Habits

My goals for January were straight forward – all habits over 80%. This is the first step towards a larger goal of all habits over 80% for three consecutive months. I want to prove to myself that I have these seven habits completely nailed before I move onto anything new.

Here’s how I got on:

Now, that’s what you call knocking it out of the park!

I couldn’t be more pleased. I’m confident I now have all of these habits in the bank. It feels amazing to say that because less than a year ago, I only had two in the green (and one of them was by the skin of my teeth!). And now, through being focused and patient, I have seven habits that feel easy to do. I can’t explain how much better I feel, and how much healthier I am for building these habits. I feel like a different person, on a different level!

So, February. Whilst I’m going to stick to my word and not try anything new, I am going to make a couple of tweaks. I’m going to increase my water goal from 2 litres to 3 litres, and my protein goal from 120 grams to 150 grams. I suspect my hit rate is close to 80% for these higher targets anyway. That said, it’s going to shift things from very comfortable, to having to think a bit harder to ensure I hit those new higher targets. These feel like appropriate tweaks to make, whilst still feel that building three consecutive months of 80%+ is realistic.

Onto to building that second part of the green wave!

P.S. I now have a handful of people who have got in touch and are starting to track their own habits visually. It’s pretty awesome to be inspiring others to build discipline and good habits in their life. I have a few ideas for how to teach this properly to anyone who wants to give it a go. Watch this space. But, in the mean time, if you want any help, just get in touch!

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If I could only pick one habit that’s non-negotiable, it’s getting enough sleep. It’s EVERYTHING.

When sleep suffers, everything else starts to unravel.

I get anxious.

Other habits slip.

I get grumpier.

I’m less optimistic.

I don’t think as clearly.

My energy levels are lower.

I’m less productive.

I start to make poor decisions.

My work is lower quality.

I use my phone more.

The list goes on.

It took giving up alcohol for this to really click with me. I used to think that alcohol was the linchpin behaviour that derailed everything else. But, when I gave it up, I realised poor sleep was just as bad. And then I realised that a big part of alcohol causing problems was that it wrecked the quality of my sleep.

I’ve found getting enough sleep is even more important as you get older. I felt I could push the limits with it in my twenties. It got harder in my thirties. No chance in my forties.

Here is my sleep consistency for the last year, along with my average sleep:

Month	Sleep consistency (6.5 hours)	Average sleep
Feb 2022	50%	6:23
Mar 2022	74%	6:45
Apr 2022	77%	6:45
May 2022	81%	6:58
Jun 2022	73%	6:56
Jul 2022	68%	6:46
Aug 2022	52%	6:26
Sep 2022	83%	7:12
Oct 2022	81%	7:09
Nov 2022	80%	7:15
Dec 2022	87%	7:13

It took a while for me to figure out how to be 80%+ consistent, and to get my average over seven hours. But, I’ve finally managed it. It makes such a difference to how well everything else in life goes.

Here are a few quick tips:

1. Track your sleep (I use whoop).
2. Consciously plan your sleep and wake up times (it’s basic math).
3. When doing 2/, account for being awake for about an hour each night (interruptions, tossing and turning etc.).
4. When you do get a bad night’s sleep (hey, it happens), try and nap later in the day to offset it.

It’s not rocket science. It takes some effort to get everything dialled in. But, when you do, you’ll never look back.

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Last month, I said November was my strongest month since I’ve been tracking my daily habits. Whilst statistically true, December is the month I’m most proud of.

I knew December was going to be a minefield. One of the reasons I’ve been able to build consistency with my habits this year is because I’ve created an environment that gives me the best chance of success. The holiday season means I lose a lot of that – travel, more socialising, easier access to food etc..

Because of this, I decided to lower my expectations in December. I’d still push for 80% consistency for all habits, but wouldn’t beat myself up if I fell short – which I fully expected to.

Here’s how December came out:

I consider that a smash. I kept five of my habits over the 80% threshold. That’s astonishing to me. Remember, it was only eleven months ago that I struggled to keep two habits above the 80% threshold. Now I can easily keep FIVE above the threshold – and in one of the most challenging months of the year.

Protein and intermittent fasting took a big hit. I knew this would happen. They are my two most challenging habits and still very reliant on a predictable environment and routine. I need a few more months to strengthen these.

