Habits

September’s results are in.

It’s officially a SMASH – far better than I could have hoped for!

If you remember, August was a write off. I was on holiday for a big part of it, so I let go of any expectations. I guess I had something to prove to myself in September. Was I going to allow a dip in August to derail me? Or, was I going to come back strong?

Before we jump in, here’s a quick recap of my goals for September:

• Get the habits which I previously considered in the bank (i.e easy to keep at over 80%) back to over 80% – no alcohol, intermittent fasting, caffeine, water and supplements.

• See where sleep and paleo fall and then plan my goals for October.

Here’s how September looked:

WHAT A MONTH. Every single habit is over 80% – including sleep which wasn’t even part of my goals! I even hit an average sleep of 7.12 hours – a record for me. September was by far my best month since I started tracking my habits. I reckon even Goggins would be proud!

I don’t really have much to say about each habit – other than I just put my head down and focused on doing really well in September. And it paid off.

I’m AGAIN reminded about the power of physically and visually tracking my daily habits. Almost every day it helped nudge my self awareness and behaviours into a better place. It’s life changing.

So, what will I focus on for October?

Simple. I want the same.

I need to prove to myself September wasn’t a lucky month. Ideally I need three months of being in the green for those six habits (alcohol, sleep, fasting, caffeine, water and supplements) to feel like I have them NAILED. At the rate I’m going, there’s a decent chance I can achieve that this year. Only after I’ve achieved this, will I consider adding in anything new.

Let’s address the elephant in the room – my diet. I’m desperate to tackle it. Recently, I’ve been reflecting on how I want to eat. I’m starting to change my view a bit. Paleo is too strict for me to be consistent or happy with. I’m realising that having it as a goal is actually causing some unhealthy eating habits. I’ll write about this soon.

What I’m likely to do is follow CrossFit’s nutrition recommendation:

Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar.

I definitely want to avoid ultra-processed foods. But wait, that just looks like paleo right? Well, the big change I want to make is incorporate (in moderation) some cheese, milk, greek yoghurt, oats – perhaps even a small amount of potato. So, still very clean, but with a bit more leeway.

The trick is in defining a rule set that I can clearly hold myself accountable to, so I can track my progress against it. I still have some work to do to figure that out.

For October, I’m going to officially drop paleo as something I’m tracking. Instead, I’ll track (but importantly have no goals for) myself against the crossfit recommendation – along with infrequently allowing some cheese, milk, greek yoghurt, oats and baked potato. That’s still too fuzzy for my liking. I mean, what exactly does ‘some fruit’ or ‘little starch’ mean? But, for now I’ll use my best judgement when it comes to daily tracking. And I’ll decide on a clearer set of rules before November starts.

October, let’s go!

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Let’s get straight to the point – August was a write off.

I expected it to be. I was on holiday for ten days, so I decided beforehand to still track my habits, but let go of any expectations.

Here’s how it looked:

Ouch.

I’ll make a few brief comments on each habit, and then get to my goals for September.

• No Alcohol – I’ve been sober for 13 and a half months, so didn’t expect this to drop below 100%.

• Sleep 6.5HR – the hot weather we had in the UK, my daughter not sleeping well and late nights on holiday were the main causes for a low 52%.

• Paleo – I ate what I wanted on holiday, as well as the period before and after – hence a very low 16%.

• Intermittent fasting (16 hour fast, 8 hour eating window) – I ate a very big breakfast every day on holiday, but held my consistency before and after – managing a fairly decent 45%.

• Caffeine (max 3 cups, before midday) – same as above, I held my consistency before and after holiday, settling at 61%.

• Water: 2 litres – this was a habit I tried to keep up whilst I was on holiday, and I did exactly that – 84%!

• Supplements – I held my consistency before and after holiday, and took about 5 days of supplements with me on holiday – managing a good 68%

As I said above, not great – but as expected.

As I look forward to September, I’m reminded of the TWO most important things in building consistency with my habits over the last six months:

1. Visually track progress on a daily basis

2. Focus on one habit at a time

It’s the second one I really need to pay attention to as I build towards all habits being at 80%+ for the end of the year.

