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Daniel Clough

One dude. Seven foundational health habits.

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Habits

Stack Ranking My 7 Foundational Health Habits

June 6, 2025

Building consistency with these seven foundational health habits is the key to feeling and looking great.

Each habit plays a role, but the real power is in how they work together — almost like an operating system reset. Forget being someone who’s tired, anxious, skipping workouts, or making poor food choices. These habits will transform you into someone strong, capable, and disciplined — not just in your training and nutrition, but in every area of life.

That said, not all habits are created equal. Some are more foundational than others. So here’s my personal stack ranking — from most to least important.

1. Sleep

    Sleep is the foundation. If all seven habits form a pyramid, sleep is the base everything else sits on.

    When I sleep poorly, everything unravels:

    • I skip training sessions
    • I walk less
    • I overeat
    • My thinking gets foggy
    • My mood tanks and I become anxious and irritable

    Here’s a great example: Last year, I went on a camping trip and got two consecutive nights of under 5 hours of sleep. The two weeks that followed were incredibly difficult. It was a perfect illustration of how quickly sleep deprivation throws everything off.

    The evidence is overwhelming. Sleep has a big effect on not only your physical health, but also your cognitive, and emotional health.

    In fact, check this out. A 5% reduction in REM sleep increases mortality risk by 13%! [1].

    Sleep is everything. You have to nail it and you have to make it non-negotiable.

    I work harder on this habit than any other, and that’s why it’s number one.

    2. Alcohol

      Alcohol comes in a very close second.

      Let’s start with the obvious: alcohol is a toxin. The evidence is clear that alcohol is bad for us:

      • Drinking more than five drinks per week shortens life expectancy.
      • Even light, regular drinking (a couple per night) can reduce your lifespan by 4–5 years
      • Drinking alcohol is linked to all sorts of diseases, including cancer etc. [2]

      But beyond the data, my personal experience was even more telling. When I drank, life would reliably go off the rails. I found it much harder to make good choices.

      But, here is what really opened my eyes.

      Wearing a WHOOP band revealed clear patterns between alcohol and health. Even a couple of drinks would tank my:

      • Recovery scores
      • Resting heart rate
      • HRV
      • Sleep quality

      WHOOP didn’t know I was drinking, but my metrics said it all.

      Eventually, I had to remove alcohol entirely to regain control. That’s why it holds the number two spot.

      Before we jump into number 3 and go further down the list, a quick side note.

      If you can nail just sleep and alcohol, you’re 80% of the way there. These two habits will drive the most visible and lasting change — and make all the others far easier to implement.

      3. Steps

        Steps are massively underrated.

        I even used to ignore steps — but now I track them daily. They’re the ultimate baseline for movement and overall activity.

        Walking is full-body movement. Add terrain, incline, or a weighted vest and you’ve got something close to Zone 2 cardio. Best of all, it’s low-friction and easy to build into your life.

        It’s not uncommon to see people attribute their entire weight loss to building a habit of walking.

        It’s also great for mental health. It improves mood, clears your head, and is the best all time generator of ideas.

        I love this quote from Dan Go.

        It’s so true.

        Theres evidence to back that this whole steps thing is great for your health too.

        Walking approximately 6,000 steps per day has a 40% lower risk of all-cause mortality — compared to those walking 3,500 steps. This risk reduction increased with higher step counts, reaching up to 53% for those walking close to 11,000 steps daily. [3]

        That’s why steps is so high on the list.

        4. Whole foods

          Another obvious, but powerful one.

          When I eat whole foods exclusively for a couple of days, I always feel sharper, leaner, and more energised.

          When I slip into a bad habit of eating sugary, processed foods, the opposite happens — I feel tired, sluggish and bloated.

          It’s literally a night and day comparison, over the period of just a few days.

          Over the long term, this only becomes even more important. You’ll find yourself more easily able to maintain a healthier body weight. And, studies have shown that populations (blue zones), which eat 90–100% whole food diets, live the longest and have the lowest disease rates. [4]

          5. Protein

            This one hurts to put so low, especially as I’m a big fan of a high-protein diet. But, I guess it just shows how important sleep, alcohol, walking and whole foods are!

            Why protein matters:

            • It’s essential for building and keeping muscle — a huge marker of long-term health and longevity.
            • It improves satiety and reduces overall calorie intake.
            • Starting meals with protein (like meat or eggs) tends to “clean up” the rest of your plate.

            Protein, in short, helps build a strong, capable body.

            6. Water

              Even mild dehydration causes fatigue and brain fog. When you’re well hydrated, you will feel sharper and make better decisions.

              Also, you will perform better in the gym when you are well hydrated. I know most of us aren’t trying to win the Olympics, but every little bit helps!

              So, stay hydrated if you want to feel sharper, have less brain fog and perform better in the gym,.

              7. Caffeine

                Last on the list — though still pretty important.

                The main reason I include caffeine in my seven foundational health habits is because it interferes with sleep. And as we’ve seen, sleep is everything.

                Caffeine has a quarter life of 10–12 hours. This means a midday coffee still lingers in your system at midnight.

                To put them into perspective, it’s proven that one evening dose of caffeine can reduce deep sleep by 20% — the equivalent of aging 15 years! [5].

                I personally tolerate caffeine fairly well, but I still respect it. Keeping it in check protects my sleep and holds me accountable.

                Final Thoughts

                If you’re just starting your journey with foundational health habits, start with sleep and alcohol. They will change your life faster than anything else and you will find it so much easier to unlock the rest of the habits.

                Tackle those two, and you’ll feel better, look better, and show up stronger in all areas of your life.

                References:

                [1] A Prospective Study of Sleep Duration and Mortality Risk in Women

                [2] Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2016 study (The Lancet, 2018)

                [3] Daily steps and all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis of 15 international cohort

                [4] Blue Zones Study (Dan Buettner + National Geographic)

                [5] Drinking just one dose of caffeine in the evening can decrease the amount of deep sleep by 20%


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                Filed Under: Habits, Health, Podcast

                Will I ever stop tracking my foundational health habits?

                May 6, 2025

                Recently, I’ve been pondering a question – will I ever stop tracking my foundational health habits?

                What got me thinking about this was seeing how a couple of people I follow online live out their healthy lifestyles – Josh Bridges and Paul Saladino. The thing about both of them is that their approach seems effortless.

                They’re not meticulously tracking habits or counting calories. They just make good choices consistently, as if it’s second nature.

                There’s no doubt about it, my system looks a little obsessive. It definitely takes time and effort. Their more natural, instinctive way of doing things really appeals to me.

                I track each of my seven foundational health habits every single day with a simple tick or cross:

                Then, each month, I create a new physical tracking sheet and update a monthly spreadsheet.

                So yeah, there’s a bit of upkeep, both daily and monthly.

                All of that said, once you get used to it, it becomes second nature. Daily tracking only takes a few minutes. The monthly admin? Maybe 30 minutes or so. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big time sink.

                That said, it’s still a thing. And it’s certainly not as natural as what I see from Bridges and Saladino.

                That contrast has made me wonder: Would life be better if I didn’t track at all? What would that feel like? How would it go?

                Let me be clear: I’d never let go of the habits themselves. They’re too important to how I look, feel and live.
The question is just about whether I could ever stop tracking them.

                And the answer I keep coming back to?

                Maybe… but certainly not any time soon.

                So, why not?

                1. I haven’t built anywhere near a solid enough base yet

                For my seven foundational health habits, four are on pretty solid ground: protein, caffeine, water, and alcohol. I consistently hit 80%+ each month. Of course, alcohol is always at 100% – because I’ve given it up for good.

                But even these “safe” habits can slip. Case in point, just last month, protein dipped below 80%.

                What works today can stop working tomorrow. So I need to stay alert – even with the ones that seem locked in.

                Then there are the more fragile three: sleep, steps, and whole foods. These are still a work in progress. I’m pushing hard to build the same kind of consistency with them, but I’m not there yet.

                So while I’ve been tracking for 38 months straight, I still feel like I’m in the early stages of the journey. I definitely haven’t built a foundation where all seven habits stick naturally at 80%+ consistently.

                1. I’m Not Naturally Disciplined

                The second reason I don’t think I can stop tracking? I might not be naturally disciplined enough to survive without the crutch of it.

                I’m not someone who finds discipline effortless. I don’t have insane willpower.
I’m not the type of person who decides something and just does it forever without a system.

                People like Bridges and Saladino – and even a few people in my own life – they seem to have that gear to just stick to something once they’ve made up their mind.