That brings me to my goals for January 2023. That’s a straightforward one. I want three months back to back of green – all habits over 80%. I need to know for sure I have these seven health habits ‘in the bank’ before I focus on anything new.

Here’s to starting January 2023 strong!

P.S. If you want to create a better set of health habits in 2023, check out Five things I’ve found to be super helpful in establishing new habits. And feel free to get in touch – I’d love to help.

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November was my strongest month in the ten months I’ve been tracking my daily habits.

My goal for November was the same as October, (and September) – six habits (alcohol, sleep, fasting, caffeine, water and supplements) over 80%.

Here’s how I did:

November, 2022 (Close up)

No Alcohol – 100%
Sleep – 6.5HR – 80%
Protein – 120 grams – 73%
Intermittent Fasting (8/16) – 73%
Caffeine (2 before Midday) – 97%
Water – 2 Litres – 93%
Supplements – 93%

(Average sleep – 7 hours, 15 mins)

I’m especially pleased about November for a few reasons:

• My sleep has been at 80%+ consistency and above an average of 7 hours for three straight months now. It’s become noticeably easier to get over six and a half hours, which is a sign that the habit is starting to stick. My average sleep also hit an all time high of 7 hours, 15 mins in November. 👊

• The switch from Paleo to 120 grams of protein has been a game changer. It’s been so liberating to let go of trying to hold myself accountable to a very strict goal of eating paleo. It turns out eating 120 grams of protein is a VERY good simple metric to focus on. Firstly, because eating enough protein is a big factor in recovering from workouts and building muscle (and I wasn’t eating enough before). But secondly, it’s a behaviour that encourages many other good behaviours. It’s forcing me to better plan out my meals. It’s encouraging me to make better food choices (high protein meals tend to be cleaner – big salads, lots of meat, nuts and dairy). It’s also helped bring my total calories down. What surprised me the most was how consistently I achieved 120 grams of protein – I hit 73%! You’ll also notice that most of the time I missed was on weekends. So, there’s an obvious way to close the gap and get it over 80%.

• Intermittent fasting fell a little below 80%, which was a bit of a shame. But, there’s a silver lining. Most of the times I missed were conscious decisions by me. I knew I was going to slip below 80% and made peace with that. At least half of the misses were drinking the odd cup of tea whilst watching my daughter play football (I count that as a miss, because technically the milk breaks the fast). Most of the benefit of intermittent fasting is that it helps you to eat fewer total calories, therefore these slip ups don’t make much difference. That said, making excuses like this can become a slippery slope. So, I’m going to tighten it up and keep things at 80% going forward.

• My caffeine, water and supplement habits are fully established habits now. I hardly have to think about them and can’t imagine a scenario where they drop below 80% again.

So, overall an INCREDIBLE month. Yes, I have a little bit of tightening up to do. But, I’m very close to having seven really powerful health habits at 80% consistency. This feels like a gigantic inflection point for me. I feel and look better for it. Things are really clicking.

That brings me to December. This is always a tricky month, because of the holiday period. I was tempted to take the same approach as I did for August (track my habits, but let go of any expectations), but that feels a bit of a cop out given where I am. So, I’m going to push for 80% for all habits and see where I end up. I’ll lower my expectations a bit. If I fall a bit short, I’m not going to beat myself up. And whatever the result, from there, I’ll be looking for a full wave of green in Jan, Feb and March 2023. If I achieve that, I’ll start to look at some other habits.

Bring on December!

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October was everything I could have hoped for. My goal was to have six habits (alcohol, sleep, fasting, caffeine, water and supplements) over 80% for the second month running. Mission accomplished – and fairly easily:

My goal for November remains the same as October – six habits (alcohol, sleep, fasting, caffeine, water and supplements) over 80%. That will give me three months in the green, and the confidence that these habits are nailed. It feels great to be within touching distance of this.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my diet too. Last month I decided to drop paleo as a focus to track. I went for a fuzzier ‘eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar’, with a few exceptions. I quickly realised this wasn’t useful to hold myself accountable to. It’s too broad and too ambitious.

Diet is a difficult one for me. I find it tricky to describe how I want to eat in one metric. And actually, in contrast to the other habits, it’s more important to be consistent as an average over a week or month, rather than each day. But, I NEED a daily metric to help me build the right habits and behaviours.

Recently, I’ve also been thinking about how much protein I want to consume daily. I’ve landed on somewhere between 0.7g and 1g per pound of bodyweight. For me, that’s between 120 and 175 grams of protein. The days I hit at least 120 grams of protein, my diet looks good. But, when I am well below that, my diet looks off.