With that in mind, I’m going to keep it super simple in September. My goal is to get the habits which I previously considered in the bank (i.e easy to keep at 80%+) back to over 80% – no alcohol, intermittent fasting, caffeine, water and supplements. I’ll see where sleep and paleo fall and then plan my goals for October. Even though I have no goals with them, I am quietly confident they will improve.

Being on holiday has also given me a bit of time to reflect and think about where I want to take my health habits over the longer-term. My goal is to get all of the above habits to 80% by the end of the year. If I am being realistic, even if I get there, it will be coming in hot. So, I’ll need to spend at least the first three months of next year resisting the temptation to add in anything new. I need to prove to myself that these are in the bank and easy to maintain at over 80% – however long it takes.

That said, once I have achieve this, I have a few ideas for other habits to focus on:

• Mobility exercises

• 150g protein per day

• Increase sleep to 7 hours

• Reduce caffeine to 2 cups per day

Whilst it’s tempting to add these types of habits now (even just to track them), I know it’s the wrong thing to do. It will distract and overwhelm me.

OK, let’s do September 👊

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I’ve been tracking my health habits on a daily basis for six months now. It’s been so powerful, I can’t imagine ever not doing it.

Here’s a recap of my goals for July:

• Eat paleo – meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts (50% of the time)

• Everything else, 80% or over – no alcohol, sleep 6.5 hours, intermittently fast (8 hours eating and 16 hours fasting), maximum of three cups of caffeine before midday, two litres of water and taking my supplements.

And, here are the results:

Overall, I’m really pleased with July. There were quite a few positives and also a few things to focus on improving.

I’ll start with the positives:

• Not drinking alcohol is hardly a thing for me now. I had a few social catch ups in July and I found it effortless to not drink. I also hit my one year alcohol free in July.

• Caffeine, Water and Supplements are also now firmly established daily habits. I suspect if I dropped the tracking altogether, I would easily continue to maintain 90% + consistency.

• Intermittent fasting under new stricter rules (only water and black coffee in my 16 hour fasting period) reached over 80% consistency for the first time. And, it felt easy. When I missed, I made a conscious decision on that day not to fast – it was never the result of me losing concentration or failing due to willpower. I’m confident I can easily maintain 80% + consistency going forward.

Now, for the areas to improve:

• Paleo came in at 45% consistency – a little shy of my 50%+ goal. That said, there are a few positives to take from that. Firstly, it was pretty close. Secondly, I proved that last month’s 47% wasn’t a fluke. Thirdly, I found a better consistency on weekdays, where I was able to eat paleo for three or four days back to back. And lastly, I managed to eat paleo on a Friday one time! So, even though I fell short of my 50%+ goal, there’s a lot of progress that gives me the confidence I can get into over 50% territory soon.

• Sleeping 6.5+ hours dropped to 68% consistency – my lowest score since March. This was disappointing, and I need to tighten this up. That said, July had some unusual challenges. It was HOT in the UK and this made it much harder to sleep. I also had a few things going on with my daughter and dog that disrupted my sleep. So, I feel I can tighten up (earlier nights, better night time routine and waking a bit later) over the next few months and soon get to a solid 80%+ consistency.

So, overall, I think I’m in a really strong place. And, I need to keep reminding myself that where I am now compared to 6 months ago is night and day.

That brings me to August and also thinking about where I want to be by the end of the year.

Let’s start with where I want to be by the end of the year. That’s an easy one. I want to be 80% + consistent on all of the above habits I am tracking. To do that, I have to maintain the five habits already at 80% consistency – no alcohol, intermittently fast, caffeine, water and taking my supplements. I don’t think that will be challenging. And then I have to get my sleep and paleo to 80% +. That will be much more challenging and will likely take the rest of the year five months) to achieve.

Now onto my goals for August. That’s a tricky one. I have a 10 day holiday in August where it wouldn’t be enjoyable or sensible to try and achieve the same level of consistency with my habits. So, I’ve decided to take August off. I will still track my habits, but will let go of any expectations. The main things I will push to keep at a decent level are sleep and water. There’s a good chance I can keep these at 80%+, but let’s see. Everything else is bound to drop significantly. And then in September, we start again!

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I’ve become almost obsessed with tracking and improving my daily habits over the last five months. I can’t remember what inspired me to do it, but I’m glad I did. It’s been life changing.

