Articles

Daily Habits: May 2023 (I’m BACK)

June 2, 2023

My goal for May was 80% across the board for all eight habits.

This was very ambitious for two reasons. I took a lot of April off, so I was definitely feeling a bit rusty with my discipline and routines. Also, 10K steps is a new habit I’m building, and I only had one month at 68% under my belt (March).

So, let’s see how I did:

(click here for full size image)

Now, that’s what you call a SMASH.

I’m so happy with hitting 80% across the board and seeing a full column of green. Sure, things came in a little hot (a few 81% ‘s) – but, I got it done. And I have to keep remembering that I took most of April off, as well having some bank holidays and a half term in May. That makes this an even a more impressive result.

As I type this, I’m taking a step back. I’m able to hold down EIGHT foundational health habits at 80%+ consistency.

I’ll say that once more.

I’m able to hold down EIGHT foundational health habits at 80%+ consistency.

That’s insane for me to think about. Two years ago I couldn’t do one. Just over one year ago, I had two (and it was for only one month, so not a properly established habit).

I struggled for literally over ten years trying to build these types of health habits. So, what helped me finally do it? Three things.

A change in mentality. There have been a handful of things I’ve had to think differently about (a good example is, 80% is good enough).
My habit tracking systems (the notepad and spreadsheet) have kept me on track every day, and every month. That mix of zooming in on the day, but also seeing the bigger picture has been super important.
Accountability. Having friends who are on the same wavelength that I can talk to regularly has been a game changer. We share strategies and help keep each other accountable.

One day, I’ll wrap all of this into some type of course that can help others make similar changes. If this sounds like it would be useful, let me know (I’ll be looking for some guinea pigs!)

Lastly, my goal for June? Exactly the same as May, and exactly the same for the rest of the year. All eight habits at 80%+. I’m not interested in layering on anything new. Instead, I just want to strengthen my consistency on these eight habits for the rest of the year.

See you in a month!

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Have you normalised, feeling lousy?

May 13, 2023

I watch this video from Joe Rogan back at least a few times a week:

It’s SO spot on.

When you get used to eating like this, you realise there’s a whole new way of feeling and living your life. I know that sounds hyperbolic – but it’s absolutely true. It’s night and day.

Yes, it’s super hard (at least at first). Our shops, restaurants and workplaces are hazard zones – full of the wrong choices. I can guarantee, you’re going to need to build more discipline and better habits to deal with them.

You have to put in the work to educate yourself on how to make the right choices. There’s never been more free and high quality information out there. But, that’s super hard too. If you don’t have your wits about you, you’ll be led to believe Cheerios are a health food or Flintstone Vitamins are actually good for your kids.

You’ll have to start being intentional about what you eat. It’s not good enough to grab food on the go, or eat whatever is available. What you’re eating needs to fit into your goals and activity levels for the day.

Why? You’ll live longer. You’ll live better. You’ll feel better. You’ll think better. You’ll look better. Everything will be better.

If you’re eating a Standard American or Western Diet (most people are), you don’t even know how lousy you feel. You’ve normalised to it. What an opportunity. Just wait until you start feeling what it’s like to opt out.

So, how do you practically get started? I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s one very simple, and obvious place to start.

Track everything you eat for seven full days (Monday through Sunday). There are lots of apps that make this very easy (myfitnesspal is what I use). All you have to do is scan the barcode from the packaging of your food, or search their crowdsourced database. It takes a matter of a few minutes to put in a full meal.

If you’ve never done this before, I can almost guarantee, you’ll be surprised by what you find. You’ll be eating too many calories. You’ll be eating too many carbohydrates and saturated fats. You’ll be eating very little protein. And you’ll be eating too much sugar.

And that’s where your journey starts. With this new level of self awareness, you can start to better educate yourself and make different choices. Where it ends, is up to you.

P.S If you want to chat about some of the best places to educate yourself on nutrition, or ways to approach making better choices – feel free to reach out.

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Daily Habits: April 2023 (uh oh, have I lost my mojo?)

May 4, 2023

April was a very unusual month for habits, because I was on holiday for most of it. I therefore decided to let go of any goals or expectations for the month.

That said, I still focused on, and tracked three of my habits (3L water, 6.5 hours sleep and 10K steps) whilst I was on holiday. And then when I got back from holiday, I resumed daily tracking of all habits.