                I don’t. I find I have to rely on routines, environment design, and tracking to stay consistent. It takes more effort. More brute force. Maybe it looks a bit over the top to everyone else, but I know deep down that it’s necessary for me.

                Why tracking matters (for me)

                Tracking these habits is crucial – not just to building them, but to keeping them strong.

                It forces daily awareness. It forces regular reflection – every day, every month, and over the longer arc of quarters and years. That reflection helps me keep strong habits from slipping, and it helps me break through with habits that are still forming.

                I’m pretty convinced that if I stopped tracking, I’d stay consistent for a while… but eventually, I’d slide. And that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.

                These habits are the foundation of my physical and mental health. They give me the capacity to handle everything else in life. Letting them erode isn’t an option.

                So, will I ever stop?

                Maybe one day I’ll feel confident enough to let tracking go. Maybe I’ll hit a point where 80%+ consistency across all seven habits feels so natural that the tracking becomes redundant.

                But honestly? I’m not convinced that day will ever come.

                I think this is a forever journey. And even if I get to a point where they all feel a lot easier than they do now, daily tracking might just be what will continue to keep me accountable.

                So, my answer is to will I ever stop tracking my foundational health habits –Maybe… but certainly not any time soon.

                Because for me, it’s not just about ticking boxes. It’s about staying intentional. It’s about building a life where health is non-negotiable. And tracking is part of the system that keeps that life on track.

                So for now, and probably for a long while, the tick sheet stays!


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                Filed Under: Discipline, Habits, Health

                Small tweaks can create BIG results!

                April 14, 2025

                Small tweaks – often the tiniest of tweaks – can lead to significant improvements in your health.

                We all know that habits and routines can be super powerful. Once established, they help us stay consistent with actions that have a big impact on our lives.

                But here’s the thing about habits and routines – they can become stale. What once worked brilliantly may start to lose its effectiveness over time.

                That’s why it’s important to remain open to exploring small changes and tweaks to your environment, habits, and routines. Sometimes, just the tiniest adjustment is all you need to completely revitalise a habit or routine.

                And here’s the kicker: minor changes can often lead to unexpected outcomes.

                You start with a small change and end up surprised by how much it helps. It can snowball into other tweaks and even bigger outcomes. Before you know it, what started as a small change has led to something transformative.

                The easiest way to highlight this is to give you a few recent examples from my own life. This will help you see just how much only small tweaks can help you improve your habits and health.

                To illustrate this, here are a couple of recent examples from my own life. These show how small and somewhat trivial tweaks have had a significant impact on my habits and health.

                Water consumption

                As you probably know, one of my foundational health habits is to drink three litres of water a day.

                However, I recently found myself struggling to hit that target. I couldn’t pinpoint why, but I started delaying drinking water until later in the day. Gradually, it became a struggle to reach my three-litre goal. The habit had become stale.

                Then, I made an unintended tweak. I bought some nice new tumbler glasses. Instead of drinking straight from my water bottle, I poured the water into one of these glasses.

                I found I really enjoyed drinking from the glass. I drank the whole glass in one go and immediately refilled it. As I went about my day, I noticed I didn’t want to leave the refilled glass sitting there too long – it was more obvious how the water would get stale in a glass (you’ve probably noticed the bubbles that appear when you leave a glass of water for too long!).

                The first day I did this, I drank four litres of water. It was actually too much – I was up peeing three times in the night! The next day, I had to be careful to only drink three litres. I’d gone from struggling to drink three litres a day to needing to monitor not over drinking – all from a small change in how I was drinking water.

                Mindful eating

                I went out for breakfast the other day at a lovely farm shop. I ordered the Greek yogurt bowl. It came in a really nice bowl and was well presented. I also noticed that the portion size was quite a bit smaller than I would typically serve myself at home.

                Because of the bowl and portion size, I just felt like I should take my time with it.

                Not only did I enjoy it, but I felt light afterwards. This was very different from how I usually feel after eating yogurt – I often feel quite bloated. Having a smaller portion and eating more slowly made the difference.

                So, before I left, I purchased some of the same bowls from the farm shop.

                And guess what? At home, when preparing my yogurt in the new bowls, I started to take more care with the presentation and mimicked the smaller portion. As a result, I ate more slowly and felt light after eating again.

                This then rubbed off on some of my other meals. I became more mindful of portion sizes (I have a habit of eating overly large portions!) and found myself starting to eat more slowly.

                This has had a significant impact on hitting my daily calorie targets. I’ve gone from struggling to stay within 2,600 calories to comfortably eating within my 2,500-calorie target.

                Honestly, I didn’t see that coming. It was a combination of being inspired by a nice breakfast at a farm shop and purchasing some attractive bowls that led me to smaller portions, more mindful eating, and finding it easier to stay within my daily calorie target.

                These two small tweaks have made a significant impact on my life. I’m now finding it much easier to drink my three litres of water daily and have improved my mindful eating, digestion, and overall food intake.

                And remember, I intentionally chose the smallest tweaks I could think of – drinking from a nice glass instead of a bottle and changing the bowl I use for yogurt. There are other, more substantial tweaks I’ve made that have had even greater impacts.

                There are far bigger tweaks I’ve made in my life that have had an even greater impact.

                I hope this demonstrates just how powerful small tweaks to habits, routines, and your environment can be.

                So, what’s the takeaway?

                Stay Curious: Be self-aware of how well your habits and routines are working. Don’t get too comfortable, and don’t let things become stale. If they do, at least notice it.

                Experiment: Don’t hesitate to try small or seemingly trivial changes. Even if they feel insignificant, these small changes can sometimes trigger a cascade of improvements that add up to a significant impact.

                I’ll leave you with a question – or perhaps a challenge:

                Identify one small tweak you can implement this week. Don’t overthink it; just do it.

                Then, observe its impact!


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                Filed Under: Habits, Health

                My health and fitness goals for 2025

                February 15, 2025

                Towards the end of last year, I took a step back to reflect on where I was with my foundational health habits, as well as my overall health and fitness. I also started to think about where I want to put my energy and focus in 2025, so I can take things to the next level.

                As usual, there’s never a shortage of things to focus on and improve – but I’ve narrowed it down to three main areas of focus for 2025.

                1. Foundational Health Habits

                  Drum roll….. no big surprise here – my number one focus will be my foundational health habits.

                  I often refer to these as the base of the pyramid. That’s because they are the cornerstone of my health and fitness efforts.

                  Not only have I found they make the biggest difference to how I look and feel – but importantly they are critical to me being a strong and disciplined person. They make me someone who is capable of being consistent with my health and fitness efforts.

                  When my foundational health habits slide, I immediately start to feel crappy. From there, everything else gets ten times harder.

                  That’s why, if someone is looking to take a first step in improving their health and fitness – or in fact their life – it’s always where I would suggest starting. Forget training programs. Forget the latest diet. Don’t worry about which supplements to take. Ignore the hacks. Start with foundational health habits and build from there.

                  I know for me personally, it’s a journey I’m always going to be on and will be trying to improve. That’s why it’s one of my areas of focus for 2025.

                  Let’s start with a quick re-cap on where I’m at with my foundational health habits.

                  I have seven foundational health habits.

                  Four of my foundational health habits are in a very strong place – alcohol, caffeine, protein and water. These are almost always over 80% consistency (my target) each month.

                  Two of my foundational health habits are in a fairly OK place, but are vulnerable – steps and sleep. Whilst I would hope for these to be at 80% consistency each month, they often dip below 80%. When I do hit 80% consistency, I get there by the skin of my teeth.

                  Lastly, I have one foundational health habit that I am still trying to get off the ground – whole foods. This is where I want 80% of my foods each day to come from whole foods. I’m still on pretty shaky ground here, usually coming in around 50% consistency for the month.

                  Alright, so, where am I going to focus my efforts to make an improvement?

                  • For a start, I want to keep the four foundational health habits I have in a good place, staying in a good place. I don’t want to become complacent and let them slide.
                  • I want to get the two foundational health habits that are vulnerable (steps and sleep) into a more robust place – where they’re mostly over 80% consistent each month and are feeling more like the above four habits.
                  • Lastly, I want to get my whole foods habit up and closer to 80% consistency each month. It’s fine for there to still be some vulnerability, but I want to break out of the ‘early stages of building’ mode and have whole foods feel more like sleep and steps do now.

                  That would be an AMAZING place for my foundational health habits to be, It would represent a big step forward from where I am now.

                  So, that’s the first area of focus – foundational health habits. Of course, I’ll be covering my progress with these throughout the year.

                  2. Digestive Health

                  Digestive health is going to be my second area of focus for 2025.

