That’s a tricky one. I have a 10 day holiday in August where it wouldn’t be enjoyable or sensible to try and achieve the same level of consistency with my habits. So, I’ve decided to take August off. I will still track my habits, but will let go of any expectations. The main things I will push to keep at a decent level are sleep and water. There’s a good chance I can keep these at 80%+, but let’s see. Everything else is bound to drop significantly. And then in September, we start again!

No Alcohol: One Year

I was on the phone to a medical specialist earlier in the week. They asked me if I smoked or drank alcohol and I said ‘no’. It felt good to give that answer with no hesitation.

I wrote about my journey after 60, 90 and 250 days. And honestly, I don’t really have too much different to say compared to 250 days.

I feel great. Not a hangover in sight. Better weekends. I have more confidence. I have less anxiety – especially at the start of the week. I’ve had a complete transformation with my health habits (see below). I weigh less and am more at ease with my physique. I’m confident that I’m healthier (we’ll find out when I take a new set of bloods in August). Also, I do not miss the mental gymnastics that come along with trying to manage my alcohol limits – which I always eventually broke.

Perhaps the best way I can describe it, is that it feels as if a weight has been lifted.

So, where do I go from here?

I suspect I’m going to be alcohol free forever. There’s too much to risk by trying to get to a place where I can have a couple of drinks on a special occasion, a few times a year. That said, I’ll keep an open mind. I prefer to be self aware of the benefits and risks – and from there, continue to make whatever the right decision for me is.

By the way, this is where my habits are for July so far:

I’m on track for a record month. I KNOW this would not be possible if I was drinking. It’s this and less anxiety that are my biggest reasons for staying sober right now.

If you’re thinking about giving up alcohol, I’d be more than happy to chat and share what’s been useful for me.

Daily Habits: June 2022

I’ve become almost obsessed with tracking and improving my daily habits over the last five months. I can’t remember what inspired me to do it, but I’m glad I did. It’s been life changing.

Before we dive in, here’s a quick reminder of my goals for June:

  • eat paleo – meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts (50% of the time).
  • Intermittently fast (8 hours eating and 16 hours fasting) under new stricter rules (80% of the time).

I also wanted to maintain the other habits I’ve already established at 80% – no alcohol, sleep 6.5 hours, maximum of three cups of caffeine before midday, two litres of water and taking my supplements.

Here’s how I did:

On the face of it, that doesn’t look great. I failed to get Paleo over 50%. I failed to get my intermittent fasting over 80%. My sleep slipped below 80%.

That said, it was very close. There are a bunch of things to be happy about:

  • Whilst my paleo consistency didn’t hit 50% or over, I made a very significant improvement from last month. Things are heading in the right direction.
  • Whilst my intermittent fasting consistency didn’t hit 80% or over, it was super close at 77%. I also have to remember, it’s only been two months of holding myself to a much stricter set of rules (only water and black coffee in my fasting period).
  • Whilst my sleep dipped below 80%, it wasn’t by too much (73%). I also managed to keep my average sleep nice and high at 6 hours, 56 mins.
  • All other habits I wanted to maintain are sitting nicely over 80%.

If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you’ll know that I avoid goals. Instead, I prefer to establish a direction I want to head. From that perspective, I’m heading in the right direction with everything. I have to remind myself that my progress won’t be linear and there is more to learn. And ultimately, my overall progress over the last five months is more than I could ever hoped for.

As for what to learn from June, there are a few things that jump to mind.

  • Events that take me out of my routine, tend to knock me off course. For example, I went to visit my Mum for three nights at the beginning of the month. My daughter also had a weekend of birthday activities towards the end of the month. I lost my consistency too much over these periods. I need to plan better for these type of things. I don’t have to be perfect in these periods, but it makes sense to at least think about damage limitation.
  • Sometimes I just get a bit lazy with my habits and forget. Taking my supplements is a good example. There’s no reason for that to be under 100%.
  • The fix for my sleep is to be more disciplined with getting to sleep earlier. I naturally wake up very early and then find it hard to go back to sleep. I also have a dog and a daughter that helps with that. So, if I go to bed late, there’s a very good chance I’ll struggle to get my 6.5 hours in.

