Habit Review: April 2024 (a step backwards?)

Hey, welcome to the Daniel Clough Podcast. I'm Daniel Clough, and on this podcast I cover the power of building foundational health habits in your life. I also share strategies that can help you build your own foundational health habits so that you can become the best version of yourself. In today's episode, we're going to look back on April to see how I did across all of my 7 foundational health habits. And you may have already guessed from the episode title, A Step Backwards, that perhaps things didn't quite go to plan. Let's jump into the episode and get to the bottom of it. Welcome to episode 14. This is going to be one of those episodes where I look back on the previous month to see how well I did across all of my habits. Now there's a few reasons that I like to do this. First of all, I find the reflection really useful. I'm able to look at where I perhaps didn't do things particularly well, as well as where I did things really well, and I always try and take these learnings into the next month. Secondly, it also keeps me accountable. I know that every single month I have to report publicly on all of my numbers, and it helps keep me on my toes. And thirdly, I hope as I talk about my habits and how well I did and how well I didn't do, that these learnings are useful for everybody else as you go about your own journey with health health habits. Now, before we get stuck in, I just want to let you know that all of the numbers for April are available on the spreadsheet link in the show notes, as well as all of the numbers going back to 2022, February 2022. So if you want to kind of look at the bigger picture of things, just go click that link in the show notes. So how did I do for April? Well, as I was moving through the second half of April, and certainly as I got towards the end of April, I had a feeling that April was just a car crash. And if I'm honest about it, I was just happy to put April behind me and to move on to May with a clean sheet. And there are a few reasons for that. Firstly, there was a few trips and a little bit of traveling going on in April, and this always knocks me out of my routine and makes it a little bit harder to stick to habits. Secondly, we had half term, so that's 2 weeks of no school. So my daughter was around the house more. There were a few day trips going on, obviously with the family, as well as kind of bits of things like sleepovers and bad food lying around and stuff like that. So that always makes it a little bit tougher. And I also found myself under the weather for about 5 days. And again, that's something that always makes it harder to stick to habits. So a combination of those 3 things really brought my numbers down for April. And I know I said initially that I thought April was a car crash, but we're what, like 11 days into May now and I've had a little bit of time to think about it. And actually, when I look at my numbers, they're not as bad as a car crash for sure. I mean, actually, if you go back and look at the numbers, say 12 or even 18 months ago, even what I would now consider not particularly a good month, it's still so much stronger. It's actually probably better than my best month, say 12 to 18 months ago. And actually, if you look across all of my habits, so across my 7 habits, 5 of them were well above 80%. One of them slipped below 80%. And then the other one is Whole Foods, which I know always is going to be well under 80% because I'm still working on it. So actually 6 of the Yes, 6 of the— I don't know, 5 of the 6 habits I expected to be over 80% were over 80%, and actually the one that slipped a little bit was just under. And again, my illness really, really affected that habit. So I think when you look at it like that, I was probably beating myself up a little bit too bad, and they're not as bad as I would think. So anyway, let's go through them individually and we'll see how well I did across each of them. So the first one is alcohol. And again, this is super, super easy. Like last month when I talked about it, I will never expect alcohol to go under 100%. I've been sober now for best part of 2 and a half years, and that's not going to change. But I do like to keep track of it every single month, um, just so I know it's in front of me. Sleep was— so again, my sleep habit is I want to be sleeping over or at least 6 and a half hours for 80% of the, of the month and my sleep came in at 83%. Again, that's pretty good. I was really struggling with my sleep 6, 7, 8 months ago and it was a struggle to keep things over 80%. So to come in over 80% and particularly with the challenges I just talked about going on within the month, I actually find that pretty good. And if I look across my tick sheet now, there wasn't any time where I missed my sleep goal twice on a row. So again, that's a really positive sign. And my average sleep was 7:19, which was actually more than the month before. So that's pretty good. I'm really happy with that. As you know, I really, really rate sleep as probably one of my most important habits, particularly for my mental health. So to know that that one sits over 80% all of the time is really important to me. So I'm pretty pleased with 83%. Protein— this was a little bit lower. Like, I'm usually really good at protein and would easily expect it to be over 90%, perhaps even close to 100%. And again, my protein goal was 175 grams per day, and I just got past it with 80%, um, for the month of April. And if I look at things, there was, there was one spot where I had a couple on the row where I missed it, but other than that, it's just generally the traveling and the half term just sometimes made it a little bit harder to hit that protein number. Um, the one saving grace is that my average is always around 180, so when I do have a dip below 175. I usually make up for it. But look, from a pure how many times did I hit 175 grams of protein, 80%. So I'm still in the green but just got there with a whisker. The next, uh, habit, caffeine. And again, for caffeine, I'm shooting for no more than 2 cups and always before midday. And I came in at 83%. Now again, this is a habit that I would usually expect to be over 