                  I’ve struggled with digestive issues for as long as I can remember – right back to when I was a child. My stomach has always been unpredictable. Some days, I’ll be bloated and in quite a bit of pain. I also suffer from constipation, and a lot of irregularity.

                  I had a health hiccup over Christmas that was a big wake up call for me. It made me realise I had normalised what is actually a pretty bad situation. I’d just got used to feeling like this – thinking that’s who I am.

                  However, I really want to make some big improvements to my digestive health this year. I want to try and get much closer to being normal.

                  I’ve already made two big changes this year that have made a huge difference.

                  Firstly, I’ve almost tripled my fibre intake, from around 10 grams per day, to 30 grams per day. Secondly, I’m now eating so much more slowly. Both of these changes have already helped reduce my symptoms and have me feeling so much better.

                  I’ve also started working with a nutritionist / gut health coach recently. I’ve already started to work on some of their initial advice – bringing in a few supplements and getting into much better gut health habits. I’ve also just done a stool test which I’m waiting on the results for, which I hope can lead to a few other changes too.

                  So, in summary, that’s two areas of focus so far – a big step forward with my foundational health habits and a big improvement in my digestive health.

                  The third area of focus is also something that’s plagued me for a lot of my life, and I’m determined to tackle it head on this year.

                  3. Mobility

                  My training is going the best it’s ever been. I’m training five times a week – a mix of weights, high intensity training and zone 2 cardio. I’m now extremely consistent in training like this, week in, week out.

                  I’m also seeing really good results. I look better and I’m stronger, leaner and fitter than I’ve ever been. I’ve had more results in the last two years, than the previous ten years.

                  But, I do have a weak spot – and that’s mobility.

                  I’ve always been a very stiff and inflexible person. This means that I tend to get injured more easily. Also, I often feel creaky – especially when waking up, or when I move in a certain way (i.e picking things up, getting up from the floor etc.).

                  So, I know I can make some really nice improvements to how I feel, if I can find a way to consistently do some work on my mobility.

                  So what does that look like?

                  Right now, I have a pretty loose plan. I want to bring in a weekly yoga practice. I want to incorporate some daily stretching. And there are also a few mobility programmes I’d quite like to work through.

                  I want to start folding these types of things into my week – essentially getting into the habit of doing a few things per week.

                  I know this is a bit of a vague action plan. However, I also want to be fairly agile about this. I want to explore and try lots of different things until I find something that works for me and I’m able to stick to. .

                  And there you have it. My three big areas of focus for 2025 are:

                  • Take a big step forward with my foundational health habits
                  • Improve my digestive health
                  • Improve my mobility

                  If I can make good progress across these three areas, I’m confident it will help take all of my health and fitness to a whole new level.

                  I’m sure there are going to be quite a lot of ‘two steps forward, one step backward’ moments when it comes to these three things. That said, I’m going to work really hard, and I’ll keep you in the loop with how I’m doing.

                  I’ll wrap with one final thought. If you’re thinking about improving your health and want to look and feel better in 2025, I would massively encourage you to get on a journey with building foundational health habits.

                  Life is too short to feel tired, crappy and to be out of shape. Foundational health habits are your best bet to get yourself out of feeling like this, and onto a better track.

                  If you want any help at all with this, DM me on X or LinkedIn, or shoot me an email. I’d love to chat and help however I can.


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                  Filed Under: Habits, Health

                  HUGE foundational health habit update (and a big change!)

                  November 5, 2024

                  I haven’t done a habit update since July, so we have three months to cover – August September and October! I’m also making a change to one of my health habits from November, which I’ll cover in a bit.

                  Before we get stuck in, here’s a quick reminder on my current goals for my seven foundational health habits.

                  Six of my health habits are in a really solid place, and feel second nature.

                  They are:

                  • No Alcohol
                  • Sleep – 6.5 hours
                  • Protein – 175 grams
                  • Caffeine – max two cups, and before midday
                  • Water – 3 litres
                  • 10K Steps

                  I expect 80% + consistency each month for the above six habits. For the most part, I achieve this fairly comfortably.

                  Whole foods, the seventh health habit – well, that’s a different story. My ultimate target is to have 80% of my foods be from whole foods every day. So far, I’m settled at about 50% consistency for the month (so I achieve it about half the time).

                  If I’m totally honest, I’m feeling a little bit stuck with whole foods. It’s taken me quite a few months to reliably get to over 50% for the month. However, I’m struggling to get anywhere near 60%. I’m in the early to mid-stages of building this habit, so for the time being, this is fine. But I can only say that for so long. I need to figure out the strategy to break into 60% consistency and beyond. More on that later too.

                  Let’s dive into the last few months. I’ll take August first, because it was an irregular month. After that, I’ll cover each habit for the months of September and October.

                  August

                  August is an irregular month because of the school holidays. That usually means a big summer holiday and a lot of day trips and traveling.In August, my environment and routines get turned on their head, making it much harder to stick to my health habits.

                  What I usually do in August is pick a couple of habits to focus on and track. I then let go of the rest. Most of the habits I let go of are still somewhat in my focus. That’s because many of them are second nature to me now, so I would guess they will still hang around the 70-80% consistency mark anyway.

                  However, because August is a very different month for me, it wouldn’t be sensible or realistic to hold myself accountable to the same standards as all of my other months. However, it’s also not sensible to drop everything. By prioritising a few that really count, it helps to keep me connected to my foundational health habits and it helps me to keep my head above water in a slightly chaotic month.

                  For August this year, I picked only three habits to track and with the same 80% consistency expectation I have for myself the rest of the year. Those three habits were alcohol, sleep and steps.

                  Alcohol is an easy one, because I’m sober 😉 Then, I felt that if I stayed well slept and hydrated, that would be a very good baseline for me.

                  So, how did that go?

                  Really very well. Drinking three litres of water came in at 87% consistency, and sleeping for six and a half hours per night came in at 81% consistency. Not bad at all for a month that has a ten night summer holiday, a couple of overnight trips and most days that were out of my normal routine.

                  September & October

                  (last six months of habit tracking) – entire history of tracking here.

                  Things went back to normal for my tracking and expectations in September and October.

                  My goal was 80% consistency for six of my foundational health habits (alcohol, sleep, protein, caffeine, water and steps) and I wanted to break into 60% consistency for whole foods.

                  No Alcohol

                  As usual, 100% consistency. I’m nearly three and a half years sober now!

                  Sleep – 6.5 hours

                  I’ve made a lot of progress on sleep recently. Sleep was one of two habits, that whilst in a pretty solid place, there’s still some vulnerability there (the other is steps).

                  I often scrape in close to the wire at about 80% consistency. And there’s several moments in the month where I think I might not make the 80% mark.

                  However, with sleep, I seem to have broken out of that. September was 87% consistency, and October was 84% consistency. My average sleep was also 7 hours, 20 mins for both months.

                  How have I managed to get rid of the last bit of vulnerability for sleep? Mainly though just tightening up my habits for going to bed a little earlier, and being more conscious of giving myself a bit of extra time in the morning if I know I need it. It sounds simple, but it’s basic math. If you want to have six and a half hours sleep, you need to be asleep for seven and a half hours (leaving an hour to spare for being awake through waking up, disturbances etc.)

                  I tend to go to bed at 10PM and I usually wake somewhere between 6 and 7 AM. So that usually gets me comfortably into the seven hours category. And I would now class my sleep habit in the same category as habits like alcohol, protein, caffeine and water – safe and second nature.

                  Protein – 175 grams

                  Protein was in the green for both September and October with 80% and 87% respectively.

                  I have protein nailed entirely now. I usually hit about 190 grams as an average for the week. It’s rare I find myself in danger of falling below 175 grams. This only happens when I’m traveling or completely out of my normal routine of eating. – which doesn’t happen that often and I’m getting better at mitigating for.

                  Caffeine – max two cups, and before midday

                  Another slam dunk. September was 80% consistency and October was 81% consistency.

                  Whilst that might look a bit close to the wire, I tend to strategically come right in on the mark. That’s because I know I can afford six misses per month with each habit, and still achieve 80% consistency. And for caffeine, I strategically pick those misses to help fuel an afternoon workout, deal with a bad night’s sleep or to indulge when I’m traveling.

                  What can I say, I’m a sucker for a double espresso.

                  Water – 3 litres

                  Eaaaaasy, peeeeasy.

                  September and October came in at 90% consistency.

                  Drinking 3 litres of water a day is second nature for me now. The only last bit of vulnerability I had with water was leaving it too late in the day (which is never smart if you want a good night’s sleep). But, I seemed to have nailed that now, usually getting three litres done before dinner.

