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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