Health

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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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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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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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:

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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