That brings me to my goals for July. They will be exactly the same as June.

That’s because I see my next big milestone as being able to get paleo to 50% or over and everything else 80% or over. And not just one month – for a few months. I want it to feel natural and effortless. I’m close. It feels like I’m starting to find a baseline with these habits. But, it could take the rest of the year for it to settle into a consistent baseline, which I’m totally fine with.

So, just a recap on my July goals:

  • Eat paleo – meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts (50% of the time).
  • Everything else, 80% or over – no alcohol, sleep 6.5 hours, intermittently fast (8 hours eating and 16 hours fasting), maximum of three cups of caffeine before midday, two litres of water and taking my supplements.

Let’s go. 👊

Daily Habits: May 2022

Tracking my daily habits continues to be one of the most life changing things I’ve done. That’s no exaggeration. When I look at my progress, I struggle to believe it’s me.

My goal for May was to focus on two things:

  • Eat paleo – 50% (from a very low historic average of 10%)
  • Intermittent fasting – 50% (under a new stricter criteria of only water and black coffee in my fasting period).

And of course, maintain the other habits I’ve already established at 80% – no alcohol, sleep 6.5 hours, maximum of three cups of caffeine before midday, two litres of water and taking my supplements.

Here’s how I did:

Let’s start with the good news:

  • Intermittent fasting (under a new stricter criteria of only water and black coffee in my fasting period) was a lot easier than I expected. I hit 74% consistency – well over my 50% goal and already super close to 80% territory.
  • Sleeping 6.5 hours finally got over 80% consistency for the first time – with my average sleep also increasing to 6 hours, 58 mins.
  • All of the habits I was looking to maintain increased significantly – many hitting over 90% consistency and a couple even hitting 100%.
  • Even though I’m not focusing on being active (I’m coming back from an injury), I’m now back to training three times a week.

I’m super proud of that. The habits I have over 80% are now very easy for me to maintain. Tracking them helps, but the best bit is that they’ve become a default behaviour for me. That’s a solid place to be.

Now for the not so good news – I came in at 30% consistency for eating paleo. That’s quite a bit less than my goal of 50%. I suspected I would find this very hard. And I did.

That said, 30% is a huge improvement from a historic average of 10%. It’s a solid step in the right direction.

It’s pretty obvious where I go from here. I need to get the intermittent fasting into the 80% zone, and get paleo into the 50% zone.

So, my goals for June are:

  • eat paleo – meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts (50% of the time)
  • Intermittently fast (8 hours eating and 16 hours fasting) under new stricter rules (80% of the time)

The fasting should come fairly easily. Paleo, not so much.

I’ve been thinking about where I need to focus to help get it to 50% consistency. I have to cut out snacking on bad foods in the evening. I’m often on course for a paleo day and then ruin it at the last minute. I also need to start getting some paleo days under my belt over the weekend (I didn’t manage a single weekend day in May). If I can make progress in those two areas, I should be able to get to my 50% goal.

See you in a month!

P.S, if you want to follow my journey chronologically, check out these posts:

Daily Habits – February 2022

Daily Habits – March 2022

Daily Habits – April 2022

Warming up – the single biggest thing to reduce injuries and get results

I used to view warming up as a boring obstacle before my workout could begin. I’ve had to entirely change my thinking around this in the last few years.

I’ve come to realise that an effective warm up is the single biggest thing I can do to reduce the risk of injury. I’ll go even further than that. Remember, being consistent is probably the biggest factor in getting results. Injuries cause inconsistency. So therefore, an effective warm up is in fact the single biggest thing I can do to get results.

As with most learning and growth, it takes time and several iterations for things to click into place. This has definitely been the case for me. My thinking has shifted over a number of phases in the last few years.

It started with seeing it as unnecessary and not warming up at all. Why take effort away from the workout? I then had some personal training in my thirties which exposed me to better warm ups – but I still loathed doing them and didn’t understand the value.

I then found Crossfit, where warm ups were built into the session. I did them, but I had a ‘go through the motions’ type of attitude towards them. Just give me the handstand push ups already!

