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):
- What’s the key, then, to being ABLE to be consistent over a medium to long term time frame?
- 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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