Here’s how it looked:

I won’t go into detail for the period whilst I was on holiday – except to say that I was about 50% consistent with 3L water, 6.5 hours sleep and 10K steps. Not bad, given the trip was packed with lots of activities and travelling (pics at the bottom of the post!).

You’ll notice my consistency was pretty sketchy whilst I was recovering from some jet lag – but once I recovered, things picked up nicely (close to normal consistency).

So, what did I learn, if anything?

Sleep is EVERYTHING. I really wanted to bounce back hard as soon as I got back from holiday. Instead, the jet lag made for a very rough adjustment trying to get back to normal consistency. When you’re under-slept and tired, it’s MUCH harder to be consistent with good habits.
Assuming you’ve built habits properly, they won’t disappear if you take a bit of time off. Sure, the adjustment back to them is a bit rough and took longer than I expected – but, I have a baseline of discipline, routines and determination that helped me get close to back on track fairly quickly.

So, what are my goals and focuses for May? It’s simple – all eight habits at 80%. My goal will be exactly the same for June and July. I want to see at least another three months of green across the board before I think about anything else.

This won’t be easy. Whilst I’m back on track (ish) now, I’m still feeling a slight effect from having the 20 days off in April. My appetite is a bit all over the place and I’m definitely feeling a bit rusty with my focus and getting back to my routines. Also, my new eighth habit (10K steps) was only tracked as a baseline last month (68%). I’ll need to see a decent improvement to hit 80% for the first time.

So, whilst a bit punchy, I want to go for it. I want 80% across the board for all eight habits, and then the same again for the next two months (and forever).

I’ll wrap up with an overview of my journey since Feb 2022:

It’s been a slow and successful build towards 80% consistency of seven core health habits:

Feb 2022 > Aug 2022 (7 months) – early stages of figuring things out, lots of reds and oranges
Sep 2022 > Dec 2022 (4 months) – figuring things out, and getting to 80% consistency on quite a few habits
Jan 2023 > Mar 2023 (3 months) – reaching my goal of 80% consistency for all seven core health habits.

Now, I have to move into the next phase – proving to myself these seven core health habits are built for life, along with adding 10K steps as an eighth. That’s what May, June and July is for.

I’m ready and more determined than ever. Let’s go!

P.S. As usual. If you’re struggling to establish some discipline and health habits in your life, feel free to reach out. I’d be happy to help.

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Daily Habits: March 2023 (a green wave at last!)

March 30, 2023

My goal for March was to keep all seven habits at 80% consistency. This would be the third consecutive month with all habits in the green – an important milestone, because it feels like a sensible benchmark for establishing a habit.

I also added a 10K steps habit in March. As with the other habits I’ve built, I’m starting slow. I don’t have a consistency goal. Instead, I want to establish a baseline percentage I can improve upon.

Here’s how I did:

I couldn’t have asked for more. Everything at 80% or over – and with a fair amount of comfort for most of them. They are all easy to keep up now. Most of the misses are a rare slip of attention, with a few intentionally planned.

I’m also really pleased with the 68% consistency for 10K steps – a strong baseline. As I expected, I didn’t find it easy. I struggled to fit them in for the first week or so. But, after a while I started to organise myself better and the second half of the month was much stronger than the first half. I didn’t appreciate my biggest challenge would be the weather. March has been miserable in the UK – lots of wind and rain!

Here is a picture of my last 3 months:

And here is my progress since Feb, 2022:

It’s an amazing place to be. Seven foundational health habits that I find easy to achieve over 80% of the time. Going forward, anything less is unacceptable. These are habits I will track and maintain at 80% consistency for life.

So, what does April bring?

I’m on holiday for the first three weeks of April (West Coast, US!). So, I’ll repeat what I did on holiday in August last year – no goals or expectations for any habits. That said, I will focus and track three habits that I want to do my best to keep at a good level – 3L water, 6.5 hours sleep and 10K steps. It shouldn’t take much to keep these at a good level whilst on holiday. They will also help me stay connected to healthy habits and feeling good.

When I get back from holiday, I’ll resume tracking all habits again for the last ten or so days of April. The aim will be to get back on track with a good level of consistency for all seven habits – even if I have no consistency goal for the month. And then, May is when it all starts again. My goals will be the same as March – all seven habits at 80% and an improvement on 10K steps (closer to 80%, perhaps even get into the green).

