I’ve made three BIG changes to my foundational health habits. I’ve dropped two of my habits, and I’m bringing in a brand new one.
I don’t make changes to my habits lightly. Whether it’s changing my target with a particular habit, dropping one entirely, or bringing on a new one – there’s often months of reflecting before making changes like this.
I’m really excited about these recent changes. It takes everything up a couple of levels. This is now a much stronger set of habits for me.
I’ll start with the habits I’ve dropped. The first one is supplements.
Supplements
When I first introduced this as a habit, I took quite a large number of supplements every day – eight different ones, and over 20 pills and capsules a day. I believed it was important to hold myself accountable for taking these on a daily basis.
However, over time my stance on supplements has shifted quite a bit. Nowadays, I actually take very few supplements. I’ve stripped it right back to just a few that I think are good for me.
As it stands, these are the four I take:
- Protein powder
- Creatine Monohydrate
- Magnesium
- Athletic greens
The reason I choose to take these four supplements is because they each serve a specific and important need of mine at the moment.
I use a protein powder when I’m struggling to get to my daily 150 grams of protein. It’s a sort of ‘break glass’ strategy. I use it when I need it.
Creatine is probably one of the most researched and proven supplements to support gaining strength and muscle. It’s super relevant to my goals right now.
Magnesium I take to help improve my sleep.
Athletic Greens, it’s essentially a high quality multi-vitamin. I see it as an insurance policy. I try to eat mostly whole foods and to get in as much variation as possible. But, knowing that I also get plenty of vitamins and minerals through supplementation – it just makes me more confident I’m covering all bases.
I absolutely believe these four supplements are worthwhile. But, worthwhile isn’t the same as foundational.
The world isn’t going to stop if I miss taking them for a day or two – probably even a week or two won’t make much of a difference. If I had to lose them all tomorrow, I could still push on and keep becoming a healthier person without them.
Therefore, taking supplements doesn’t feel foundational. I can’t put it on the same shelf as the likes of sleep, alcohol, protein etc.
I’ll still aim to take my supplements daily. But, I’m not going to track it every day, and I’m not going to stress if I don’t manage it. And this means I’m going to remove supplements as a foundational health habit.
Now, onto the second habit I’m removing – intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting has been a hard habit to remove, because it’s served me so well up until this point. It’s served me so well, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it’s helped me develop a healthier relationship with food. I’m now very self aware and intentional with my eating – compared to a few years ago where I would unintentionally graze throughout the day. It’s helped me take back control of my relationship with food.
Secondly, it’s helped me better control my calorie intake. I’ve always been very indulgent when it comes to food. Once I start, I find it hard to stop. Pushing out the first bite of food until the afternoon and making the eating window smaller, has really helped me with this. It’s often been the difference between effortlessly being able to hit 2500 calories – to easily blowing upwards of 3000 calories.
So, you might ask, why the hell am I removing intermittent fasting as a foundational health habit then?
Well, recently I’ve been fasting less anyway. Since I’ve become more focused on building muscle, I choose to eat breakfast on weight training days. This helps to get some food in me before a training session. That means I’ve only been aiming for 80% consistency for the eighteen or so days left in the month outside of that.
For the days I’m not fasting, I find I don’t have the problems I used to have. I can still have a good relationship and discipline with food, and I’m pretty consistent with hitting my calorie goals on these days too.
And you know what? I’ve started to really like having a whole food, high protein breakfast to kick off the day. So much so, that I’ve found myself wanting to do that more than 20% of the time on those 18 days I’m supposed to be fasting.
So, I had to ask myself – why keep sticking to this as a foundational health habit, if it’s not actually solving a problem for me? If it’s not critical to improving my long-term health?
Now, I want to make it clear, by removing intermittent fasting as a health habit, that doesn’t mean I won’t ever intermittently fast again.
Sometimes it’s nice to just get going for the day, and not have to worry about food. And now and again, it’s a nice flex to remind my body that I’m in control. It’s also a great tool if you know you’re eating out at a restaurant, or you have a high calorie dinner ahead of you. It’s a damage control strategy.
I’ll still intermittently fast from time to time, I’m just happy to be a bit more flexible with it nowadays. I actually expect I’ll end up fasting two, maybe three times a week going forward.
If I find myself going backwards on my relationship with food, or in being able to stick to my calorie target for the day, I always have the option to bring it back in as a foundational health habit again. But, I think I’m going to be just fine.
At this stage, I just can’t justify it as a foundational health habit. It’s more something that was very important for me at a point in time – and will continue to be useful as a tool when I need to use it.
OK, that’s it for the habit’s that are out – supplements and intermittent fasting.
So, what’s the new habit?
Whole Foods
Whole foods is a habit I’ve been thinking about for a while now. I brought it in as a new habit for February. There’s just no question that ultra-processed foods are horrible for your health.
In fact, the British Medical Journal did an umbrella review of 45 studies [1] that looked at the relationship between ultra-processed foods and adverse health outcomes.
They found convincing evidence that supported direct associations between ultra-processed foods and higher risks of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, as well as anxiety and common mental disorders.
They also found highly suggestive evidence that linked ultra-processed foods to higher risks of incident all-cause mortality (that’s fancy science speak for dying of pretty much anything), type 2 diabetes, depressive outcomes – together with higher risks of adverse sleep related outcomes, wheezing and obesity.
The huge and undeniable health benefits you get from eating a mostly whole food diet – is in itself, a cast-iron reason for bringing it in as a foundational health habit. But, I also know how I feel when I eat mostly whole foods – it’s very tangible for me to see.
I feel lighter, leaner, less bloated, less achy (which probably means there’s less inflammation going on) and less tired. I’m generally sharper in my mind too – I have less anxiety and just feel in a better mood. And on the flip side, I know when I get stuck in a rut of eating ultra-processed foods for a few days, I quickly begin to feel lousy.
And I don’t want to feel lousy. I want to feel good.
So, this is why whole foods is making its way in as one of my foundational health habits.
The goal I’m setting myself when it comes to whole foods is to have 80% of my calories be whole foods – allowing myself 20% leniency.
The whole foods definition can be a bit fuzzy and is admittedly open to interpretation. I’ll cover my own definition of whole foods in a future episode, but for now I’ll summarise it, as for the most part, foods that tend to have one ingredient, and haven’t been heavily processed. So, that’s meat and fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts, milk, eggs, potatoes, oats etc.
That means avoiding the obvious ultra processed foods, such as ready meals, cakes, biscuits, ice creams and chocolate bars – yup, all the tasty stuff! But, even things that might not quite be so obvious – fruit flavored yogurts, instant soups, fizzy drinks, mass produced white bread, breakfast cereals and bars etc.
As with all of my habits, my ultimate goal is to be able to achieve this 80% of the time over the month.
And boy, do I have some work to do here. I only achieved 45% consistency in my first month of tracking it. This is easily going to be my biggest challenge with my habits in 2024. Watch this space as I look to get this up to 80% consistency.
So, there you have it. Supplements and intermittent fasting are out. Whole foods is in.
I’ll continue to keep reflecting on all of my foundational health habits, and I reserve the right to change and improve things in the future. And if I do so – you’ll be the first to hear of it!
Notes:
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