When I left Crossfit, I started working with a personal trainer (Jamie). He helped me get clear on my goals and the best way of achieving them. He now creates all of my sessions and programming. Working with Jamie has helped educate me on why warming up was so important and how to structure it. This was the biggest singular shift in thinking for me. I understood things better. I started to be much more consistent and intentional with my warm ups. I started to even like doing them – well, sometimes. That said, I still didn’t quite make the connection between just how important it was for reducing the risk of injury – and therefore my results.

And then I got injured at the beginning of this year. Leading up to that, I had my best 6 months of training ever, with great results. It’s taken me the best part of five months to get back to a place where I can train consistently again. This has given me a lot of time to reflect on why I got injured and how I can reduce the risk of it happening again. That’s when things started to REALLY click. Warming up was a significant factor in all of this.

And that brings me to today. My warm ups are long and well designed. I approach them with a lot of intention. I never rush or skip them. I like doing them – almost always. I don’t see them as something I do before the workout. They are part of the workout.

That’s a million miles from where I started. I’ve had to have a fundamental shift in mindset.

One thing that’s been helpful is to approach it with an ‘athlete mindset’. It sounds weird, but I literally imagine I’m an athlete. Now, on one hand that’s ludicrous – because I am very far from an athlete. But, when I think about it like that, I’m able to approach it with the respect it deserves. If I want my body to perform as well as it can, for as long as it can – I have to triple down on doing the work that will help me do that.

Let’s get even more specific and practical. Below is how my warm ups are structured and how they fit into the session.

They begin very general, and then finish being very specific. They mostly fit the following structure:

1. Gentle movement – this starts the process of getting warm, getting the heart rate up, and getting the blood moving [VERY GENERAL]

2. Foam rolling – this helps loosen tight soft tissue and further improve blood flow, with an emphasis on the movements that will follow [GENERAL / STARTING TO GET SPECIFIC]

3. Dynamic warm up – prepare my body for the session with dynamic movements that are related to the movements I will be doing under load. Here, I want to lengthen my range of motion and push my heart rate and breathing up nicely. [SPECIFIC]

4. Specific movements – practising the specific movements I’ll be doing in the workout. I’ll do this before each working set at a reduced load / rep range [VERY SPECIFIC]

And here’s how that looked exactly for one of my workouts earlier in the week:

  • Walk – 20 mins [VERY GENERAL]
  • Foam rolling – Calves, hamstrings, IT bands & lower back. A bit of hip stretching [GENERAL / STARTING TO GET SPECIFIC]
  • Air bike: 5 mins at moderate pace (to get moving again after the foam rolling) [GENERAL / STARTING TO GET SPECIFIC]
  • 3 sets of: [SPECIFIC]

– 10 Touch floor, then reach overhead

– 10 banded pull aparts

– 10 Scap push ups

– 10 glute bridges

– 10 PVC/banded passovers

  • Landmine rows (couple of sets with just the olympic bar and half reps of workout sets)

After the above I was very warm. My heart rate was elevated, and my body felt nicely primed for the main workout (a mix of air bike, landmine rows and shoulder taps).

Now, I want to be clear, the above warm up lasted 45 mins. That’s excessive. To give some perspective, my actual workout was only 15 mins, followed by a 15 min cool down. But, right now, that’s appropriate for where I am in the journey of coming back from my injury.

Going forward, I expect my warm up will account for roughly a third of my session. So, I might expect to spend 30 mins warming up, 45 mins on the main workout, and 15 mins cooling down.

As you can tell, it’s been quite a process to arrive at where I am today with my warm ups. I’m super glad I arrived here though. I really understand why I’m warming up and how to do it right. And that’s helped me actually want to do it and be consistent with it.

Perfection is not the goal

I was off to an absolutely cracking start for my habits in May. You could say, a perfect start.

My goal was to maintain the habits that I’ve recently got to 80% consistency:

  • sleep 6.5 hours
  • drink two litres of water
  • drink a maximum of three cups of caffeine (before midday)
  • take my supplements

I also wanted to eat paleo and intermittently fast (as per my new stricter rules) at 50% consistency.

I was particularly impressed with my first six days of sleep. A perfect record and an average of 7:35 hours a night. But then days 7, 8, & 9 happened. They were still above 6.5 hours, but getting a bit close to the wire. I started to feel disappointed that I wasn’t able to keep up with the 7 and 8 hours numbers from the first six days.