Most people won’t eat over 100 grams of protein without being intentional about it. It’s actually quite hard to do. It requires you to get a decent headstart on the day. If you’re low on protein by late afternoon, forget about eating over 100 grams.

And then it clicked. Having a goal around how many grams of protein I want to consume is a very nice and simple metric for me. It’s a great focus in itself (helps build muscle, recover more quickly etc.). But, importantly, it helps to drive a lot of other good decisions – being more intentional, food choices, starting the day off right etc.

Yes, I want to ultimately be someone who eats ‘meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar’. Yes, I ultimately want to eat a diet that’s high in protein, low in carbs and high in fat. Yes, I want to mostly cut out processed foods. But, it’s a step too far for now. I need to bring it back to a smaller step that will help me build the right set of behaviours that I can then build on top of to get to where I want to be eventually.

So, my diet goal for November is to eat 120 grams of protein per day at 80% consistency. I know if I can build consistency for this, everything around it will get easier. 120 grams at 80% consistency is going to be stretching for sure – but doable if I focus on it enough.

Let’s do this.

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Now and again, I speak to someone who is desperate to make changes to improve their health.

Usually, the motivation behind this is a feeling of hitting a low point. We’ve all been there. That dreaded feeling of having enough of living a certain way. You’re overweight. You’re not happy with what you see looking back at you in the mirror. You feel sluggish and tired most of the time. You seem to pick up colds and viruses too easily (and have a hard time shaking them off). You start to worry about running into health problems later in life.

Whilst the moment of feeling at a low point isn’t nice – it’s very powerful. If I could bottle it, I’d be rich beyond my wildest dreams. It’s a rare inflection point that can drive you to take action to make big improvements in your life. But, it’s what comes after that feeling that determines whether any of that action leads to permanent change.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve hit that low moment for my health. I’ve also lost count of the number of times I’ve then sprung into action, but failed to make permanent changes.

In the last eight months, I’ve found a way of making health changes that stick. Just look at the difference below:

This has caused me to think about what advice I could give to someone that is at that low point with their health, and wants to make changes.

I now keep my advice to only two things. The first is around the approach. The second is more practical.

Approach:

You have to resist the temptation to try and make too many changes – or too big a change. This will almost definitely lead to failure. It’s very hard to resist this temptation. When you’re at a low point, you’re desperate to turn things around. That usually leads to wanting to make big changes, fast. But, what you need to do is the opposite – make small changes, over time.

Rather than build the discipline of doing new things, you actually have to work harder on the discipline of letting mostly everything stay the same – whilst focusing on one or two small changes. The changes I’ve made over the last eight months were made systematically – one at a time. But, combined, they add up to a whopper level of change.

Almost every month, I focused on only one or two things. I had to accept, that whilst the rest would still be measured, they would not be a focus. I had zero expectation of seeing a result. And you know what most people don’t realise? The things you chose not to focus on – actually end up improving anyway. This is because the momentum of creating positive change is infectious.

The bottom line – small changes, over time, add up to very meaningful and permanent changes over the long term. I know this is mentioned in almost every piece of self help type advice – but rarely do people actually do it that way.

Practical:

When it comes to health, I now always give the same advice. If you’re at a low point, the chances are you’re sedentary and eating badly. So, I would suggest making one small change to each of those.

And I really do mean small. It’s not going to feel enough – and that’s the litmus test. If it doesn’t feel enough, that’s probably about right. It needs to be easy enough for you to have a high probability of being consistent with it. Being consistent with the change is actually more important than the change itself. Remember, your goal at this point is to build consistency and momentum.

When it comes to being sedentary, I almost always advise to start walking. Why? It’s free. You can do it anywhere. Almost anyone can do it. The risk of injury is super low. And it gets you outside. It’s the perfect choice to build consistency and momentum. Of course, it won’t feel enough. You’d probably rather commit to a more ambitious gym or running schedule. Stop yourself in your tracks. Remember, you’re looking for easy and small. You’re looking for consistency and momentum.

Even with something as simple as walking, you’ll likely still need to temper your ambitions. It’s probably not a good idea to set a goal of walking for an hour every day. A better goal might be to walk three times a week for 30 mins. Or, twice a week for an hour. If you end up doing a bit more – that’s icing on the cake. Remember, your modest goal is more than you’re doing now. And importantly, it’s something you have a high chance of being consistent with. There will be plenty of time in the future to build on top of this and be more ambitious.

