Before we get stuck in, a quick reminder of what my goals were for last month (May 2024).
- Keep the six foundational health habits that I have already built (alcohol, sleep, protein, caffeine, water and steps) at 80%+. Specifically, work on sleep and steps becoming less fragile.
- Improve whole foods to 50%+, preferably closer to 60%
So, let’s see how we did!
(see my entire habit journey here)
Look at that! May was my best month for a long, long time.
The six foundational health habits that I’ve already built (alcohol, sleep, protein, caffeine, water and steps) were all over 80% and in the green.
But, my biggest win of the month was getting whole foods over 50%. This is a massive jump on the last four months and exactly where I wanted to be. Now that I’m over 50%, the new challenge is to maintain that and push it upwards into the 60%’s, 70%’s and eventually the 80%’s.
As per usual, let’s get into the details.
No Alcohol
Same as always. I’ve been sober for nearly three years now 🙂
Sleep – 6.5 hours
Sleep came in at 81% consistency, and I had no consecutive misses. On top of that, I was super pleased that my average sleep was over seven hours.
I would like to change my goal from six and a half hours, to seven hours at some point. That’s the holy grail. But, for now, if sleep were to stay at over 80% consistency at six and a half hours for 2024, I would be very, very happy.
Protein – 175 grams
A very good month for protein – 87% consistency. No consecutive misses. I feel very confident in being able to hit 175 grams most days. It’s just an easy thing for me to do now. In fact, so much so, that I usually expect my protein consistency to be over 90%. But, for the month of May, 87% is just fine with me.
Caffeine – max two cups, and before midday
Caffeine was at 81%. Every time I miss caffeine, it’s an intentional choice – either for a pre-training espresso boost, or because I’m traveling. This is exactly where I want to be.
Water – 3 litres
A super month for water – 94% consistency. Water is easy peasy for me now. It’s been over 80% for a very long time, and is usually over 90%. Lately, my challenge has been trying to consume most of my water ideally before 19.00. I got into a bad habit of leaving my water consumption towards the end of the day, which means night time toilet visits – which then affects my sleep.
So, I’ve been trying to work on this during May. I want to ideally consume most of my water before 20.00, giving myself a couple of hours of not drinking fluid before going to bed. I feel like I’m getting there. It hasn’t been perfect, but I’m definitely improving.
Hitting 94% consistency, being in the green and making improvements to when I consume water is a brilliant result for May.
10K Steps
Steps was another one that came in at 81% consistency. There were a few consecutive misses, which I don’t like to see. But, these were mostly down to bad weather or traveling. But, in the grand scheme of things, I’m really happy with 81%. If you remember, last month I slipped into orange with 73%. So, I needed to prove to myself this was a blip. And, I did exactly that!
Whole Foods
Whole Foods was easily my biggest win of the month. I came in at 55% consistency. May was the fourth month I’ve tracked whole foods.
My daily target goal for whole foods is to eat 80% whole foods. And then of course, as with my other habits, I am aiming for 80% consistency for the month. This is actually a very, very hard thing for anyone to do. But, it’s especially hard for me, given I have a bad relationship with food, and a massive sweet tooth!
My gut tells me that it’s going to easily take at least the rest of the year, but possibly 2025 for me to get to 80% consistency on this habit. If I go back to February (when I started tracking whole foods), it was 45%. March was 48% and April dipped to 33%.
Now, until now, I haven’t been really trying to improve it. Instead, I’ve been letting my baseline form, whilst I’ve been focusing on my other six foundational health habits. May was really the first month where I said, no, I’m going to make a bigger effort to try a few things and see if I can get whole foods over 50%. And it worked. I’m really happy with that.
I hope this has now set a benchmark for me to always be over 50%. And I now have to start getting it into the 60s or 70s, and eventually 80% consistency.
Wrap up
So, if I take a step back and look at the whole month, I’m really happy that six of my habits were in the green and over 80% consistency.
Impressively, my whole foods habit is now over 50% consistency. That now sets a nice benchmark for me to try and hold and then improve upon for the rest of 2024.
My goals for June are very similar to May, 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 June, I want another month over 50%, preferably closer to 60%
See you next month!
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