And then, I came in with a 3:52 for day 10.

I was disappointed with myself. I could have easily avoided the 3:52. Instead, I went to bed late when I knew I would be getting up at 04.30 the next morning – and I ruined my perfect record.

But, wait. Let’s back up a minute.

I KNEW I would come in shockingly low on day 10. I even made the decision to stay up late consciously. I did it with knowledge I was easily on track enough to still achieve my sleep goal for the month (80%).

Let’s back up even further. Why on earth was I disappointed on days 7, 8 and 9? They were ABOVE the goal of 6.5 hours. I was literally disappointed with achieving my goal!

If I take an even more macro view of things – even with day 10 – I am at 90% consistency with sleep for the month. That’s nicely ABOVE my 80% goal. It’s a great month so far. Everything is well above my goal, with only paleo lagging a bit – and I have plenty of time to course correct on that.

So, why do I find myself disappointed and giving myself a hard time? Why do I find myself slipping into perfection being the goal?

One word. Expectations.

I’ve gone most of my adult life holding myself to high and unrealistic standards. I’ve managed to change my mentality around this in the last few years. But, it’s so incredibly easy to fall back into the trap of letting my expectations run out of control. Before you know it, I’m changing the goal posts and having a crappy internal dialogue with myself.

The silver lining is that nowadays I‘m able to catch this happening early. I can then pause and zoom out – see things for what they really are.

And this is what I see. I’ve made a breakthrough with my habits in the last few months and have found a system that works. I’m smashing May. I’m on an upward trend with momentum. I can be happy and proud of where I am in general. I literally find myself looking at my habit sheets and day, hardly believing it’s me doing it.

Perfection is not the goal. Nearly all of the benefits happen in the 80 – 90% consistency range. That’s where you can live a successful, healthy and balanced life.

Daily Habits: April 2022

Tracking my daily habits has been a game changer. And I don’t use that phrase lightly. In just three months, I’ve built a handful of habits up to 80% consistency.

In fact, my focus for April was to nudge those handful of habits to 80% consistency. Here’s how I did:

I’m really pleased for a few reasons. Even though I fell just short of 80% for sleep (I missed it by one day) – I’ve shown that last month’s improvement was not a fluke. I also had a curve ball in the form of a camping trip that pulled my numbers down. I was more on the ball over the weekends too.

As with March, I wasn’t counting ‘Be active’ because I’ve only been walking and doing rehab for my back injury. I’m starting to ease back into training now, so I’ll start counting that in May.

So, the big question – what’s my focus for May?

I’ve been trying to decide if I should give myself another month to let the handful of habits really settle at 80% before tackling something new. That would probably be the sensible thing to do. But, I’m also itching to tackle my nutrition. After some thought, that’s what I’m going to do. It’s long overdue.

I would usually focus on only one thing at a time. However, there are two things that are very closely linked, which it makes sense to tackle together.

The first is eating paleo. This is going to be challenging for me. I have a bad relationship with food and tend to over-indulge in foods that are bad for me. I don’t know why I do it. I’ve tried to explore this with therapy and reading – but I haven’t been able to figure it out yet. I’m hoping that by making nutrition a focus within the framework of my daily tracking, I can make a breakthrough.

The second is intermittent fasting (8 hours eating, 16 hours fasting). But, wait – I’ve been telling you my intermittent fasting is already at over 80%? It is! Well, kinda. I drink cups of tea (and quite a few) in my 16 hours fasting window – so technically it’s not fasting because I consume milk.

The reason these are linked is because milk isn’t paleo (it’s dairy). So if I’m going to focus on eating paleo more often, I should also take the opportunity to tighten up my intermittent fasting.

So, my goals for May are:

  • eat paleo – meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts (50% of the time).
  • Intermittently fast (8 hours eating and 16 hours fasting) under new stricter rules (50% of the time).

I’ll now only consume water or black coffee in the fasting window.

If I can achieve 50% consistency for eating paleo and strict fasting, that would be massive for me. I can then see a path to nudging both of those to 80% over the next few months.