See you next month! 🙂

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Health and longevity top picks #1

March 27, 2023

I read and listen to a lot of stuff every week (articles, podcasts, videos, books etc.). I like to think I’m good at finding content that helps shift my thinking in a significant way, and also gives practical advice. Things I can implement today, which immediately make a positive change in my life.

I used to send my favourite pieces of content as part of a fortnightly newsletter, but I retired it last year.

Last week I stumbled on a few things that I think are so good, I just had to share them. You can find them below.

I won’t bring the newsletter back, but I will round up the best of the best in a post like this from time to time.

Dr. Satchin Panda: Intermittent Fasting to Improve Health, Cognition & Longevity | Huberman Lab (3 hours, 16 mins)

Dr. Satchin Panda is one of the leading experts on circadian rhythm and intermittent fasting. This is such a fantastic listen on circadian rhythm, sleep, fasting and longevity. It doesn’t matter where you are in your journey of health, I guarantee you’ll come away from this better informed and with a few ideas for things to try.

Listen on Spotify

Max Lugavere’s 10 biggest, most impactful takeaways from over 250 episodes of his podcast

I love Max Lugavere. He sticks to the fundamentals and explains things in a way that’s really easy to understand. He’s always full of very practical advice too. These ten takeaways, from over 250 episodes of his podcast are the best example of that.

You can check them out on this Instagram post or below (in case you don’t have an instagram account):

P.S His Joe Rogan interview was one of the best interviews around health and longevity I’ve listened to. You can check it out here – 1870 – Max Lugavere – The Joe Rogan Experience

Huberman AI

Andrew Huberman is a Neuroscientist and his podcast Huberman Lab is one of the most popular health podcasts. He dives deep into scientific topics around health and longevity and has some really smart guests on.

A guy called Riley Tomasek created Huberman AI, a website that uses AI to pull answers from Huberman Lab episodes. The quality of the answers are mind blowing. This might be the best free, online resource for finding information on health and longevity

For example, ask ‘How much magnesium should I take?’ and you’ll get the following answer, and five links to specific places on previous episodes where magnesium dosing is discussed:

The food I Eat 100% affects how my whole day goes by Joe Rogan

Joe Rogan completely kills it in this short clip where he talks about how the foods you eat affect how you feel. I was on the edge a bit today for staying on the right side of good and bad foods, and this gave me the inspiration to stay on the right side!

Dr. Peter Attia: Improve Vitality, Emotional & Physical Health & Lifespan | Huberman Lab Podcast

I love, love Peter Attia. He has a new book coming out soon (Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity), so he’s been doing a podcast tour recently. This wide ranging discussion of everything healthspan and lifespan is a good introduction to Peter and his work.

Listen on Spotify

The Pump Daily – Arnold Schwarzenegger

The Pump Daily is Arnold’s daily newsletter. I wasn;t expecting it to be that good, but I’m really enjoying it. Arnold sticks to the basics and it’s full of practical tips for physical and mental health. Well worth a subscription!

5 Reasons WALKING is the King of Fat Loss (Changed My Life) – Thomas DeLauer (Video: 3 hours, 16 mins)

Walking has too many benefits to ignore, which is why I’m trying to build a 10K steps per day habit. Thomas does a great job of laying out why in this short video.

The World’s No.1 Sleep Expert: The 6 Sleep Hacks You NEED! – Matthew Walker | E228 (2 hours, 5 mins)

Matthew Walker is one of the leading sleep experts and this is a great conversation between him and Steven Bartlett. They discuss why sleep is so important, and some of the ways to get more sleep, and better sleep.

Listen on Spotify

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7 health and fitness apps I highly recommend

March 24, 2023

Technology has made it much easier to be fit and healthy. There’s no app that can make you exercise or put the right foods in your mouth – you have to do that yourself. But, there are now some brilliant products and apps that help to take some of the friction out of the process.

Here are seven health and fitness apps that, with the exception of one, I use every day:

Whoop

I’ve used Whoop for nearly four years. I use the app a handful of times a day and have referred many people to it.

It’s a wearable that tracks your sleep, recovery, and daily effort. It tracks all of the usual health markers – heart rate variability, resting heart rate, skin temperature, blood oxygen and respiratory rate. They also have proprietary recovery and strain scores which help you understand when to push and rest.