                  Not much else to say on water!

                  10K steps

                  As mentioned above, steps is really now the only habit out of my strong six that has some vulnerability to it.

                  Steps came in at 73% consistency in September and 81% consistency in October. And this highlights the vulnerability. I fell below the mark in September, and only just scraped through in October.

                  The root cause of the vulnerability is clear to me – always has been. When I miss, I usually fail to have a plan for the day, and I get a very low amount of steps in during the morning and early afternoon – leaving me with an uphill struggle to get it done.

                  And therefore the fix is an easy one. Have a plan on how to get them done, depending on what I have on for that day, and don’t leave them too late. It’s as simple as that, and that’s what I’ll focus on for November and December, to try and drop this vulnerability.

                  So far in November, I’m one miss out of four. And I’m standing here typing this as midday and have got only about 1,000 steps in. I’m not out of the woods with this one yet, far from it.

                  Whole foods – 80%

                  Alright, this is where it gets tough. September was 53% consistency and October was 48% consistency. Ouch.

                  Whole Foods is proving to be quite a struggle to make progress on. It took me four months to get over the 50% consistency mark, and I’ve been stuck there (ish) now for five months.

                  If I’m honest about it I haven’t been able to find a strategy to break out of the 50% mark. All I want for my next step is to reliably get into the 60% consistency area.

                  As I type this, it’s helping me to see where I need to put my focus. I track my calories and foods every week. And I am pretty consistent in eating over 70% whole foods over the period of a week. The problem is that it’s lumpy. And by that I mean that Mon to Weds is usually extremely clean (nearly 100%). Yet, things take a massive dip starting from Thursday evening. That means that my number of days that I hit 80% whole foods is only about half the time (hence the 50% consistency for 80% per day over month).

                  So, it’s Friday and the weekend that I need to focus my efforts. If I can tighten up things there, I know I can safely get into the 60% consistency. Possibly even 70% consistency area.

                  Watch this space for if I’m able to do this in November!

                  Wrap up

                  All in all, September and October were two really solid months.

                  If we put whole foods aside, with the exception of one habit, in one month (steps for September), every single habit was above 805 consistency and in the green. And let’s face it, the one that fell short was still at 73% consistency, so not a million miles away.

                  Whole Foods is the big one that stands out that needs more focus from me. And again, not disastrous, I just have to figure out the jump from 50% consistency and into the 60’s.

                  So, my goals for November are:

                  • My six ‘safe’ habits (alcohol, sleep, protein, caffeine, water and steps) to be 80%+ consistency
                  • My seventh ‘work in progress’ habit (whole foods) so be 60%+ consistency

                  And my two big focuses are:

                  • Steps – have a plan for how they will get done each day, and don’t leave them to late
                  • Whole foods – clean up my eating for Friday and the weekends

                  Wait, I’m going to make a change to a habit

                  I teased at the beginning that I was going to make a change to one of my foundational health habits.

                  Now that sleep seems fairly safe at six and a half hours and 80% consistency, I want to level things up a bit.

                  Why? Sleep is arguably my most important foundational health habit. Six and a half hours was always my starting point. It’s taken me the best part of three years to truly and comfortably get it to this level.

                  I can tell easily the difference between getting six and a half hours of sleep and above seven hours. I wake more refreshed, feel sharper, have better energy and a better mood.

                  I eventually want to work my way to eight hours, but am sort of on the fence as to whether it’s realistic or practical for me to get there. However, seven hours is definitely at least where I want to be, and it is also realistic.

                  To get there, I’m just going to need to pay extra attention to my bed and wake times, to ensure I’m in bed for at least eight hours, to allow for an hour of disturbances.

                  Worst scenario, I come in at 70% ish for a few months, until I can figure a thing or two out to be at 80%+ consistency.

                  So, in addition to the above two goals and focuses, that’s the third.

                  See you next month!


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                  Filed Under: Discipline, Focus, Habits

                  TWO things you have to change, if you want to build better habits and behaviours

                  October 26, 2024

                  There are two things you need to change if you want to be successful in building better health habits, behaviours, or any type of transformative change in your life.

                  Those two things are:

                  1. People

                  2. Environment

                  I challenge you to think about any big change you’ve made in your life. You will probably notice that the people in your life and your environment changed along with it.

                  On the flipside, I challenge you to think about any big change you’ve struggled to make in your life. It might even be a change that you’re struggling to make at the moment. You will notice that the people and environment were / are fairly static and not changing much.

                  You can’t expect a new result if the people you surround yourself with, or your environment doesn’t change much. Your determination and will power won’t be enough to overcome people and the environment not changing.

                  Now, I know that making changes to the people in your life or your environment sounds big and scary. But, it doesn’t mean you have to do everything at once. You don’t need to up sticks and move to a new town. You don’t have to start ghosting friends and family. It usually happens much more subtly and piecemeal than that.

                  The best way to illustrate this is to share some examples in my own life, and some from my friends. I think this will help you connect the dots between how transformative changes are made, alongside changes to people and environment.

                  Let’s start with people.

                  1. People.

                  I used to really struggle with my fitness and my health. I found it very hard to adopt the behaviors and health habits that I wanted to have in my life.

                  I wasn’t able to stick to foundational health habits like moderating my alcohol and drinking enough water. I couldn’t get my act together and train consistently. I also had an incredibly bad relationship with food, which led to a lot of binge eating foods that were bad for me.

                  Today, I stick to seven foundational health habits extremely consistently. I’m training five to six times a week, and am active almost every single day. I now have a much better relationship with food, and my whole foods percentage is usually above 70%.

                  Those are gigantic changes to have made over only a couple of years. And what I notice is that the people in my life also changed throughout the journey.

                  When I was struggling to train consistently, I trained at a CrossFit gym. There was a great coach there called Jamie, who led the morning sessions. Where possible, he would give me some 121 pieces of advice – but ultimately, most of our time together was in the group sessions.

                  Today, Jamie is my personal trainer. He does all of my programming, and also helps me more broadly with lifestyle, mindset and health. I talk to him weekly and now consider him a close friend. Bringing Jamie closer has been instrumental in how I’m now able to consistently stick to a training program, and also lead the lifestyle I have today.

                  Here’s another good example. I have two good friends in my life called Rich and Barry. We share many of the same health goals and we’re going through a similar journey with our health and fitness. There isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not sending voice notes, exchanging whatsapp messages and talking to each of them. We’re much closer and they play a much bigger part of my life now, vs. two or three years ago. This has made it alot easier for me to make changes in my life when it comes to my health, fitness and my habits.

                  There are also a bunch of other like minded people, who whilst not as close as Jamie, Rich and Barry, are on the periphery. These people have become a bit closer to me because we naturally share the same goals and are going through a similar journey.

                  Even as I write this, it’s become so much clearer to me how the people in my life have changed as I’ve made my own big changes in my life. Jamie, Rich, Barry and some other friends are now much closer. We share ideas, inspire each other and there’s a sense of accountability that exists between us. I also naturally happen to see slightly less of some other friends too.

                  Here’s one more example of how people in your life will change when you successfully make big changes in your life – this one is with my friend Barry again.

                  Like me, Barry struggled with his relationship with alcohol for quite a long time. And, like me, he failed to moderate alcohol, or give it up for quite a long time – before becoming sober.

                  Barry is now a year and a half sober. And it’s interesting to notice that the people in his life have changed significantly over this time.

                  Firstly I hope that he would agree with me that he and I have become closer during this time. I was slightly ahead of him in giving up alcohol, and we became closer as he made this big change in his life.

                  Barry also became friends with a guy called Manolis he met at the boxing gym (a new environment he manifested for himself – are you starting to better see the connection between environment and people?).

                  Manolis ended up moving into Barry’s family house for the best part of a year. Manolis is a pretty fit guy. He boxes, trains a lot and doesn’t drink alcohol. Even though perhaps Barry didn’t realise this at the time, he was bringing a really good influence close into his life, and this almost certainly made giving up alcohol easier.

                  In the last year, Barry has invested in, and has helped build the yoga retreat Mana and Wak. He’s gone on to build a strong relationship with the person who founded and runs that retreat.

                  It’s been impressive to see him help build a whole new community of people around him. People that like to do yoga, cold swims, sauna, train jiu-jitsu, drink coffee and eat good food. And wouldn’t you know it? The people that are part of this type of community either tend to not drink, or they’re certainly not drinking when they’re doing those types of things.