Of course, I’ll continue to maintain my 80% levels for sleep, drinking two litres of water, a maximum of three cups of caffeine before midday and taking my supplements.

A big ambitious month ahead. I’m ready for it. 👊

P.S If you are interested in my progress for February and March, you can find them here – Feb, March.

The single best thing I’ve ever done to improve my habits

I started tracking my daily habits a couple of months ago. I wrote about how I did in February here.

It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done to improve my habits. It’s given me the dose of self awareness I needed to change my behaviours.

I made sleep a priority for March. I wanted to improve my sleep consistency (how many nights I slept for over 6.5 hours), whilst hopefully seeing everything else maintained.

Here’s how I did:

I’m super pleased. This is a nice baseline to improve upon.

The number of nights I slept over 6.5 hours jumped from 50% to 74%, which is a huge improvement. I also noticed my average sleep time was nicely up – from 6 hours, 23 minutes to 6 hours, 45 minutes (tracked by whoop)

The main change I made was to be more conscious of what time I went to bed and woke up. I know that sounds obvious, but I just didn’t think about it much previously. I would find myself going to bed about 23.00 and waking up at 05.00 – and then be surprised I only got 5 hours sleep.

I’m also pleased with my other scores improving. Remember, my goal was only to maintain them. Intermittent fasting, restricting caffeine to 3 cups before midday, drinking two litres of water and taking my supplements all increased. This is only the second month I’ve been tracking my daily habits, so the self awareness factor is continuing to help me be more consistent. It’s much easier to notice when I might be at risk of not achieving a habit on any given day – which then nudges me to take action to avoid it.

Eating paleo is obviously in a bad place. I was only focusing on sleep this month, so I didn’t expect it to increase. It needs a more well thought out plan of attack. Being active wasn’t tracked in March because I’m dealing with a lower back injury. I’m currently just walking and doing rehab (which I do daily, but I didn’t think it was useful to track it as being active).

That brings me to my focus for April. I’m very tempted to tackle eating paleo because I know that’s where the biggest bang for buck is (not only because it’s starting off low, but because an improvement here will improve my health the most). That said, it’s also a fairly complicated one because of my bad relationship with food.

I would also like to see the habits I have mostly dialled in get to at least 80%. Why 80%? No reason other than it feels about the right number to be consistent enough to get most of the benefits – whilst also giving me a bit of wiggle room to enjoy life and not stress about being perfect. Bringing sleep, intermittent fasting, caffeine, water and supplements up to 80% feels like a stretching – yet achievable ask for April. In a 30 day month, that allows me to have six misses.

In fact, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll aim to bring those up to 80% consistency in April. I know the two areas I need to focus on to do that. I need to be more focused on a daily basis (often I know the action I need to take to avoid a miss, but I let it happen anyway). I also need to be a bit more vigilant on the weekends, which is where I often drop the ball.

I think eating paleo will increase a bit, because I hate seeing it so low. But, it’s not the focus and I’m not attached to any type of result there. That’ll be for May.

Wish me luck!

Coming back stronger than ever

I’ve been working with Jamie (personal trainer) for the last year. One of the things he’s helped me with is to address the root causes of previous back injuries. It was going great. I had been training 4-5 times a week for about a year – getting stronger and fitter without any back issues.

Towards the end of last year we decided (Jamie might disagree with the we part 😉 ) to introduce some higher risk movements back into the program to see how I coped with them. Cleans and some CrossFit type movements – essentially hinge movements under load.

It was too much. My back felt tight after the sessions, which eventually led to a lower back twinge. We spent a few weeks reducing the intensity to let it rest. When it felt better (no pain, but I still felt very stiff), I tried to do a normal session with reduced intensity. I stupidly chose a weight that was too heavy and it twinged again. I then spent the next three weeks training at reduced intensity. It helped to not make it worse, but I still had a handful of twinges every day. So, we switched to only walking and VERY light rehab exercises. I’ve also been seeing an osteopath for the last few weeks.

I’m finally at a point where I haven’t had a twinge in a handful of days. I can see some light at the end of the tunnel.

The last three months have HUMBLED me. I have a good mentality around training and one of the best personal trainers I could hope for. But, I’ve realised there is still a long way for me to go. I’ve been able to think a lot about why I got injured and how I can help reduce the risk of lower back injuries in the future.