I love their sleep tracking. Sleep is a massive focus for me and I like to understand how long and well I’ve slept the night before. More recently, I’ve also been using their live activity feature for heart rate zone 2 training sessions.

One of the other reasons I love Whoop is because of the insights it gives you on your behaviours. Use whoop for a few weeks and you’ll realise how terrible alcohol is for your sleep, heart rate variability and resting heart rate. You’re almost guaranteed a red recovery score the night after a few drinks. That was a huge eye opener for me.

If I could only keep one of my health and fitness apps, I would choose Whoop – hands down.

MyFitnessPal

I’ve been using MyFitnessPal for the last six months or so. It’s a food diary that makes it super easy to track your calories and nutrients. You can scan the barcode of any food, or search their crowdsourced database.

I use it to track everything I eat. It helps me stick to my target calories and macronutrients (protein, fat and carbohydrates) each day. It also gives me a nice previous seven day trend of how things are going. Even for someone like me who has a very good understanding of what foods contain, it steers my decisions for food daily. Tracking my food intake more closely is easily the most impactful thing I’ve done for my health in the last 6 months. I’m making better choices. I’m also lighter, leaner and feel way better.

Apple Health

Apple Health has only been something I’ve been using for the past 6 weeks. The only thing I use it for is to track my daily steps, which has become a recent focus of mine. And it does that nicely!

Pliability

Pliability is one of two apps I use to take the guesswork out of mobility. It focuses on static stretching routines, combining mindfulness and breathing techniques too. Kinda, yoga’ery.

It has a mobility test you can do, which then personalises your experience. It also has a new session that appears every day, as well as a number of paths you can follow too (lower back, upper body, ready to run etc.). The standout aspect of Pliability is quality. The app is well put together and the videos and narration is super high quality.

I tend to just dip in and out of the daily sessions, but will sometimes follow a path if I get a specific injury.

GOWOD

GOWOD is the second of two apps I use for mobility. It works much the same as Pliability in that it has a mobility test, personalised experience, daily sessions and paths you can follow. But, it’s more focused around dynamic exercises, and incorporates some tools like foam rollers, massage balls, bands etc.

The other cool thing about GOWOD is it can build a personalised warm up for your training session. You can select what exercises you are going to be doing, and it will give you a personalised warm up for that session.

GOWOD is a great compliment to Pliability. Between the two, my mobility needs are nicely covered!

TrueCoach

TrueCoach is a platform / app that’s built for personal trainers. My personal trainer (Jamie) uses it to lay out all of my training sessions for the week. It’s easy to follow the workouts, record your results and look back on previous sessions too (super useful to remember last week’s progress).

You’ll only find yourself using TrueCoach if you have a personal trainer who is using the platform. But, I wanted to give it a mention, because it’s a really nice app.

Forth

I use Forth to get my blood work done. Their health tests and platform are very slick. I had my blood taken at a nearby SuperDrug and within 72 hours, the results of 44 biomarkers were available – with notes from a GP. Their platform (website and app) shows everything really nicely and there’s a lot of advice on how to interpret and improve your results.

With health as a big focus of mine, getting blood work done has become something I’ve prioritised in the last couple of years. And Forth makes everything super easy and affordable.

If you know of a good health and fitness app that I’m missing, I’d love to hear about it. Let me know 🙂

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My simple framework for consistency

March 22, 2023

Consistency is by far the most important factor in achieving long-term results. In fact, one of my favourite quotes at the moment is:

“Little by little, a little becomes a lot”

Small actions taken consistently, really do add up to some very significant results over the long-term.

Consistency is open to interpretation though. Doing something 100% of the time is being consistent. So, what’s 90%? What’s 80%? Where do you draw the line?

If you set the bar too high, it can often backfire. It becomes too hard to sustain. Ironically, trying to be too consistent, will actually cause inconsistency. On the flip side, if you set the bar too low, you won’t do a behaviour frequently enough to get results.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about what exactly consistency means to me. I’ve settled on a definition and framework that feels right. I suspect it’s also the right way for most people to think about it:

A minimum of 80% consistency over a period of 30 days – with no more than two consecutive misses.

There are three parts to this, let’s break this down a bit.