                  Notice how the people in Barry’s life over the last couple of years have changed significantly. Not only did he manifest a lot of new people. I’m closer to him. He’s good friends with Manolis. He has a whole community of like minded people around him at the Yoga retreat. And I know for a fact that he spends less time with some of the people he gravitated towards when he drank alcohol.

                  And I know for a fact that this made a massive difference to him being able to give up alcohol, vs. really struggling to give it up many times before that.

                  Notice that both of the changes Barry and myself have made to our friends group, didn’t happen all at once. They happened over a number of years, and they happened a step at a time. We didn’t even necessarily know the people to bring into our life, or who to be more distant with at any one point in time. It happened much more piecemeal and organically.

                  So, you don’t need to decide all of these things at once. You just need to start being more conscious of the people that you might want to be spending less time around, and who you might want to be spending more time around. If you do that, you will find yourself being able to make big changes to habits and behaviors much more easily.

                  2. Environment

                  Environment is the second thing you need to change if you want to be successful in building better health habits and behaviors.

                  The examples I want to share for environment are smaller, but I think they will help illustrate how a change in environment can help you make a transformative change in your life a lot easier.

                  I’ve always struggled with my relationship with food. I have a huge sweet tooth and am prone to binge eating on bad foods. This tends to happen mostly in my the house, which is where I spend most of
                  my time.

                  I ended up making one tweak to my environment, which made a huge difference to my challenges with eating bad foods. I took every type of bad food that I was tempted by (chocolate, sweets, biscuits etc.) and I put them in a big black box that has two combination lock padlocks on it. The only people that know the combination is my wife and daughter.

                  This means that the types of foods that tempt me and are bad for me, are no longer around me or accessible. When I open my cupboard, all I see is either foods that aren’t great for me, which I am not tempted by (bars, cereals, crisps etc.) or healthy foods I am better off eating.

                  I literally don’t have access to the bad foods that I am tempted to graze on when I’m at home. This has made a gigantic difference to the quality of my diet – it’s been night and day.

                  Want to hear something hilarious? Recently I’ve realised that the combination padlocks don’t properly secure the black box. I thought that would ruin the whole thing for me. Yet, I still don’t find myself hardly ever tempted to go into that box. It’s just enough friction to keep me on the right side of things. Plus, breaking into a black box to eat chocolates just isn’t a good look at all!

                  Another good example when it comes to a change of environment is with my training. When I was training at the CrossFit gym, I found it very hard to be consistent with my training.

                  I would fairly regularly miss sessions that I signed up to do. The gym is only a five minute drive from my house. However, in the winter it’s a hassle to get up, get dressed, scrape ice from the car and then make the drive. It’s basically twenty minutes of faffing either side of being in the gym.

                  Over the last couple of years I’ve been training in my converted garage home gym. I love training much more now. I only have to walk fifteen or so steps and I’m in my own space that I have curated exactly
                  how I want it. I also realised I prefer to train by myself. Making that change to my training environment means I’m now able to train five to six times a week consistently. I usually look forward to it and the
                  friction is so much less having it on my doorstep.

                  Another example – My Yeti water bottle. I struggled to be consistent with drinking enough water and staying hydrated for a long time. However, now it’s probably one of my easiest health habits to stick to.

                  Before I used to drink my water in random bottles or glasses. I know it sounds silly, but my Yeti water bottle is an expensive, beautiful bottle. It’s nice to fill up, hold and drink. And because it’s one liter, I know I just need to drink three of them a day.

                  This change has just made it easier and nicer to drink more water. It has helped me go from struggling to drink even a liter per day, to now being able to drink 3 liters as almost second nature.

                  I’ll give you one last example of changes to an environment. For that, we’ll go back to my friend Barry.

                  When Barry was giving up alcohol, one of the first changes he made was to no longer step foot into the pub. Now, I know you’re probably thinking, that’s a pretty obvious one right?

                  Sure, but you have to remember that at the time, Barry had quite a few friends that he still wanted to spend time with. He even tried for a while to go to the pub and stick to soft drinks and zero beers – which wasn’t a very successful strategy.

                  Only when he pulled himself out of the pub environment did he start to have a better chance of finally giving up alcohol. And that environment change, led to another. He replaced time in the pub with going to a boxing gym. And then being at a boxing gym, eventually led to the retreat and a new community altogether. Today he spends a lot of his time when not at work and with the family, doing cold plunges, sauna, yoga etc.

                  Now, he didn’t necessarily know he was going to make those drastic changes to his environment at the beginning. It started with just a first decision to no longer go into the pub – and then one environmental change naturally led to another. And with each change, the more he felt he was able to change about himself. He’s literally a different person today vs. a few years ago.

                  Wrap up

                  I hope this has given you a good example of how you have to make changes to the people in your
                  life and your environment if you want to bring new behaviors and habits – or if you want to make any type of transformative change in your life.

                  When you’re trying to build new habits and behaviors, I would encourage you to think about a tweak that you can make to the people around you and your environment.

                  Remember, you don’t have to make a lot of changes all at once. Start with making a small change. Bring someone in closer. Distance yourself from that one person who is making it harder for you to make a change. Make a tweak here or there to your environment.

                  These small changes will naturally lead to other changes with people and environment – perhaps ones you’re not even able to see presently. And before you know it, your life will start to look quite different – both in terms of the positive changes you’re able to make, but also for how the people in your life and environment shifts around you.


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                  Filed Under: Discipline, Habits, Health

                  Mastering Consistency: The Key to Transforming Your Health and Fitness (And How to Build It)

                  October 13, 2024

                  What if I told you that there is one thing that is the key to transforming your health and your fitness? And nothing else will come even close. Well. That one thing is CONSISTENCY.

                  Consistency is without doubt the single biggest reason that I’ve been able to transform how I look and feel over the last few years – vs. struggling for about twenty years prior to that.

                  And I can tell you, it’s unbelievable to witness the results that are possible – if you just week in, week out – stick to foundational health habits, train hard, and eat right. It’s literally impossible to not look good, and feel great.

                  But here’s the thing – I wasn’t always consistent. I spent nearly twenty years struggling to get it right. In those twenty years, I really did want it. I really did try very hard. I was just never able to get my act together.

                  I would get stuck in a vicious cycle of shooting for perfection. And then, as soon as I wasn’t able to achieve that perfection, I would fall off the wagon HARD. A good example. If I slipped on my diet, I would then fall into a long cycle of bingeing on all types of foods that were bad for me. It was some type of weird ‘get it out of my system’ before I started again behaviour. But, really, I was just self sabotaging.

                  Or, it was as simple as I just couldn’t seem to rustle up the raw discipline that was necessary for me to be consistent with my habits, training and nutrition.

                  All in all, there was just a lot of starting – then stopping – and then starting back up again.

                  And by the way – each time I started back up, I would throw everything at it. But, no amount of intense effort – even if I was giving 120% for a short time – could make up for the lack of steady, consistent action.

                  So, in case I haven’t made it clear enough – consistency is everything. You absolutely have to be consistent over a medium to long term time frame if you want to get impressive results. Nothing else will work.

                  —

                  So, the million dollar question (actually two):

                  1. What’s the key, then, to being ABLE to be consistent over a medium to long term time frame?
                  2. What’s the difference between those that struggle and those that find it easy?

                  You’ve probably heard of people like David Goggins or Jocko Willink. Both are ex Navy SEALS.

                  Goggins, who famously runs 10 miles every day, and Willink, who posts a 4:30 a.m. watch photo on X to prove his routine – they make it look easy.

                  For most of us, it feels impossible to be this disciplined, this consistent. It’s almost as if Goggins and Willink were born with some type of superhuman willpower or motivation.

                  Well, the good news is that you don’t need to be born with anything special. I can assure you, I certainly wasn’t. And I have gone from someone who lacked discipline and wasn’t able to be consistent for most of my adult life – to someone today who is extremely disciplined and consistent with my foundational health habits, training and nutrition – week in, week out.

                  I can boil this transformation down to two key shifts that I had to make. And, I know, if you can make them too, consistency is going to feel almost effortless.

                  And the best part? You don’t need to live like a Navy SEAL or wake up at 4:30 a.m. every day to do it.

                  OK. Let’s dig into the two key shifts.

                  1. The Great, Good, OK and Bad Week Framework

                  The Great, Good, OK and Bad Week framework has been instrumental in helping move me away from the ‘shooting for perfection and falling off the wagon’ vicious circle that I would so often get stuck in.

                  In short, all of your efforts over a week can generally be categorised into one of these four buckets:

                  • Great week
                  • Good Week
                  • OK Week
                  • Bad Week

                  Those are your four buckets.