Before we dive in, here’s a quick reminder of my goals for June:

• eat paleo – meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts (50% of the time).
• Intermittently fast (8 hours eating and 16 hours fasting) under new stricter rules (80% of the time).

I also wanted to maintain the other habits I’ve already established at 80% – no alcohol, sleep 6.5 hours, maximum of three cups of caffeine before midday, two litres of water and taking my supplements.

Here’s how I did:

On the face of it, that doesn’t look great. I failed to get Paleo over 50%. I failed to get my intermittent fasting over 80%. My sleep slipped below 80%.

That said, it was very close. There are a bunch of things to be happy about:

• Whilst my paleo consistency didn’t hit 50% or over, I made a very significant improvement from last month. Things are heading in the right direction.
• Whilst my intermittent fasting consistency didn’t hit 80% or over, it was super close at 77%. I also have to remember, it’s only been two months of holding myself to a much stricter set of rules (only water and black coffee in my fasting period).
• Whilst my sleep dipped below 80%, it wasn’t by too much (73%). I also managed to keep my average sleep nice and high at 6 hours, 56 mins.
• All other habits I wanted to maintain are sitting nicely over 80%.

If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you’ll know that I avoid goals. Instead, I prefer to establish a direction I want to head. From that perspective, I’m heading in the right direction with everything. I have to remind myself that my progress won’t be linear and there is more to learn. And ultimately, my overall progress over the last five months is more than I could ever hoped for.

As for what to learn from June, there are a few things that jump to mind.

• Events that take me out of my routine, tend to knock me off course. For example, I went to visit my Mum for three nights at the beginning of the month. My daughter also had a weekend of birthday activities towards the end of the month. I lost my consistency too much over these periods. I need to plan better for these type of things. I don’t have to be perfect in these periods, but it makes sense to at least think about damage limitation.
• Sometimes I just get a bit lazy with my habits and forget. Taking my supplements is a good example. There’s no reason for that to be under 100%.
• The fix for my sleep is to be more disciplined with getting to sleep earlier. I naturally wake up very early and then find it hard to go back to sleep. I also have a dog and a daughter that helps with that. So, if I go to bed late, there’s a very good chance I’ll struggle to get my 6.5 hours in.

That brings me to my goals for July. They will be exactly the same as June.

That’s because I see my next big milestone as being able to get paleo to 50% or over and everything else 80% or over. And not just one month – for a few months. I want it to feel natural and effortless. I’m close. It feels like I’m starting to find a baseline with these habits. But, it could take the rest of the year for it to settle into a consistent baseline, which I’m totally fine with.

So, just a recap on my July goals:

• Eat paleo – meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts (50% of the time).
• Everything else, 80% or over – no alcohol, sleep 6.5 hours, intermittently fast (8 hours eating and 16 hours fasting), maximum of three cups of caffeine before midday, two litres of water and taking my supplements.

Let’s go. 👊

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Tracking my daily habits continues to be one of the most life changing things I’ve done. That’s no exaggeration. When I look at my progress, I struggle to believe it’s me.

My goal for May was to focus on two things:

• Eat paleo – 50% (from a very low historic average of 10%)

• Intermittent fasting – 50% (under a new stricter criteria of only water and black coffee in my fasting period).

And of course, maintain the other habits I’ve already established at 80% – no alcohol, sleep 6.5 hours, maximum of three cups of caffeine before midday, two litres of water and taking my supplements.

Here’s how I did:

Let’s start with the good news:

• Intermittent fasting (under a new stricter criteria of only water and black coffee in my fasting period) was a lot easier than I expected. I hit 74% consistency – well over my 50% goal and already super close to 80% territory.

• Sleeping 6.5 hours finally got over 80% consistency for the first time – with my average sleep also increasing to 6 hours, 58 mins.

• All of the habits I was looking to maintain increased significantly – many hitting over 90% consistency and a couple even hitting 100%.

• Even though I’m not focusing on being active (I’m coming back from an injury), I’m now back to training three times a week.

I’m super proud of that. The habits I have over 80% are now very easy for me to maintain. Tracking them helps, but the best bit is that they’ve become a default behaviour for me. That’s a solid place to be.

Now for the not so good news – I came in at 30% consistency for eating paleo. That’s quite a bit less than my goal of 50%. I suspected I would find this very hard. And I did.