80% consistency

I’ve found that 80% is a perfect balance between being consistent enough to get impressive results – yet still giving you the flexibility to enjoy your life and deal with challenging periods. Everything above 80% starts to become diminishing returns, when you take into account the marginal gains vs. the trouble you run into. It’s not worth the trade off.

30 days

Thirty days is a good length of time to measure consistency. It helps you see the bigger picture. You’re less likely to get bent out of shape by having a bad day – or even a bad couple of days. You can afford to miss up to six times in a 30 day period, and still achieve 80%.

Two consecutive misses

The consecutive misses aspect of consistency is something that I only recently figured out. It might even be more important than 80% and 30 days.

A single miss is easy to recover from. As we know, you can afford six of them in a 30 day period and still achieve 80% consistency. But, if you do have a miss, you must try and put things right the following day. Because, where one miss is a blip, two consecutive misses becomes the start of a pattern. The probability of another miss is higher after two consecutive misses. And so on, for three misses, and four misses etc. It’s a very slippery slope. So, I’ve found that you should try very hard to avoid two consecutive misses. And you never want to go more than two consecutive misses.

To give a bit of context, here’s how my habits are looking for March so far (21 days in):

The first thing you’ll notice is aside from 10K steps (a new habit I’m establishing a baseline for), I’m on track to achieve 80% for every habit. For some habits, I’m even trending towards between 90 and 100%. That’s fantastic, but it’s the icing on the cake and not my goal. I just happen to find those habits easier to do.

You’ll also notice that other than 10K steps, you won’t find more than one consecutive miss. When I miss (whether the miss is intentional or not – and sometimes it is intentional), I try very hard not to have another consecutive miss afterwards. And if I ever miss twice on the row, I’m on high alert.

So, a minimum of 80% consistency over a period of 30 days – with no more than two consecutive misses. That’s how I define consistency. It helps me get impressive results and live a balanced life.

I encourage you to spend some time thinking about what consistency means for you. Define it in a way that leaves no ambiguity. Because, when you get clear on stuff like this – things really start to click.

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Daily Habits: February 2023 (Building a green wave and adding a new habit!)

March 3, 2023

My goals for February were the same as January – all habits over 80%. This is because, whilst I am confident I have these habits locked down, I want to see three consecutive months to validate that.

Drum roll….

Green across the board – that’ll do. 😉

A few things I’m particularly proud of:

I hit my protein and water goals easily – despite increasing them significantly for February
My average sleep was strong at 7:21 (second strongest month ever)
In many cases, the misses were intentional and planned (vs. struggling to hit them in the past). Remember, I’m not trying to be perfect. The goal is not necessarily to hit 100% consistency (with the exception of alcohol)

Now, onto that new habit.

I asked Jamie (my Personal Trainer) if he had any recommendations for new habits to add in the future. He gave me some really solid advice – don’t add any. Instead, continue to nail the foundational habits I have. Avoid the risk of overwhelming myself by adding in new, non foundational habits.

As any good client will tend to do, I’m going to ignore his advice and add another habit for March. 😂

I don’t do this lightly (because often when I do, I pay for it). However, having a steps goal has been on my mind for a while. You might have noticed that I’ve never had a goal for activity. This is because Jamie programmes all of my workouts, and I’ve never had a problem with following his plan. I’m active 5-6 times a week – it’s just who I am. And in any case, it’s kinda hard to set a goal for it because the programming changes to reflect where I am, at any one point.

That said, I’ve slowly become convinced that I need to be consistent with walking. I was going to write an article about why walking is so good, but Thomas Delauer just completely nails it with this short video:

Being consistent with a 10K steps habit will be complementary to the other activity I’m doing and will uniquely help me get leaner. I also like the fact that it will force me to get out in fresh air more often and better use my mornings.

10K steps is not going to be a walk in the park (I literally did not see that pun coming – sorry!). It’s going to take quite a bit of intentional effort to hit.

In true habit building style, I will not set myself a consistency goal to start with. I will just track my baseline in March, and build towards 80% over time. This approach has worked for every other habit I’ve built. That said, I’m really hoping my baseline will be over 50%, but let’s see.

March, here we come!

P.S. I go on holiday on March 29th, so it’s going to be critical to build an early lead to counter balance this.

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Defining self discipline (and why you have to build it)

February 22, 2023

As I’ve built a more disciplined life, I’ve become clearer on what self discipline means to me.

