April was an interesting month. It got off to a bad start, and it went downhill further from there. As I got into the second half of the month, I was happy for it to finish. I was just keen to start May with a clean slate.
There were a few reasons for April not being the greatest month.
Firstly, there were a couple of trips and some other bits of travel. We also had half term, which meant my daughter had two weeks off school. Both of these meant less routine, and generally more temptations in my environment. Lastly, I found myself under the weather for about five days. This always makes some habits harder to stick to (tougher to sleep well, eat enough protein, get steps in etc.)
But, enough with the excuses. Lets jump into the numbers:
(see my entire habit journey here)
I finished April thinking it had been a bit of a car crash. But, with a bit of time to think and reflect about it, I was being a bit harsh. If you go back and compare April to 12 or 18 months ago, it would actually be considered a very strong month. That really puts into perspective the progress I’ve made over the last year and a half.
If you look across all of my seven foundational health habits, five of them were at least 80% consistency. 10K steps slipped below 80% – but only just. And whole foods was well below 80%, which was to be expected. I’m still in the very early stages of building this habit.
Bear in mind, being sick really hit my steps specifically. I had four consecutive misses towards the end of the month, which really pulled my average consistency % down. Had it not have been for those, my steps would have been well above 80%.
When you look at it like that, I was probably beating myself up a little bit too much. In fact, I actually did quite well considering the challenges of the month.
Let’s go through each habit individually and we’ll see how each one went.
No Alcohol
As per usual – 100%. Always will be, given I’m nearly three years sober!
Sleep – 6.5 hours
Sleep came in at 83% consistency. I’m very happy with that. I avoided consecutive misses too, which is very important for me, especially with sleep. It helps keep my anxiety on the right side of things.
Sleep was a habit that was a bit fragile until a few months ago. I now have four consecutive months in the green. This gives me a lot of confidence that this is now pretty stable and should stay in the green going forward.
Protein – 175 grams
Protein came in right on the nose – 80% consistency. I’m usually very good with protein, so I would expect it to be closer to 90%.
The factors that made April a challenging month had a big impact on protein. I found it harder to hit 175 grams when traveling and being sick. The one saving grace was that my average for the week always tends to be around 180 grams. So, even when I do dip below 175 grams, I usually make up for it, either before or after.
So, not fantastic. But, I still achieved green status, and there’s nothing to worry about for next month. I’ll take that.
Caffeine – max two cups, and before midday
Caffeine was at 83% consistency. Like protein, I would have expected it to be closer to 90%.
That said, most of the times I missed my caffeine habit was when I was traveling or on a day trip. In those situations, I consciously chose to break the habit, so I could enjoy a double espresso in the afternoon. And I was very conscious to make sure I didn’t break it too many times to fall under the 80% mark.
So, all good with caffeine.
Water – 3 litres
Super, super strong at 87% consistency.
Traveling or being sick doesn’t affect my water consumption much at all. I still find it pretty easy to hit my three litres. Case in point, I’ve been in the green for 25 months now!
10K Steps
OK, this is where things start to unravel a little, with 73% consistency.
Steps is a habit that, like sleep, is still a little fragile. However I don’t think this was the problem in April. As I mentioned above, being sick disrupted my steps. There were four days where I just wasn’t well enough to get out there and walk a lot. If I removed only two of those, I would be back up to 80%.
So, I’m not going to beat myself up about steps falling below 80% consistency. The dip wasn’t caused by a change in behavior or because of the fragility of the habit. It was purely the sickness, which couldn’t be foreseen, or helped. That’s just how it goes sometimes.
And, I should remind myself, we’re not talking 50% or 60%. I still got close to 80%, even with a bout of illness knocking me out for four days.
I’m confident that I will be above 80% for steps in May.
Whole Foods
Eer. 33% consistency. Yeah terrible.
Let’s take a step back though. This is the third month that I’ve tracked whole foods as a foundational health habit.
I came in at 45% consistency in February, and 48% in March. For those months, and May, I haven’t really tried to improve the score. Because I’m in the early stages of building the habit, I’ve just been letting a baseline form whilst I’ve been focusing on my other six foundational health habits.
That’s been fine up until now, but it needs to change for May. I’ll cover that in a second.
Wrap up
So, not a car crash – not at all. Actually, fairly decent numbers for a very challenging month.
My goals for May are very straightforward. And they will be almost identical for every month of 2024.
- Keep the six foundational health habits that I have already built (alcohol, sleep, protein, caffeine, water and steps) at 80%+. Specifically, get sleep and steps to be less fragile.
- Improve whole foods. For May, I want to get whole foods to 50%+, preferably closer to 60%
The main thing I will focus on for making progress with whole foods, is to consciously have a plan for keeping whole foods over 80% for any given day. And then becoming more self aware throughout the day as I try to steer towards that. This is quite a big change from just passively letting the baseline form, so it should hopefully improve.
So far, May is looking really good. Things are on track for an excellent month!
Watch this space 🙂
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