90%. And again, actually, if I look through my tick sheet, no two in a row. And I think pretty much all of the times that I broke my caffeine habit was when I was traveling or when I was moving around on a day trip and I just fancied that espresso in the afternoon. So very, very conscious choices to kind of break the habit. And I was very conscious to make sure I didn't break it enough to fall under the 80% mark. So 83% on caffeine is just fine by me. Water, 3 liters, really good, 87%. Um, super, super strong. Um, actually, usually if I'm ill or if I'm traveling or if there's things going on, I still find it pretty easy to hit my water habit, and I haven't missed it for a very, very long time. No 2 in a row, um, just nice and consistent. So really happy with water. Steps is where it starts to get a little bit hairy, and I hit 73% for steps. And to be honest, if I look at things, it was really illness that caused quite a big problem there. So I missed 10K on the first day of the month. Then there was a couple of misses towards the middle of the month, but then I had 4 misses in a row and that was really where I felt ill and it was very hard to get out and go for a walk and get 10K steps in. I also had a bit of a calf injury as well, which, which made that a little difficult as well. So I'm not going to beat myself up too much. Steps was a habit that was kind of floating around sort of 80%, sometimes dipping 80%, and I thought I'd really nailed it with 87% last month. So it's not great to see it fall under 73%, but if I take out those 4 consecutive misses because of my illness, I would have been well over 80%. So I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I don't feel like it's actually me dipping because of a change in behavior, or perhaps I haven't nailed it. I think just an unusual month kept things under 80%. And again, we're not talking 60% or 50%, right? 73%, and that was with a big bout of illness really knocking me you know, 4 days on the row, only a couple of those days, you know, away and I'd have been back up to 80%. So not great, but I'm pretty confident that I will be well above 80% for 10K steps in the month of May. And then Whole Foods, terrible, 33%. And this is really the third month I'm tracking Whole Foods. I started at 45% in February, then I got to 48% in March, and now I'm back down to 33%. And I must admit, I haven't really tried to improve it. I've just been letting it sit as a sort of baseline measurement whilst I've been focusing on my other habits. But that needs to change for me, which we'll talk about in a second, because 33% is just pretty rubbish and I need to get that up to kind of 50% or 60% so I can really start to see a bit of traction with that habit. It's the one habit that I'm obviously still in the early stages of building, so I expect it to be red and I expect it to be well under 80%, but You know, I really— my immediate goal with that is to get it over 50% and then well into the 60s and 70s. That's what success looks like over the next kind of 3, 4 or so months. So taking a step back from that, actually not too bad, right? So of my 7 habits, 5 were over 80%, 1 just dipped below 73%, which was the 10K steps. And again, illness was really the main cause of that. Had I not have had that illness, I think I would have been over 80%. And Whole Foods very low at 33%. So again, if I even if I scroll back to— you can do this, you know, go back to kind of 2023. Most of my months in 2023 did not look as good as that April. So I'm not going to beat myself up too much. And I'll wrap the episode with my goals for May. And again, really similar to my goals for the whole year, actually. Those 6 habits that I feel I have just nailed last year, I really just want to keep them over 80% and just prove to myself that they are well and truly nailed. There is still a couple of little bits of kind of friction with steps, sometimes a little bit with sleep. They still feel a little bit fragile. And again, you know, sleep came in at 83%, steps dipped below 80% for the, for the reason I just mentioned. So, you know, I still have a little bit to prove on those 2. And just in general, I want those 6 habits to be always over 80%. So really, the primary goal is to keep alcohol, sleep, protein, caffeine, water, and steps above 80% for May. And then obviously beyond that, I'll be trying to do the same. And then whole foods, I've really got to kind of get up to 50% and hold at 50% and then look to kind of build from there. And the main thing I'm going to do there really is just be much more self-aware of my whole foods percentage every single day. As with most Habits is usually about the self-awareness and then how that drives conscious actions throughout the month to kind of improve upon things. And in February, March, and April, I just kind of like let things be, and then I would either tick it or cross it at the end of the day for however I did. Um, this month I need to do a little bit better. I actually need to have a plan for the day, and as I move throughout the day, I've got to kind of be very conscious about trying to guide that into a tick rather than a cross, at least half of the time. So my goal there would be trying to get Whole Foods to 50%. And then I would say if I can hold 50% for 2 or 3 months, that then gives me a really solid baseline to then take to 60, 70, and 80%. And again, my goal for the end of the year is to try and get Whole Foods up to 80% and feeling like, you know, relatively stable. So here's to May of getting Whole Foods to 50% and also keeping all of the other habits above 80%. And if I look at my May so far, I'm doing really, really well and I'm well on track for that. I'm actually about 50% with Whole Foods already and I'm well above 90% for all of my other habits. So again, that's just to remind me, 11— a reminder for me, 11 days in the month to really, really hold on to that. And if I can have a next good week or 10 days, then I'm going to be cruising in towards the end of May with some really good numbers. And we will talk about about those in about a month's time. Thanks for listening. I hope you found that useful. It was certainly useful for me, and I will see you next month.