Ultimately, it comes down to this:

Self Discipline = Consistently doing things you don’t want to do

Now, on the surface that sounds pretty miserable right? One could make the argument – what sort of a life is that to live? But, let me tell you, without any doubt at all, it’s EXACTLY the right type of life to live.

The things you don’t want to do aren’t usually big or horrible – they’re minor points of discomfort. In most cases, it’s not even discomfort – it’s more that there is an easier and more comfortable alternative. And once you get into it, it’s always less uncomfortable than you imagine.

Let me give you some examples:

I never feel like drinking a litre of water within the first thirty minutes of waking up. It’s not overly uncomfortable to do. There’s just an element of discomfort, and therefore friction associated with it. Instead, its very tempting to wake up, drink a black coffee and get started with the day. But, almost every morning, drinking a litre of water within thirty minutes of waking up is exactly what I do. Because I know if I don’t, I will struggle to hit my goal of three litres per day.

I rarely feel like working out. I’d guess I feel like it about 20% of the time. It’s always tempting to put it off and do something easier and warmer instead. But, if I plan to workout, I WILL workout. I push the temptation to the back of my mind, put on my trainers, and get out for a walk (first part of my warm up). I then get into the garage gym and push through the rest of the warm up (yeah – still not feeling like working out). Then I get into the session. By now, I’m either happy to be doing it, or at least OK with it. I continue to push through that early friction and discomfort because I know I have to do it. If I want to be healthy, fit and happy in my own skin, I have to do it.

Everyday, I eat within an eight hour window – usually between 1PM and 9PM. I start to become aware of some hunger around mid morning (I’m feeling it now as I write this at 11:30). I feel this because I’m either genuinely hungry, or because eating would be nice (I kinda like food). Almost every day, I observe that feeling of hunger and discomfort, and I choose not to eat. I do this because I know sticking to my fasting period helps me eat less and make better food choices. This is foundational to my health and fitness goals.

Like I said, these examples are not big or horrible things. Simply, they are things I would rather not be doing – and there is a much easier and comfortable alternative.

My day is filled with these moments. Whilst I don’t choose the right option all of the time, I do choose it most of the time (80% is good enough, remember?).

OK, let’s go back to the argument of consistently doing things you don’t want to do – what sort of a life is that to live? Exactly the right one. These moments aren’t a huge hardship. They’re about making conscious decisions to delay short term gratification, for a much, much bigger prize.

What is that much, much bigger prize?

It’s being at a body weight I am comfortable with. It’s being comfortable taking my top off. It’s having energy. It’s being in a good and optimistic mood. It’s being in good health – meaning a good lifespan and healthspan [1]. It’s having pride and confidence, that comes from making good decisions and living life the right way.

Imagine the inverse – leading an undisciplined life. One where you take the easier and more comfortable option more often than not. That leads to being overweight. Being embarrassed to take my top off. Being tired a lot of the time. Feeling down. Having health problems. Struggling with confidence. Fuck that. It makes all of those moments of discomfort worth it.

I’ll say one other thing, that I only realised in writing this article. The sense of pride and confidence you feel from consistently doing things you don’t want to do, is one hell of a feeling. It helps to soften and neutralise those moments of discomfort.

It’s clear to me that the bigger prize, combined with how you feel about yourself on a day to day basis when you consistently do things you don’t want to do – that’s exactly the right life to live. There’s no question about it.

Notes:

[1] Lifespan is the total number of years we live, whereas healthspan is how many of those years we remain healthy and free from disease.

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Do this one thing, and it will completely change your health and life

February 9, 2023

Have you ever found yourself eating a meal, only afterwards to feel unexpectedly bloated and to have a huge slump in energy?

Have you struggled to lose weight, even though you’re trying really hard to eat more healthily?

Have you tried a bunch of different diets, but not found the right results with any of them?

Me too.

The title of this article wasn’t clickbait. I really do have ‘one thing’ you can try that has the potential to completely change all of this. But first, a story and some context.

I’m heading to a cafe for an English breakfast. Now, I love an English breakfast, but this isn’t a situation to take lightly. Immediately my brain clicks into gear.