That said, 30% is a huge improvement from a historic average of 10%. It’s a solid step in the right direction.

It’s pretty obvious where I go from here. I need to get the intermittent fasting into the 80% zone, and get paleo into the 50% zone.

So, my goals for June are:

• eat paleo – meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts (50% of the time)

• Intermittently fast (8 hours eating and 16 hours fasting) under new stricter rules (80% of the time)

The fasting should come fairly easily. Paleo, not so much.

I’ve been thinking about where I need to focus to help get it to 50% consistency. I have to cut out snacking on bad foods in the evening. I’m often on course for a paleo day and then ruin it at the last minute. I also need to start getting some paleo days under my belt over the weekend (I didn’t manage a single weekend day in May). If I can make progress in those two areas, I should be able to get to my 50% goal.

See you in a month!

P.S, if you want to follow my journey chronologically, check out these posts:

Daily Habits – February 2022

Daily Habits – March 2022

Daily Habits – April 2022

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Tracking my daily habits has been a game changer. And I don’t use that phrase lightly. In just three months, I’ve built a handful of habits up to 80% consistency.

In fact, my focus for April was to nudge those handful of habits to 80% consistency. Here’s how I did:

I’m really pleased for a few reasons. Even though I fell just short of 80% for sleep (I missed it by one day) – I’ve shown that last month’s improvement was not a fluke. I also had a curve ball in the form of a camping trip that pulled my numbers down. I was more on the ball over the weekends too.

As with March, I wasn’t counting ‘Be active’ because I’ve only been walking and doing rehab for my back injury. I’m starting to ease back into training now, so I’ll start counting that in May.

So, the big question – what’s my focus for May?

I’ve been trying to decide if I should give myself another month to let the handful of habits really settle at 80% before tackling something new. That would probably be the sensible thing to do. But, I’m also itching to tackle my nutrition. After some thought, that’s what I’m going to do. It’s long overdue.

I would usually focus on only one thing at a time. However, there are two things that are very closely linked, which it makes sense to tackle together.

The first is eating paleo. This is going to be challenging for me. I have a bad relationship with food and tend to over-indulge in foods that are bad for me. I don’t know why I do it. I’ve tried to explore this with therapy and reading – but I haven’t been able to figure it out yet. I’m hoping that by making nutrition a focus within the framework of my daily tracking, I can make a breakthrough.

The second is intermittent fasting (8 hours eating, 16 hours fasting). But, wait – I’ve been telling you my intermittent fasting is already at over 80%? It is! Well, kinda. I drink cups of tea (and quite a few) in my 16 hours fasting window – so technically it’s not fasting because I consume milk.

The reason these are linked is because milk isn’t paleo (it’s dairy). So if I’m going to focus on eating paleo more often, I should also take the opportunity to tighten up my intermittent fasting.

So, my goals for May are:

• eat paleo – meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts (50% of the time).

• Intermittently fast (8 hours eating and 16 hours fasting) under new stricter rules (50% of the time).

I’ll now only consume water or black coffee in the fasting window.

If I can achieve 50% consistency for eating paleo and strict fasting, that would be massive for me. I can then see a path to nudging both of those to 80% over the next few months.

Of course, I’ll continue to maintain my 80% levels for sleep, drinking two litres of water, a maximum of three cups of caffeine before midday and taking my supplements.

A big ambitious month ahead. I’m ready for it. 👊

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P.S If you are interested in my progress for February and March, you can find them here – Feb, March.

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I started tracking my daily habits a couple of months ago. I wrote about how I did in February here.

It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done to improve my habits. It’s given me the dose of self awareness I needed to change my behaviours.

I made sleep a priority for March. I wanted to improve my sleep consistency (how many nights I slept for over 6.5 hours), whilst hopefully seeing everything else maintained.

Here’s how I did:

I’m super pleased. This is a nice baseline to improve upon.

The number of nights I slept over 6.5 hours jumped from 50% to 74%, which is a huge improvement. I also noticed my average sleep time was nicely up – from 6 hours, 23 minutes to 6 hours, 45 minutes (tracked by whoop)

The main change I made was to be more conscious of what time I went to bed and woke up. I know that sounds obvious, but I just didn’t think about it much previously. I would find myself going to bed about 23.00 and waking up at 05.00 – and then be surprised I only got 5 hours sleep.

