Daniel Clough

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It’s a beautiful thing, when you start to like the person you’re becoming

If you know me or my writing, you’ll know that I struggle with confidence. It’s been like this for as long as I can remember.

There’s often some type of self doubt, anxiety, or imposter syndrome hovering around me. Even when I’m at my highest, I feel a black cloud in the background. I can be in the zone and feeling super capable one minute – only to feel like a complete fraud the next.

So far, I’ve relied on two strategies to keep this somewhat under control:

1. I’m an ambitious person. So, I will push myself, and then momentum tends to shove me forward. This has helped me gravitate to senior roles in companies. I’ve founded my own company. I write in public. I’m starting a podcast. I would like to launch a habit coaching course in the future. My ambition gets me started, and then I simply have no choice but to push the self doubt down and power through. It can be exhausting. But it’s better than the alternative – to be paralysed by self doubt.

2. I’ve invested a lot of time trying to find things that can help me be more confident. Reading books. Listening to podcasts. Taking courses. Gratitude. Meditation. Hypnotherapy. Coaching. Journalling. Surrounding myself with people who inspire me and lift me up. Some of it has been helpful. But, if I’m honest, even what’s been helpful, only eased things temporarily.

I was surprised by some internal dialogue the other day:

‘It’s a beautiful thing, when you start to like the person you’re becoming’

This feeling has been growing in me recently. I’m really starting to like the person I’m becoming. I’m becoming comfortable in my own skin. I’ve never genuinely felt like this before.

And then it hit me. More often than not, I’m confident and optimistic. In fact, so far this year, I can’t even remember a particular episode of self doubt or imposter syndrome. There have only been a few periods of low mood. But, I can track that to a lack of sleep, which I was able to correct.

So, how on earth did this sneak up on me?

And then it hit me again, this was the start of it. Eighteen months ago, I started a journey of building a set of rock solid habits in my life. This slowly grew into eight health habits I’m now very consistent with. Building these habits has had a gigantic impact on how I feel about myself.

Giving up alcohol was massive (I’m nearly two years sober). I struggled with what to do about alcohol for a long time. Finally deciding I will never have a drink again has been so impactful for my mental and physical health. It’s been truly liberating.

Giving up alcohol also highlighted how important sleep is for me. I first realised this when one morning I woke up feeling hungover and anxious. I noticed I had a few nights of very poor sleep. I forced a huge sleep that night and felt so much better the next day. My anxiety was gone. Huh? Maybe it wasn’t so much the alcohol that was causing my anxiety – but the impact it had on my sleep [1]. Improving my sleep has been a complete game changer for me. As it improved, I noticed everything else got easier.

And then you have all the other habits, Prioritising protein. Fasting. Limiting caffeine. Drinking plenty of water. Walking a lot. All of the eight health habits I’ve built, play a part in how much better I feel about myself now. And, cumulatively, they pack a huge punch.

But, it goes beyond just packing a big punch. It’s the person I’ve now become by holding myself accountable to these eight habits. I’ve become a man of discipline. Someone who is taking personal responsibility for how I want to live my life. Someone who consistently delays short term gratification, because I value the bigger picture more. Someone who does what they say. I’m not trying to be someone like this (like I did for most of my adult life) – I’m this person FOR REAL. I’m really doing it. This has made me feel very differently about myself. I’m proud of creating a much better version of myself.

Whilst the habits started it all off, I couldn’t have predicted what would happen next. As I became a more disciplined person, and as my confidence grew, a switch flipped in me. It happened about six months ago. I started to make some other changes in my life that I wasn’t able to make before.

I became more dedicated with my training. I started to invest in longer warm ups. I became more consistent with my cool downs. I was more focused in each training session. I added an extra few hours of zone two training into my program. It’s now incredibly easy for me to be active every day and to total about 10+ hours a week of training.

I started to take my nutrition far more seriously. I began tracking and controlling my food intake very consistently. I took my clean vs. unclean food ratio from something like 50/50, to now easily 80 / 20. I started to eat more protein. I’m now easily averaging 180 grams per day – compared to finding it very hard to hit 120 grams per day.

I struggled for many years trying to build this type of discipline in my training and nutrition. Yet, in 6 months I was able to break through it all. I can’t emphasise how much of a transformation it’s been for me to take my training and nutrition to a whole new level. I’m in the greatest shape and health of my life. Feeling comfortable in your own skin (literally) is an incredible feeling. Not to mention, pushing yourself hard has a very direct and positive impact on your mood.