                  The biggest shift you need to make is actually one of mindset. And that’s because you need to really understand that you do not need to be consistently perfect to get the results you want

                  Let me say that one more time, because it’s crucial.

                  You do not need to be consistently perfect to get the results you want.

                  In fact, ironically, aiming for perfection is a sure fire way to NOT get the results that you want.

                  You can absolutely afford some bad and OK weeks in the mix of things and still achieve incredibly impressive results.

                  Here is a quick highlight of what great, good, ok and bad weeks look like for me, as well as how many of each you probably want to aim for:

                  Great Weeks

                  I’ll let you into a little secret – great weeks are actually kinda rare. I’m talking about those weeks where you just seem to have the midas touch. You hit almost every single note. It’s hard to even find a crack in anything that you did.

                  Great weeks tend to come round about only 10% of the time actually. So, that’s literally one every five weeks or so.

                  For me, a great week would look something like this:

                  • 3 weights sessions, with some good progression
                  • 3 hours of zone 2 cardio
                  • Average of 10K steps
                  • Hit my calories target
                  • Average of 175 grams of protein
                  • Over 70% whole foods
                  • And have a very strong week for foundational health habits (90%+)

                  This is just a picture perfect week. I couldn’t wish for anything more.

                  But, as I said, great weeks really only show up now and again. The stars often have to align for me to be able to come in this strong. In fact, I can’t even remember a time where I managed two consecutive great weeks.

                  Good Weeks

                  Good weeks are the norm for me. And they happen about 50% of the time.

                  A good week for me is usually where a lot of what I just described happens – but I also fall short on a few of those things. Perhaps I was only able to get half of my zone 2 cardio done, and my whole foods fell to 60%. On top of that, I might have struggled with one of my foundational health habits.

                  In the grand scheme of things, I still did a lot of very good things right. But, I dropped the ball on a few things that make it fairly obvious to point out where I fell short.

                  Falling short on a few things, when you did most other things right, isn’t a bad place to be at all. In fact, that’s why I label it a good week! It’s a good place to be.

                  You can’t be great at everything, week in, week out. Life is going to get in the way. Sometimes you’ll just make mistakes or have a lapse in willpower or discipline. It happens. And when it happens for a few things, it usually means I’ll have to settle for the week to be good – but not great.

                  OK Weeks

                  For me, these tend to show up about 20% of the time. And as another reminder, that means about every five weeks or so.

                  On the surface, it sounds bad to say you’ll have an OK week every one in five weeks. It instinctively feels too frequent. But, realistically, that’s how often they show up for me.

                  An OK week for me, is where I fall short on more than just a few things. I’m probably dropping the ball on maybe half of the things I’m trying to do.

                  Maybe I only got two weights sessions in. I only got an hour of zone 2 cardio in. My steps might have taken a big hit – maybe 5K average or so. And then nutrition and habits were a bit hit and miss across the board.

                  So, yeah. Just OK. Definitely not a disaster. I mean, I still got three good sessions in – a mix of weights and cardio. I still walked a bit. And despite missing quite a bit with my nutrition and habits, there were still a fair few things to point towards that were good. So, a mixed bag. Not good, but not bad. Just OK.

                  I look at OK weeks as a kind of ‘tread water’ week. Having too many of them certainly will stop you moving forward. But, at the same time, there’s enough being done in them to keep your head above water and stay somewhat neutral.

                  I usually hit an OK week when I have a lot of stress in my personal life, or perhaps I’m starting to feel some burnout and need to rest. Or, when I have too many travel and social commitments, as this will disrupt my routine.

                  That’s just how it goes sometimes. You have to take the rough with the smooth. Some weeks will feel OK and flat. You just need to accept them and move onto the next week. Push to get another good or great week under the belt.

                  Bad Weeks

                  A bad week tends to come around about 5-10% of the time. So, roughly one in every five to ten weeks.

                  It’s fair to say, bad weeks are pretty much disasters. They usually involve quite low activity across the board, and a fair amount of falling off the wagon when it comes to nutrition and habits.

                  These are the sort of weeks that you just want to forget about. For whatever reason (burnout, really bad sleep, stress, or even just simply losing your grip on things for a bit), the week is a bit of a car crash.

                  When these weeks happen, you just need to forget about them. Understand, they do not define you. Great, good and OK weeks came before it, and they will come after it. And if you have enough progress and momentum behind you, it will certainly take more than a bad week to make a dent in things.

                  On the whole, see bad weeks for what they are – a blip.


                  So, a bit of recap so far on the first key shift.

                  The biggest thing to remember is this – ‘you do not need to be consistently perfect to get the results you want’.

                  It’s impossible to have perfect or great weeks every week – you know this. Having this expectation of yourself is only going to get you stuck. Because the moment you fall short, you’re going to feel terrible about yourself. This then leads to self sabotage type behaviors – which will kill consistency in its track.

                  And it kills consistency in its track because the average when you’re stuck in a start and stop cycle is very low – regardless of how hard you push in the periods where you’re doing well.

                  So, all you need to do is stack a mix of great, good, OK and bad weeks, at the type of realistic ratios as I just described. Do that over a mid to long term time frame – and that is what will lead you to really impressive results.

                  So, that’s the first shift you need to make. Let go of perfection. Use the Great, Good, OK, and bad week framework.

                  If you adopt this framework, you’ll find that your discipline, consistency and results will shift to a whole new level.

                  And I can guarantee that it will work because I’ve seen it happen for myself. I’m in the best shape and health of my life by FAR, and I did it by using this framework to be consistent.

                  So, now let’s get into the second shift. And this is where we’re going to get back to foundational health habits.

                  2. Foundational Health habits

                  If you’ve listened to any of my previous podcast episodes, or anything I have written, this one is not going to be a surprise to you.

                  Yes, foundational health habits will help get you into the best shape and health of your life. Moderating alcohol and caffeine, sleeping well, drinking enough water to be hydrated, eating mostly whole foods, walking a lot, eating enough protein – there’s not a lot of debate that these things are objectively going to improve your health and fitness.

                  But, as I’ve said many times, the direct health benefits you get are only part of the prize. And arguably, they are actually the least important part of the prize.

                  Building foundational health habits into my life has helped me become someone who can now operate at a whole new level. It’s like I’m a completely different human being – someone who is so much more confident, disciplined and ultimately, someone who is now much, much more capable.

                  If I now look at what I’m able to be consistent with on a weekly basis, it would have been unfathomable for me to imagine that for myself only two years ago.

                  But today? I just feel super well put together. I’m optimistic, confident, and hardly have any anxiety. I have so much more energy. I have a level of discipline that’s not only been built from the journey I went through in building foundational health habits in my life, but it’s also a direct result of having them in my life.

                  And, what this all comes down to – I’ve become someone who is now capable of being consistent with what I decide I want to do. And before, I just wasn’t the type of person who was capable of it.

                  Each and every foundational health habit you bring into your life, will help shift what you’re capable of doing in life.

                  When you’re well slept, you will find it exponentially easier to be consistent. Same goes for being well hydrated, being active, reducing your alcohol intake etc. I won’t go through every habit. But you get the point. Each of the foundational habits, and particularly the compound nature of several of them, will transform your discipline and your ability to be consistent.

                  So actually, this second shift is far more important than the first. Yes, the great, good, OK and bad week framework is a really powerful tool to help you achieve consistency. But, if you lack the pure capability – if you’re not someone who is capable of sticking to something – no amount of framework is going to help you.

                  So, I encourage you to build foundational health habits into your life – starting today. Go through my previous articles and episodes, where I detail what the seven foundational health habits are, and feel free to copy my approach to tracking them. I can guarantee, you will not regret it. Because it will unlock a capability that has the potential to transform your whole life, not just your health and fitness.

                  As usual, I’m just an email away if you want any help with it.

                  Wrap up

                  Let’s wrap this up with a bit of a summary.

                  Consistency is the biggest thing you are going to have to nail, if you want to transform your health and fitness – and actually anything in your life.

                  You have to be able to week in, week out – consistently stick to the plan. And no amount of hacks or intensity will make up for a lack of consistency.

                  By adopting the great, good, ok and bad week framework, and building foundational health habits into your life, you will transform yourself into someone who is capable of being disciplined for the work that lies ahead. And that is what will get you the results you want.

                  I hope you’ve found this useful, and good luck on your journey.


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                  Filed Under: Discipline, Habits, Health

                  Habit Review: July 2024 (it got a bit bumpy!)

                  August 19, 2024

                  Hmmmm. So, July was a little bumpy. Let’s talk it through!