This breakfast can go a few different ways. On one end of the spectrum, this will become a 1,000 calorie, high carbohydrate, high sugar, highly processed breakfast. On the other end of the spectrum it could be a 500 calorie, low carb, low sugar breakfast. And of course, there are a few options in the middle.

The 1,000 calorie, high carbohydrate, high sugar (37 grams), highly processed breakfast

The 500 calorie, low carb, low sugar (6 grams) breakfast

This needs to be a conscious choice. It needs to take into account what else I plan to eat, and how active I am that day. Because the moment I’ve finished that breakfast, I can’t take it back. It sets me off on a certain path.

If I choose to eat the breakfast that is typically laid out on the menu (the 1,000 calorie one), I better be skipping lunch, not snacking and thinking carefully about how my evening meal will close the day right. And I better be goddamn active to offset the fact that I will likely need to eat more to get enough protein. If I eat the more bespoke breakfast (the 500 calorie one), I will have much more flexibility for the rest of the day.

As you can see, I’m incredibly conscious and intentional about every single piece of food I put in my mouth. I’m aware of the calories, protein, carbohydrate, fat and sugar content of it. And I understand how the decision to eat that piece of food fits in with the rest of my day.

I have to be. I’m determined to be strong, lean and healthy. My goal is to eat approx. 2,000 calories each day. I want the macronutrient breakdown to be approx. 40% protein, 40% fat and 20% carbohydrates. And I want to keep my sugar intake around 30 grams. So, I can’t just fuck around and eat unconsciously. I have to have an extreme level of self awareness of what is happening if I’m to build towards those numbers each day.

Sometimes I WILL decide to eat that 1,000 calorie breakfast. Life is about a balance, and I know how to let loose from time to time. In fact, I have more flexibility in my life today, than I did when I was less disciplined. Discipline really does equal freedom. But, if I do eat the 1,000 calorie breakfast, the rest of my day will need to be shaped to reflect that very conscious decision. Most of the time, I won’t though – because I prefer more flexibility throughout the day.

Ok, let’s back up a bit. This is feeling a bit obsessive huh?

I get it. I get that I’m super over the top with this stuff. I have calorie, protein, carbohydrate, fat and sugar goals for the day. I track every single piece of food I eat. My self awareness and level of consciousness for how I eat is kinda off the charts. It probably even has some hints of an unhealthy relationship with food. I’m absolutely not suggesting you have to, or need to be like me with this stuff.

BUT, I think it’s a huge mistake to eat on auto-pilot each day. It’s a huge mistake to have virtually zero understanding of how much you’re eating and the makeup of the foods you’re eating. Because this leads to over-eating. It leads to eating too many carbohydrates, too little protein and too many saturated fats. It leads to consuming too many processed foods and too much sugar – EVERY DAY. And here’s the kicker. You don’t even KNOW you’re doing it. In fact, sometimes you think you’re doing the opposite. I honestly believe that 99% of people fall into this category.

Why is all of this even important? Because living your life in this way often leads to being overweight and metabolically unhealthy. It leads to unnecessary swings in mood and energy levels. It’s a one way track to feeling like crap and health problems down the road.

OK, let’s now get to that ‘one thing’.

If I could suggest one thing someone could do to start the journey of becoming a more conscious eater? Use Myfitnesspal to track everything they eat for seven days. There’s no need to do anything differently or adjust your behaviour – just record everything. Myfitnesspal makes this pretty easy. You can scan items and it also has a huge database of common foods – included branded foods. It’s also free.

I will almost guarantee that you will find out that you’re eating too much (too many calories). I will almost guarantee you’re eating too many carbohydrates. I will almost guarantee you are eating too many saturated fats and processed foods. And I will almost guarantee you are eating too much sugar. Hey, perhaps you will even find out you’re under-eating? That’s my point. What you thought you knew, will probably become completely unravelled.

It will be an education and a half. All of a sudden you will realise how wrong you were about certain foods. You know that salad you ate with dressing that you thought was a light option? Wrong. The pasta dish you thought was pretty healthy? Wrong. That glass of orange juice you were led to believe was healthy? Super wrong.

It will be the start of a journey that leads you to becoming a more conscious and healthier eater. One that helps you make more informed and better choices about food. And one that will completely change your health and life for the better (see, it wasn’t clickbait!).

How far you go down that journey? Well, that’s up to you. But, it’s a journey that’s absolutely worth starting.

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