Habits

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.

2. 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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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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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.

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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.

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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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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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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.

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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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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.
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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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