The changes I’ve seen in myself aren’t contained to health and fitness. It started there, but then expanded into other areas of my life. I’m more secure and confident in my relationships. I’m more confident and composed at work. I’m starting to spin up some personal projects (podcast coming soon!). I’m genuinely much more optimistic about the future.

And you know what? It still feels like I’m so early on this journey. It feels like the handbrake only really came off six months ago. The best is yet to come.

This all sounds peachy right? Look. I’m not naive. I know life is going to throw some curveballs my way in the future. And it’s not like all of this was a particularly conscious plan. I actually didn’t see it coming. But, goddamn does it feel good to have a stronger foundation of confidence and optimism. So for now, I’m just going to be grateful for the switch that was flipped and hold onto it.

So, what’s the lesson in all of this?

If you’re struggling with confidence, self doubt, anxiety, or imposter syndrome – I would suggest avoiding the hacks. The hacks can be quite useful as optimisation, but only after you’ve solved the root cause. In themselves, they aren’t going to get to the root cause.

My brother Joseph helps people with confidence and imposter syndrome. In his course, he uses the Why technique [2] to help people get to the root cause of their anxiety. And every single time, without fail, it comes back down to this:

I’m not good enough.

So, go back to basics and work on yourself. Be relentless about it. Make it your number one priority. Build a set of self care and health habits that stick. Give yourself the time to do it properly (it took me 18 months). Build yourself into someone you like and are proud of. Start to feel good enough. And then watch what happens from there.

Notes:

[1] In episode #31 of the Huberman Lab Podcast, Dr. Matthew Walker and Andrew Huberman discuss how alcohol fragments sleep, reduces REM sleep, and can lead to emotional sensitivity. Link to specific segment here.

[2] An explanation of the ‘five whys’ technique here. By the way, it doesn’t have to be contained to five whys, and may often take more to get to the root cause of a problem.

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Daily Habits: June 2023 (are the cracks starting to appear?)

I absolutely smashed May – 80%+ across the board for all eight habits. The goal for June was exactly the same, as it will be for the rest of the year.

You may have already guessed from the title of this post, I might have got into trouble in June.

Let’s see how I did:

(click here for full size image)

OK, I have some explaining to do. Let’s talk positives to start with:

  • I rarely achieve 100% consistency on anything outside of no alcohol. So, it felt good to drink three litres of water every day in May. I find this very easy now.
  • I only missed eating 150+ grams of protein one day, hitting 97% consistency. At the end of last year, I found 120+ grams a day hard. Only eight months later, I have an average of 175 grams. Something very unusual has to happen for me to miss 150 grams. That’s a massive improvement.
  • Fasting, supplements and caffeine were all safely above 80%.

Now for the slip ups.

  • Sleep and 10K steps took a bit of a beating (67% and 73% respectively).
  • Some consecutive misses started to creep in

And that’s because of this:

Yep, we got a puppy (Toby). And well, he’s being a puppy!

We knew it would be hard work, but I under-estimated the impact it would have on my sleep and steps. He likes to wake very early, and doesn’t like to be left alone for too long!

On one hand, it’s a tough pill to swallow. I’ve worked so hard to build eight habits to 80% consistency. I hate to see some yellows creep in. But, if I take a step back, I realise that these habits are too strong to unravel because of a temporary life event. Life is not perfect. I can’t expect a stable and predictable environment every month.

What’s important is that I take the hit, and now focus on how to temporarily mitigate the changes in my situation. I need to hold my head above water as much as I can. And soon enough, Toby won’t rise so early and will be able to be left for longer (this is already happening).

So, what can I do?

I’m going to focus on two things:

  1. Go to sleep earlier. If I’m going to be woken up at 5AM, I have to mitigate that by going to bed earlier. I’ve resisted this so far as I like to have a full evening to myself. But, that’s just not viable right now, and sleep is absolutely a higher priority. It’s the base of the pyramid for me. At least for a while, I need to be hitting the sack around 9PM.
  2. Time block when I’m going to get my steps in. I tend to have a rough plan and then be opportunistic and flexible throughout the day. That usually works. But, with less flexibility, it falls apart. I need to block time out in the day, and then be more disciplined about walking at that time.

Bring on July. I have a real challenge in front of me. But, the goal remains the same – all eight habits at 80%+.