                  My goals for July were straight forward:

                  • 6 habits I’ve fairly firmly established – alcohol, sleep, protein, caffeine, water and steps – at 80% consistency and in the green
                  • Whole foods, which is my seventh habit that I’m in the early stages of building – my goal is to be above 50% consistency again (that would make it the third consecutive month of being above 50%) – and preferably I’d like to see it closer to 60% consistency. 

                  Alright, let’s jump into how well I did in July:

                  I think it’s fair to say that I had a bit of a wobble in July.

                  Of the six foundational health habits I wanted to keep 80% consistency or over and in the green, I only managed to keep four of them in the green – alcohol, protein, caffeine and water. I’m of course, super happy with those.

                  The two habits that slipped below 80% consistency and therefore into the orange were sleep and steps. Although, not by much – 74% consistency for sleep and 77% consistency for 10K steps. So, not overly happy with these. We’ll get into that in a few moments.

                  And then for my seventh foundation health habit, whole foods – that came in at 52% consistency. I’m fairly happy with that as it means I’ve managed to be over 50% for three consecutive months now. That’s a pretty good place to be given I’m in the early stages of building my whole foods habit. 

                  So, overall I’d say July was pretty mixed. A mix of some great, some good, and some OK.

                  As usual, let’s dive into the details:

                  No Alcohol

                  Goes without saying, 100% consistency. 

                  It’s also worth mentioning that I hit my three year sober milestone in July. I only realised two weeks after the fact, because I’m no longer concerned with counting. That’s just who I am now.

                  Sleep – 6.5 hours

                  Sleep came in at 74% consistency. This kinda pisses me off, because sleep is so damn important. I therefore hate to see it in the orange. 

                  That said, there’s nothing substantial or new that would lead me to believe I’m in trouble with sleep. I know my sleep habit is a little vulnerable at times. I got a friendly reminder of this.

                  There’s two things I’d put down to my sleep consistency being low in July. 

                  Firstly, I got off to a bad start (three misses in the first nine days). From there, I didn’t recover properly and clocked up a few unnecessary misses due to a lack of focus. I simply went to bed too late when I knew I should have gotten an early night to give myself the best chance of getting over 6.5 hours.

                  Secondly, I always find summer a bit of a challenge when it comes to sleep. It’s been a very hot July and the sun has been rising early. This always tends to present a bit of extra risk to hitting my 6.5 hours.

                  These will be the two things I think about over the next few months.

                  Protein – 175 grams

                  Protein came in at 81% consistency. I would usually expect this to be comfortably in the nineties. However, a few trips and unusual breaks from my routine caused this to dip.

                  As with all of my habits, anything 80% of above is entirely fine. Yeah, it’s nice to see things high eighties and into the nineties, but that’s icing on the cake. So long as I’m 80% or above and in the green with each of my habits, I’ve achieved my goal. So, no worries with protein. I’m pretty confident we’ll be back to 90%+ consistency over the next few months.

                  Caffeine – max two cups, and before midday

                  Same score and same analysis as protein – 81% consistency.

                  81% is perfectly fine with me. As usual, each of my six misses were very intentional – either around a trip or fuelling an afternoon workout. 

                  Water – 3 litres

                  Water was my highest scoring habit, at 94% consistency. Water is a standout habit for me. It’s almost second nature to drink 3 litres of water a day, and it’s not something I struggle with at all. This didn;t used to be the case, but over time I’ve just drummed it in.

                  10K Steps

                  Steps were a bit of a bummer – 77% consistency. Like sleep, this one annoyed me because it’s also one I have some vulnerability with and July kindly reminded me that.

                  Always the same deal – I lose my focus, and leave it too late. I know what I have to do to get it reliably over 80% consistency. And that’s what I’ll focus on for the next few months.

                  Whole Foods – 80%

                  Whole foods came in at 52% consistency. On one hand, that’s great and now three consecutive months over 50%. That’s a solid trend there. 

                  On the other hand, I’m not seeing signs of it getting closer to 60% and over. And that’s what I now need to work on.

                  Improving this is going to be very hard, and will take some time. Once you start to track everything you eat, you realise how hard it is to even eat 30 or 40% whole foods. With my target being 80% whole foods per day, it only takes one or two things to not be whole foods to kill the percentage.

                  To improve this, I just need to be much more focused and start to dial things in tighter. I’ve made a good leap from under 50% to always over 50%. So, some extra dialing in will help me get closer to, and over 60%. I’m motivated to do that, watch this space. 

                  July Wrap Up

                  Yes, I had fairly mixed results in July. It definitely could’ve been better.

                  But, I have to remind myself that this will sometimes happen. Now and again, I’m going to have to take it on the chin that established foundational health habits WILL fall under 80% consistency, and into the orange now and again.

                  I think the important thing to remember is that a blip on a habit for one month is definitely not a trend. Realistically, that’s just going to happen sometimes – through losing my focus or through the curveballs life will deal me from time to time.

                  What’s important is to make sure it isn’t a trend. If I slip into two consecutive missed months, that becomes the start of a trend. And three consecutive missed months? That’s definitely a trend.

                  So, I’ll pick myself up, and focus extra hard on things for the next few months. I want to prove to myself this is just a one off blip!

                  Aug Goals

                  My goals for August look a bit different from a usual month. That’s because I’m on holiday in Tenerife for ten days.

                  I’m going to do something a little custom for August, and only focus on and track steps and water. If you want to dig deeper into how I think about my foundational health habits whilst on holiday, and my rationale for only tracking steps and water, check out How I track my habits on holiday.

                  September will of course be back to normal. 

                  I will see you next month!


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                  Filed Under: Discipline, Habits, Health

                  How I track my habits on holiday

                  August 5, 2024

                  Have you ever gone on holiday, and done one of these two things?

                  • Completely gone off the rails, and let go of every part of your healthy lifestyle?
                  • Tried to maintain every part of your healthy lifestyle – only to find it impossible to do so?

                  Either way, I have a fix for you.

                  Since I started tracking habits, my view on how to handle things whilst on holiday has evolved. However, over the last year or so, and the last couple of holidays – it’s settled into a place that feels right and works for me.

                  Before I dive into the tactical stuff, I want to share three principles. These principles define my approach for how I think about my habits when I’m on holiday:

                  1. It’s critical to dial things back

                    It’s not realistic to perform at the same level when you go on holiday or on any type of significant trip.

                    A big part of that is your environment. Having a predictable environment is crucial to being consistent with habits. And of course, that becomes completely disrupted when you go on holiday. This makes it virtually impossible to achieve the same levels of consistency whilst on holiday – even if you wanted to.

                    And look, you’re going to have a hard time enjoying your holiday if you’re continually getting bent out of shape by struggling to stick to unrealistic habits. You don’t want that to spoil your holiday.

                    So, the first thing is you have to dial everything back, and reduce your expectations.

                    Taking a break from your usual discipline and consistency now and again, is actually a good thing.

                    2. Taking a break can help you re-group, and recharge.

                    Here’s a good example of that. I train in a five week block. Weeks one to four follow almost exactly the same structure, and increase in intensity. By the end of the fourth week, I’m always feeling physically and mentally tired.

                    Welcome, week five – the deload. In the fifth week, there is much less structure. The emphasis is on being out of the gym, staying super active and reducing the intensity.

                    By the time I’m through the fifth week, I’m recharged mentally and physically. I’m super ready to hit week one of the next block.

                    This is a good example of how it can be advantageous to take a bit of a break from the normal discipline now and again. And that’s what I aim to do when I’m on holiday.

                    3. Whilst a break is good, it’s important to not detach and go completely off script

                    If I were to lose every aspect of my foundational health habits, I know I’m going to feel crappy – literally in my body, but also in myself for letting go completely of a healthy lifestyle.

                    It’s important to keep some type of light or reduced habit practice in place. This helps to keep the element of discipline alive. What you’ll find is that it then won’t be such an uphill struggle to pick things up when you get back from vacation. Sure, you might be a bit rusty when you get back to things. But, if you’re anything like me, I dust myself off pretty quick.

                    So, the third principle is, it’s important to keep at least some level of commitment to habits while on holiday.

                    This is all a timely reflection for myself, because I’m heading off to Tenerife on holiday shortly.

                    So, with all of that said, what’s my exact approach and plan when I’m in Tenerife?

                    What’s worked really well the last couple of times I’ve been on holiday, is to pick just a few habits to focus on. I tend to try and make sure these habits are not only the most foundational ones – but also ones which are friendly to stick to when on holiday.