When it comes to diet, you want to find a change that will be somewhat challenging – but also small enough that you can be confident you can be consistent with it. It’s probably not a good idea to decide to do 30 days of paleo. That’s a gigantic lifestyle change that would be very hard to achieve. Even eliminating desserts might be too big a goal – particularly if you’re already eating them most nights. A better goal might be to eliminate a certain food you know isn’t good for you (i.e I am no longer going to eat crisps). Or perhaps reducing something you do regularly (i.e reducing desserts to only weekends).

The hardest thing about all of this is deciding on goals that are small, and achievable. Every fibre of your body will want to do the opposite. But you know deep down (in your heart, and from experience) this will not lead to success.

Once you’ve identified the small changes you will make to being active and your diet – commit to making them for 30 days. If at the end of 30 days you’ve been 80%+ consistent, pick another one or two small changes to make. You might want to be more ambitious with the changes you’ve just made (i.e go from desserts only at the weekend, to now once per week). Or, you might want to try something entirely new. And then commit to another 30 days. Your goal now becomes to maintain the two you have at 80%+, as well as establishing the new ones.

If you were not consistent enough, or lacked the confidence in maintaining the consistency – go for another 30 days. Then, when you’re successful, you have permission to tackle new changes.

I’ll leave you with one final suggestion that will greatly increase your chance of success. Create a physical, visual chart to track your progress. This is literally how I built 80%+ consistency with six health health habits, over eight months.

If you need any help, or have any questions, hit me up!

September’s results are in.

It’s officially a SMASH – far better than I could have hoped for!

If you remember, August was a write off. I was on holiday for a big part of it, so I let go of any expectations. I guess I had something to prove to myself in September. Was I going to allow a dip in August to derail me? Or, was I going to come back strong?

Before we jump in, here’s a quick recap of my goals for September:

• Get the habits which I previously considered in the bank (i.e easy to keep at over 80%) back to over 80% – no alcohol, intermittent fasting, caffeine, water and supplements.

• See where sleep and paleo fall and then plan my goals for October.

Here’s how September looked:

WHAT A MONTH. Every single habit is over 80% – including sleep which wasn’t even part of my goals! I even hit an average sleep of 7.12 hours – a record for me. September was by far my best month since I started tracking my habits. I reckon even Goggins would be proud!

I don’t really have much to say about each habit – other than I just put my head down and focused on doing really well in September. And it paid off.

I’m AGAIN reminded about the power of physically and visually tracking my daily habits. Almost every day it helped nudge my self awareness and behaviours into a better place. It’s life changing.

So, what will I focus on for October?

Simple. I want the same.

I need to prove to myself September wasn’t a lucky month. Ideally I need three months of being in the green for those six habits (alcohol, sleep, fasting, caffeine, water and supplements) to feel like I have them NAILED. At the rate I’m going, there’s a decent chance I can achieve that this year. Only after I’ve achieved this, will I consider adding in anything new.

Let’s address the elephant in the room – my diet. I’m desperate to tackle it. Recently, I’ve been reflecting on how I want to eat. I’m starting to change my view a bit. Paleo is too strict for me to be consistent or happy with. I’m realising that having it as a goal is actually causing some unhealthy eating habits. I’ll write about this soon.

What I’m likely to do is follow CrossFit’s nutrition recommendation:

Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar.

I definitely want to avoid ultra-processed foods. But wait, that just looks like paleo right? Well, the big change I want to make is incorporate (in moderation) some cheese, milk, greek yoghurt, oats – perhaps even a small amount of potato. So, still very clean, but with a bit more leeway.

The trick is in defining a rule set that I can clearly hold myself accountable to, so I can track my progress against it. I still have some work to do to figure that out.

For October, I’m going to officially drop paleo as something I’m tracking. Instead, I’ll track (but importantly have no goals for) myself against the crossfit recommendation – along with infrequently allowing some cheese, milk, greek yoghurt, oats and baked potato. That’s still too fuzzy for my liking. I mean, what exactly does ‘some fruit’ or ‘little starch’ mean? But, for now I’ll use my best judgement when it comes to daily tracking. And I’ll decide on a clearer set of rules before November starts.

October, let’s go!

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