I’m also pleased with my other scores improving. Remember, my goal was only to maintain them. Intermittent fasting, restricting caffeine to 3 cups before midday, drinking two litres of water and taking my supplements all increased. This is only the second month I’ve been tracking my daily habits, so the self awareness factor is continuing to help me be more consistent. It’s much easier to notice when I might be at risk of not achieving a habit on any given day – which then nudges me to take action to avoid it.

Eating paleo is obviously in a bad place. I was only focusing on sleep this month, so I didn’t expect it to increase. It needs a more well thought out plan of attack. Being active wasn’t tracked in March because I’m dealing with a lower back injury. I’m currently just walking and doing rehab (which I do daily, but I didn’t think it was useful to track it as being active).

That brings me to my focus for April. I’m very tempted to tackle eating paleo because I know that’s where the biggest bang for buck is (not only because it’s starting off low, but because an improvement here will improve my health the most). That said, it’s also a fairly complicated one because of my bad relationship with food.

I would also like to see the habits I have mostly dialled in get to at least 80%. Why 80%? No reason other than it feels about the right number to be consistent enough to get most of the benefits – whilst also giving me a bit of wiggle room to enjoy life and not stress about being perfect. Bringing sleep, intermittent fasting, caffeine, water and supplements up to 80% feels like a stretching – yet achievable ask for April. In a 30 day month, that allows me to have six misses.

In fact, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll aim to bring those up to 80% consistency in April. I know the two areas I need to focus on to do that. I need to be more focused on a daily basis (often I know the action I need to take to avoid a miss, but I let it happen anyway). I also need to be a bit more vigilant on the weekends, which is where I often drop the ball.

I think eating paleo will increase a bit, because I hate seeing it so low. But, it’s not the focus and I’m not attached to any type of result there. That’ll be for May.

Wish me luck!

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Last month I decided to track how consistent I was with my daily habits. The idea wasn’t to be perfect, but to bring better self awareness of how I was doing.

Here’s how I did in February:

It worked exactly as I wanted. It gave me more self awareness from both a micro and macro perspective.

From a micro perspective, I would sometimes realise I was at risk of not doing something as the day went on. For example, it might be mid afternoon before I realised that I hadn’t drank any water yet. If I left it for a few more hours, I would be into the evening and there was a good chance I wouldn’t get my two litres in. That would force me to course correct and drink a litre immediately to put me back on track. I can guarantee the big picture would look worse had I not had this daily dose of self awareness.

From a macro perspective, it’s super useful to look at a picture of a month like this. I can see what habits are almost effortless and which ones need a bit more focus. It’s also obvious where I have some harder thinking to do if I want to improve my consistency.

Here is what I noticed:

• No alcohol is a given. I’m 231 days sober. It’s a default habit and there’s no risk of having a drink.

• Being active 4-5 times a week and intermittent fasting is easy. An almost perfect record.

• Drinking 2 litres of water, 3 cups of caffeine (before Midday) and taking my supplements is fairly easy. A few slip ups here or there, but comfortably in the 80/20 zone.

• Eating paleo (ish), sleeping 6.5 hours, meditating for 60 mins and networking with two people a day need a lot of work. My record is anything from terrible to patchy at best.

• Weekends are trickier for me. It’s super easy to get off track with even habits that are fairly easy to keep up in the week. That’s something to think about.

I should add that mediating for 60 mins and networking with two people per day are new habits I’m trying to establish. I’m still in the early stages of figuring out the best way to get these habits to stick. But, paleo (ish) and sleeping 6.5 hours are things that have been on my radar for a long time, and as you can see I’m struggling with them.

As I head into March, it would be super easy (and predictable) to set out to try and improve everything that needs work. But, I know that will quickly become overwhelming and lead to failure. Instead, I need to pick one thing to focus on.

That’s sleep. It’s the easiest one to improve (I have a good sense of what to change) and will make the biggest impact.  If I’m sitting here at the end of March looking at the same type of picture, but with improved sleep – that’ll be a hell of a win.

If you want to improve your habits, I’d highly recommend tracking them like this. Having something in front of you that’s visual, gives you a healthy dose of self awareness many times a day. And being able to look at the bigger picture helps give you a sense of where to focus your efforts for improvement.

See you at the beginning of April 😊

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