Here are my insights:

  • My warm ups are longer and better than they have ever been. But, I need to take them to the NEXT level – both at the beginning of the session and before specific movements. It’s insane how much better my range of motion is after a good warm up. This might be the biggest thing I can do to reduce the risk of back injuries in the future.
  • I need to fully commit to cool downs. If I’m in a rush, I skip them. I almost think about them as optional. No longer. It’s the best time to get static stretching in.
  • I need to lose my fixation for high risk movements. Sure, I would love to be able to do the Olympic lifts and other CrossFit stuff – but they will always be high risk for me. Being able to train consistently and get incrementally fitter and healthier is more important. Perhaps I will get there some day – but I’m content to say goodbye to them if that’s what it takes.
  • My training split used to be a mix of upper body, conditioning, lower body and CrossFit stuff. Before I got injured we decided to change it to upper body, conditioning, midline / rehab and something fun and safe. I can see now that this is EXACTLY what I need. In fact, I’m now more than ever willing to shut my mouth and do what Jamie tells me to do.
  • Being too ambitious with weight choice is still a problem for me. Every time I have to make a decision, I need to remember to err on the side of caution. It’s always better to move a bit faster and better with a lighter weight – than a heavier weight and get injured.
  • If I injure my lower back again, I need to immediately stick to walking for a while. I need to see a couple of weeks of no twinges and most stiffness gone before I try and get back into training. Trying to train through it – even at a reduced intensity, only prolongs recovery.
  • There is more I can be doing to help improve my mobility outside of my training sessions. Foam rolling, stretching, rehab, massage ball etc. I have plenty of time on evenings and weekends to get 20 mins in. There’s no excuse.

I’ve also had some time to think about other sports and activities I’d like to do outside of my training sessions. Things that will be fun, safe and help me move better. Yoga, rucking, swimming, paddle boarding and tennis are on my radar. I’m not going to set any big expectations – or try to do them all at once. I’ll pick one to focus on and explore the others whenever it feels right.

I’m going to start with swimming. I’ve already booked myself into some swimming lessons for when my back is completely healed. I want to improve my front crawl technique so I can get some morning swimming sessions in. I have a lovely outdoor pool a few miles for me that can help double up as some cold exposure!

So, even though being injured for so long sucks, I’m confident I will come back stronger than ever.

No alcohol: 250 days

Giving up alcohol for 60 days felt like a massive milestone for me. But now it’s just the first step in my 250 day journey of being alcohol free.

At the 60 day mark I still had some desire for a glass of wine at weekends or at social events. Whilst I felt confident that I wouldn’t slip up and have a drink – there was always a risk. When people noticed I wasn’t drinking, I told them that I was taking a break from drinking.

Now, the desire has gone and I tell people I don’t drink. There’s no chance I’ll slip up.

Life remains much better without it. I’m more consistent with health habits. I have less anxiety and feel more upbeat. It’s easier to maintain an ideal weight.

I find myself at a crossroad. I’ve been careful to never commit to giving up alcohol forever. The real goal was to change my relationship with it – which I have. I have proved to myself I can take it or leave it and go long periods without it. I know for sure life is a lot better when I do that.

The question now is – can I integrate it back into my life on my terms? Do I even want to?

I think I do. My ideal scenario would be having a couple glasses of very nice wine 3 or 4 times a year – at special occasions. I want to be conscious about what those special occasions are. I would like to drink slowly and really appreciate it. And then after – effortlessly – not drink again for several months.

My only worry is that every rule I’ve ever tried to put in place for alcohol has failed. It’s a 100% failure rate. That’s not good. Will a couple of glasses turn into three or four? Will I feel the desire to drink again on weekends? Will I be able to give it up again if I do fall into that pattern?

OK, let’s get more positive. I’ve also never given up alcohol for 250 days and had the relationship with it that I do now. I have a whole new perspective. So, I think the chances of the above happening are unlikely. And if they do happen, I’m confident I can return to being sober forever.

I’m on the fence. So, for now I will continue on my path of not drinking. Perhaps the right occasion will present itself for an experiment. Or perhaps I will never feel like running the experiment.