I’ve gone from eight to seven habits over the last couple of months. I’ve dropped two habits, and introduced a brand new one. If you want to know a bit more about that change, check out Three BIG changes to my habits!
The two habits that I’m particularly struggling with right now are sleep and steps – so these were big focuses for me in February.
And then the other thing that’s worth mentioning is, I was using February to set a baseline for my new habit – which is Whole Foods.
Whenever I start a new habit, I always start with no expectations. I use the first month to simply track it, and see where my baseline naturally sits. From there, I then set a realistic first target, and I start to think about where I can make improvements to hit that target.
So, without further adieu, let’s see how I did in February.
(Click here to see the full history, going back to Jan 2022)
Overall I’m super pleased with how February went.
I hit green on five of my habits, so that was awesome. I slipped just below green with one of them. And then of course one of them looked terrible – but – we’ve just talked about that one. February was the first month establishing a baseline for my new habit, whole foods. So that was to be expected.
Let’s take the habits one by one.
I hit 100% consistency for no alcohol. I would never expect anything different here. Even so, I will continue to track it and call it out every month, because it’s such a key foundational health habit.
Sleep came in at 83% consistency. I’m super pleased with this one. It’s now the second consecutive month of being in the green, and this is hopefully the start of a new trend.
What was particularly great to see is my average sleep for the month coming in at 7 hours, 25 mins. That’s the highest I’ve ever seen it.
That’s because I’ve been making a big effort to be mindful of when I go to bed, and when I wake up – to ensure I give enough of a window to safely hit my six and a half hours sleep target.
I can’t emphasize enough how important getting at least six and a half hours of sleep is for me. For example, the night before last, I hit six hours and 15 mins. Not only that, it was low quality sleep – a lot of light sleep and not much restorative sleep.
And I REALLY felt it yesterday. I struggled with energy. I was also anxious for most of the day and I just couldn’t seem to click into an optimistic gear. This actually lasted for most of the day, and it’s even drifted a bit into today (despite me catching up nicely last night with a whopping 9 hours sleep).
This is a huge reminder of why sleep is one of my most important foundational health habits – and why I was super happy to see me come in at 83% for February.
Protein also came in as green at 83% consistency.
There’s not much to say here, other than my five misses for the month came in a block of two and another block of three. And that’s because of a couple of trips I had in February, where I found it hard to hit 150 grams of protein on consecutive days.
Now this is something I have to be careful about because it’s a risky place to be. A single miss is usually pretty easy to recover from. I know I can afford six of them in a 30 day period and still achieve 80% consistency.
But, if I do have a miss, it’s so important to put things right the following day. Because, where one miss is a blip, two consecutive misses can easily become the start of a new pattern. It just becomes a really slippery slope, and it’s a big risk to falling off the wagon entirely.
And that’s why even though my 83% for protein is a win, I have to be careful about those two and three consecutive miss patterns. That’s one to watch for next month.
I won’t spend much time on caffeine. That’s because I hit 90% consistency and I find caffeine very easy to stay on track with generally – which as a reminder is a maximum of 2 cups per day, and always before midday .
My three misses were all single misses, and each one was a conscious decision to break from the rule – either because I was on a trip or because I decided to have a coffee before an afternoon training session.
Next up is water. I came in at 83%, which in the grand scheme of things, is all fine.
I rarely dip below 80% consistency for the month when it comes to water. What I’m more concerned about at the moment is how I get there. I tend to leave things too late in the day, and then I find it a rush towards the end of the day to get my three litres in.
And when I do miss my goal of 3 litres, it’s usually because of exactly that – I’ve left things too late in the day. I choose not to drink water in the evening, to avoid waking several times in the night to take a pee – which is me basically prioritising sleep over water at that point.
So, my focus remains the same with my water goal. Get it in earlier in the day, and make sure that I get to my 3 litre target by the early evening.
Steps is where I slipped into the orange. I came in at 76% consistency because of seven misses for the month.
Whilst not disastrous, I need to start doing better here. It’s the fourth consecutive month that I’ve come in at under 80%. I really have to figure this one out.
Like water, it’s just a case of being more intentional with when I will get my steps in each day. I preferably need to break the back of the 10,000 steps as early in the day as I can.
Watch this space for hopefully a big improvement in March as I try to do that.
I’ve saved the new habit for last – whole foods.
My goal here is to have 80% of my calories be from whole foods. I had no expectations for my consistency in February – I simply wanted to track things and see where my baseline settled at.
I came in at 45% consistency – so, pretty low. But, it’s just the starting point, and I see a lot of opportunities for improvements.
One of the most useful things I got from tracking whole foods in February is an increased level of self awareness (which by the way is one of the biggest benefits of tracking daily habits in general).
Simply having to track this daily has helped me see how thin the margin is when it comes to eating 80% whole foods. I usually eat about 2,400 calories a day, so that means I can only afford 480 calories of non whole foods – anything above that and I’ll miss my target of 80%. If you have a good grasp of the calorie content of foods, you’ll know, 480 calories is not much of a margin at all.
I have a good idea of where I can tighten things up with whole foods for March. I’m going to set my goal at 50% consistency, with a stretch goal of closer to 60% consistency for the month. That would be a nice step forward to the eventual final destination of 80% consistency.
All in all, February was a pretty solid month. I’m really happy with it. Five habits in the green. One just slipping into orange. And, whilst one was in the red, that was totally expected.
The goal for March is preferably six habits in the green, and whole foods moved into the orange and much closer to 60% consistency.
And on that note, I will see you next month!
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