                    For me, three habits always rise to the top:

                    1. Sleep

                    Sleep is hands down my most important foundational health habit. Firstly because of the direct impact it has on my physical and mental health. But, also because it has a lot of influence over the consistency of my other habits.

                    When I sleep well, I feel so much better. I’m more confident. I have little to no anxiety. More often than not, I am in a good mood and my energy is high.

                    2. Steps

                    Steps are the simplest way to stay active. I might do some other stuff when I’m on holiday – perhaps getting in the gym, practicing some bodyweight circuits, some mobility, and probably some swimming. But, that’s all a bonus, and only if I feel like it, or have access to those facilities..

                    Keeping steps as a habit, means that I will maintain a baseline of activity. And this is important for my mental health. Whenever I slip into being sedentary, the bad stuff tends to creep in.

                    3. Water

                    Water is an obvious one. It’s an easy habit to stick to when on holiday – and like sleep – when I’m hydrated, I feel good.

                    When I drink very little water, I feel tired, I get headaches and I tend to feel my mood lower.

                    The other thing about water and a holiday, is that it’s usually hot weather on a holiday. So, drinking water is an even more important habit to keep up to ensure that I stay hydrated.


                    So, those are the three habits I usually focus on whilst I’m on holiday – sleep, steps and water.

                    The other foundational health habits will definitely stay in the back of my mind for sure. Because many of them are becoming second nature for me now, they will still be upheld to some degree. But, importantly, I have no expectations, and they don’t get tracked.

                    Another piece to this is the actual target of each habit. Now, I think it’s perfectly fine to adjust either the actual goal for each of the habits (i.e number of litres of water to drink), or the total consistency that you’re aiming at for the period of time you’re on holiday (i.e 80% consistency)

                    For example, I usually aim for 10K steps a day, and 80% consistency over a normal month. On holiday, it would be perfectly fine to reduce that to 5K steps for 80%.

                    A lot depends on what type of holiday it is, and what is realistic for you. Remember, the key here is to hold onto a few of the most foundational health habits. You don’t want to abandon everything altogether. Pulling back on the targets is perfectly fine and still achieves that.

                    I find the existing targets I have for sleep, steps and water, as well as the 80% consistency just fine for my upcoming holiday. In fact, it’s usually fine for any holiday I go on. I’ve used this approach for weekend trips, as well as a three week holiday in the US.

                    So, to summarise, the habits that I’m going to track for my holidays are:

                    • Sleep: 6.5 hours
                    • Steps: 10K a day
                    • Water: 3 litres a day

                    Now, I’m going to throw in a bit of a curve ball for this holiday. I’ve decided I’m not going to track my sleep, and instead just focus on tracking only steps and water.

                    You might ask – why on earth would I do that? Surely, sleep is the most obvious one to hold onto?

                    You might be right. But, there are a couple of reasons I want to run this experiment.

                    Firstly, I want to take a break from whoop. I’m interested to know what it feels like from having a break from the daily data. I also want to avoid a white band on my wrist, next to the rest of my beautifully sun tanned body!

                    Also, sleep is something that is naturally very high for me on holiday. I’m not out partying, and I tend to allow myself to lie in. I have a lot of confidence that my sleep will naturally come in above the 6.5 hour mark for 80% regardless of how closely I track it.

                    There is a good chance that I will learn from this experiment that letting go of tracking sleep is a bad idea. But, I’m interested to give it a go and see how it feels.

                    So, for Tenerife, I will only focus on tracking steps and water for my 80% consistency. I’ll still somewhat be aware of getting over 6.5 hours of sleep, but I won’t track it like steps and water.

                    To summarise, here are my recommendations for tracking foundational health habits on holiday:

                    • Pick two or three foundational health habits that you will focus on, and track
                    • Try and make those habits the most foundational, but also ones which fit in nicely with your holiday
                    • Only focus on tracking and hitting those habits whilst on holiday. Let go of all expectations for the other habits.
                    • When you’re back from holiday, get back to full tracking!

                    I’ll see you after my holiday, hopefully with a sun tan!


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                    Filed Under: Discipline, Habits, Health

                    Habit Review: June 2024 (I’m building momentum!)

                    July 10, 2024

                    Before we get stuck into June, I want to take a moment to recap my goals with foundational health habits for 2024.

                    I have two goals for 2024:

                    • Take the six foundational health habits I’ve mostly established (alcohol, sleep, protein, caffeine, water and steps) – and truly make them second nature. Whilst most of these are in a pretty good place, some are still fragile.
                    • Get whole foods (my newest foundational health habit) up to mostly 80% consistency and in the green. It doesn’t necessarily have to be second nature (as with the other six), But it would be good to get it up and around 80% consistency.

                    And therefore, a reminder of what my goals for June were:

                    • Alcohol, sleep, protein, caffeine, water and steps at 80% consistency and in the green
                    • Whole foods to be above 50% consistency again (it was above 50% for the first time in May) – preferably closer to 60% consistency.

                    Alright, lets jump in!:

                    As you can see, June was a REALLY strong month. I achieved both of my goals. My six habits were at least 80% consistency and in the green, and whole foods was above 50% (53%). That’s exactly where I wanted to be.

                    Let’s dive into the detail:

                    No Alcohol

                    100%, of course. I’m nearly three years sober 🙂

                    Sleep – 6.5 hours

                    Sleep came in at 87%. That’s a small Improvement from May, and now six consecutive months in the green. That’s awesome to see. And it reflects the fact that I’m finding sleep a little easier to keep over 80% lately.

                    Ultimately, anything over 80%, and preferably with no double misses, is what I’m looking for. And June was exactly that, so we’re good.

                    Protein – 175 grams

                    Protein landed right on the nose at 80%.

                    I’m probably always going to find myself with a handful-ish of days throughout the month where I struggle to get 175 grams of protein in. It’s usually around a trip, a low protein dinner, or simply a lack of planning.

                    By the way, even when I miss my protein number on a given day, my average for the week is usually around 180-190 grams. So, it’s not the biggest thing in the world if I’m hanging around 80% consistency.

                    That said, it’s really useful to hold myself accountable to seeing 80+5 consistency, with no more than six misses in a month. Because, more misses would easily become a slippery slope to an average below 175 grams.

                    Caffeine – max two cups, and before midday

                    Caffeine, like protein, came in at 80% consistency.

                    Caffeine is likely to always come in at around 80%. And that’s because all of my misses are an intentional miss – usually enjoying an afternoon coffee on a trip, or to fuel a later than usual workout.

                    So, 80% consistency, with no double misses is exactly where I like to be!

                    Water – 3 litres

                    87% for water. No double misses.

                    I’ve also been reaching my goals of 3 litres of water much more smoothly recently – usually getting it in by 8PM ish (important to avoid night time toilet visits!).

                    So, super happy with water.

                    10K Steps

                    I found steps a bit of a struggle in June. I scraped in at 80% consistency, and also managed a double miss, which I don’t like to see.

                    What causes me to miss my step goal? Mostly, bad weather or poor planning. The poor planning part is what I need to focus on. I often leave getting a start on my steps too late in the day, which leaves me open to the miss.

                    So, in July, I need to focus on 1. having a plan, and 2. breaking the back of the 10K steps as early in the day as possible.

                    Whole Foods – 80%

                    Whole foods came in at 53% consistency – about the same as last month.

                    That was my goal, so I’m happy with that. This now really sets a benchmark for me to improve upon. The second half of the year is really about keeping consistency above 50%, and slowly nudging things into the 60% and the 70% area. And, hopefully towards 80% consistency and in the green for the end of the year.

                    Importantly, I’ve been making real strides on a day-to-day basis in making better, conscious decisions around the food I’m putting into my mouth.
                    .
                    So, I’m happy with 53% consistency. I still feel very vunerably when it comes to eating 80% whole foods each day, and I’m not completely convinced I will never see a drop below 50%. But, what’s important is that it’s all heading in the right direction. And that’s exactly what I need for now.

                    Wrap Up

                    I’m really, really happy with June. It was an incredible month.

                    Six of the habits that I expected to be 80% consistency or above, were. And my seventh habit (whole foods) stayed above 50% consistency. So, I achieved both of my goals for June.

                    Overall, 2024 is shaping up to be a great year. More greens, less oranges, and hopefully no reds from here.

                    My goals for July

                    My goals for July are exactly the same as they were for June.

                    • Alcohol, sleep, protein, caffeine, water and steps at 80% consistency and in the green
                    • Whole foods to be above 50% consistency again (it was above 50% for the first time in May) – preferably closer to 60% consistency.

                    I will see you next month!


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                    Filed Under: Discipline, Habits, Health

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