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How to build unbreakable consistency

I spent at least fifteen years chasing specific goals and perfection. I knew in my heart that it was wrong and making me miserable, but I still kept doing it.

I bounced between perfection and falling off the wagon hard – which is almost the definition of inconsistency. And because consistency is EVERYTHING for getting results, I struggled to change.

Over the last eighteen months, I’ve begun to think about things completely differently. I built a whole new mentality and mindset. This has helped me transform myself and achieve more than I could possibly imagine.

As I reflect on how I’ve changed, there are five things that stand out as making the difference:

1. Direction over goals

Nowadays, I rarely have any specific goals. Instead, I’m very clear in the direction I would like to go, and then I put all my focus into taking small steps towards that right direction.

For example, below are a few things I have written down for improving my health, which I often reflect on:

  • I put my health first – above everything else.
  • I’m metabolically healthy and I feel great.
  • I’m living my life in a way that will give me a full, healthy and happy last decade of my life.
  • I’m proud of how I look. I’m lean and comfortable in my own skin – and with taking my top off.
  • I’m fit, active and able to do lots of things – train, play sports, take on challenges or adventures.
  • I can move well – without aches and pains.

I could easily attach goals and tangible metrics to all of those – but I don’t. I prefer to build habits and take actions that move me closer to the above feeling more true when I say them. I focus on what I will do today, and how I spend my weeks – not on where I want to exactly end up.

2. 80% is good enough

I’ve learned that 80% consistency is where you find the sweet spot for getting most of the rewards – but with the flexibility to have some fun and stay sane too. Everything above 80% starts to become diminishing returns, especially when you factor in the marginal extra gains, and the risk of falling off the wagon.

It took me so long to admit this. Since I have, I’ve been able to achieve so much more, and be so much happier.

3. Averages are what count

In the past, when I would slip up on something, I beat myself up. If I skipped a training session, I would consider myself lazy. If I ate a piece of cake, I felt undisciplined and fat. The list goes on.

It comes back to 80% is good enough. But, importantly, it’s 80% over a period of time. Most slip ups are just blips in the grand scheme of things. You can still have a great day, if you make a mistake in the morning. You can still have a great week, if you have a bad day. And you can still have a good month, if you have a bad week.

For example, I track how many calories I eat every day. But, what I really care about is my weekly average. That means it’s fine if my calories sit too high one day. I have plenty of opportunity to bring the average down over the next couple of days. My weight and body fat over the long run, won’t be decided by one day’s worth of calories.

The same goes for habits. Below is how I’m doing for June:

I’ve had seven misses so far. None of them bothered me. I have peace of mind that I’m on track to be at 80%+ consistency for all my health habits this month. And, THAT’S what counts. That’s what I need to move forward.

4. Consecutive misses are fatal

A single mistake or miss is easy to recover from. It’s not enough to disrupt momentum. However, two can very easily become the start of a new pattern. And three? You’re already on a new pattern. Notice that I have no consecutive misses in June so far.

If you do make a mistake or have a miss, you must try and put things right the following day. If you have two consecutive misses, you cannot afford another.

5. Be patient

A lack of patience can sometimes be the biggest risk to consistency. It can be easy to feel that things are going too slow, or that you should change your approach.

Various things can cause a lack of patience. You might find yourself comparing yourself to someone else. You might have an unrealistic view of how long a change will take. Or, maybe you’re tired, and you’re finding yourself questioning everything.

When you’re starting to feel impatient, it’s useful to take a big step back. Look at everything from a distance and try and see the situation for what it really is. More often than not, you’ll realise you were over-reacting.

A few weeks ago, I started to become impatient about how my weight and body fat were dropping too slow, if at all. Only when I stepped back could I see three things were clouding my judgement. I had got caught up comparing myself to someone else. I was also reminded, that I had only become more disciplined with how I was eating for a few months. And, lastly, I was still very early in the journey. In fact, I was doing perfectly fine.

Listen, I’m far from perfect. I still find myself straying from the above five things. But, importantly, I now have self awareness when it’s starting to happen. That means I can self correct pretty quickly. If you can get yourself into this position, you’ll find yourself being able to build a level of consistency you never imagined.

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Daily Habits: May 2023 (I’m BACK)

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.

  1. 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).
  2. 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.
  3. 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?

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?)

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:

(click here for full size image)

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!)

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:

(Click here for full size image)

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

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

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

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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