Habit Review: February 2024

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. This episode is a regular monthly review of how I performed on my habits for the previous month. I'll recap on my goals for February, share how I did on each habit, and then also cover what my focuses are for the following month. I think you'll find lots of little tips in this episode that will be helpful for your own habits, and ultimately this is a really nice way to hold me accountable for walking the talk. So enjoy the episode. All right, it's that time of the month again. In this episode, I'll look back on the previous month to see how I did with my now 7 foundational health habits. And yep, I've gone from 8 to 7 habits over the last couple of months by dropping 2 habits and then introducing a brand new one. And if you want to know a bit more about that change, you can check out the previous episode where I explain it all. And if you have been keeping up, you'll know that this year is really about digging in deep and hardening each of these 7 health habits. I want to get to the point where it feels easy to be in the green with all of my habits. That's 80% consistency for each habit every month. Now the 2 habits that I'm particularly struggling with right now are sleep and steps. So these were big focuses for me in February. And then the other thing that's worth mentioning is I was using February to set a baseline for my new habit, which is Whole Foods. And whenever I start a new habit, I always start with no expectations. All I'm looking to do in the first month is just track it and see where my baseline naturally sits. And from there, I will then set a realistic first target, and I start to think about where I can make improvements to hit that target. So without further ado, let's see how I did in February. So overall, I'm super pleased with how February went. I hit green on 5 of my habits, so that was awesome. I did slip below green with just one of them. And then of course, one of them looked terrible. But we've just talked about that one. February was the first month where I was establishing a baseline for my new habit, whole foods. So it was expected for it to be quite low. Let's take the habits one by one. So the first one is no alcohol. Now, this one is super easy. I hit 100% consistency and I would never expect anything different here. But I will continue to track it and I'll continue to call it out every month. And that's because it's such a key foundational health habit. Next up is sleep, and sleep came in at 83%. Now that's an awesome achievement. It's now the second consecutive month of being in the green, and this is hopefully the start of a new trend for me. Now what was also awesome to see is that my average sleep for the month was 7 hours and 25 minutes, and that's the highest I've ever seen it. And that's because I've been making a big effort to be mindful of when I go to bed, and also when I wake up, and that's to ensure that I give enough of a window to safely hit my 6.5-hour sleep target. Now I can't emphasize enough how important getting at least 6.5 hours of sleep is for me. For example, the night before last I hit 6 hours and 15 minutes. And not only that, it was low-quality sleep. A lot of light sleep and not very much restorative sleep. And I really felt it yesterday. I struggled with energy, I was anxious for a lot of the day, and I just couldn't seem to click into an optimistic gear. And this actually lasted for most of the day and has even drifted a bit into today, despite me catching up nicely last night with a whopping 9 hours of sleep. So this is just a big reminder of why sleep is one of the most important foundational health habits and why I was super happy to see me come in at 83% for February. Let's jump to protein next. So that's another one in the green at 83% consistency, and there's not much to say here other than my 5 misses for the month came in a block of 2 and another block of 3. And that's because of a couple of trips I had in February where I just found it hard to hit 150 grams of protein consecutive days. Let's jump to protein now, another one in the green at 83% consistency, and there's not much to say here other than the fact that my 5 misses for the month came in a block of 2, and another block of 3. And that's because of a couple of trips I had in February where I just found it hard to hit 150 grams of protein on consecutive days. Now, this is something that I have to be a little bit careful about because it's a risky place to be. A single miss is usually pretty easy to recover from, and I know I can afford 6 of them in a 30-day period and still achieve 80% consistency. But if I do have a miss, it's so important to put things right the following day. Because where one miss is a blip, two consecutive misses can easily become the start of a new pattern. It just becomes a really slippery slope and it's a big risk to falling off the wagon entirely. And that's why, even though 83% for protein is a win, I have to be careful about those two and three consecutive miss patterns. So that's just one to watch for next month. Okay, on to caffeine as the next habit. And I'm not going to spend much time here. And that's because I hit 90% consistency and I find caffeine very easy to stay on track with generally. Which as a reminder is a maximum of 2 cups per day and always before midday. Now my 3 misses were all single misses and each one was a conscious decision to break from the rule. Either because I was on a trip or because I decided to have a coffee before an afternoon training session. So we're all good on the caffeine front. Now on to water. And as a reminder my goal is to drink 3 litres of water per day. And I came in at 83%, which in the grand scheme of things is all fine. I rarely dip below 80% consistency for the month when it comes to water. And actually, what I'm more concerned about at the moment is how I get there. I tend to leave things too late in the day, and then I just find it a rush at the end of the day to get my 3 litres of water in. And actually, when I do miss my goal of 3 waters, it's usually because of exactly that. I've left things too late in the day, and then I choose not to drink water in the evening to avoid me waking up several times in a night to take a pee. Which is basically prioritizing sleep over water at that point. So my focus remains the same for my water goal. Get it in earlier in the day and then make sure that I get my 3-liter target at least by the early evening. Let's cover steps as the next habit. Not so great here. I came in at 76% consistency and I had 7 misses for the month. So I got pretty close, but I need to start doing better here as it's the 4th consecutive month that I've come in under 80%. And I really have to figure this one out. And honestly, it's not rocket science. Like water, it's just a case of being more intentional with when I will get my steps in each day and also breaking the back of those 10,000 steps as early in the day as I can. Basically, don't leave it too late in the day. So watch this space for hopefully a big improvement in March as I try to do that. Okay, last habit, and I've saved the new habit for last, and that's whole foods. Now my goal here is to have 80% of my calories be from Whole Foods. And as I said earlier, I had no expectations for my consistency in February. I simply wanted to track things and see where my baseline settled out. And drum roll— I came in at 45% consistency. So yeah, pretty low. But look, it's just a starting point and I can already see loads of opportunities for improvements here. And really the most useful thing from tracking Whole Foods in February, which by the way is one of the biggest benefits of tracking daily habits in general, is an increased level of self-awareness. Simply having to track this daily has helped me see how thin the margin is when it comes to eating 80% whole foods. For example, I usually eat about 2,400 calories a day, so that means I can only afford 480 calories of non-whole foods, and anything above that and I'll miss my target of 80%. And if you have a good grasp of the calorie content of foods, you'll know 400 calories doesn't go that far at all. So I have a good idea of where I can tighten things up for March. And I'm gonna set my goal at 50% consistency with perhaps a stretch goal of closer to 60% consistency for the month. Either one of those would be a nice step forward to the eventual final destination of 80% consistency. And there you have it. February was a pretty solid month overall, and I'm really happy with it. 5 habits in the green, 1 just slipping into orange, and then yeah, 1 in red, but with Whole Foods being in the first month of tracking, That was totally expected. And by the way, if you want to see my numbers for February as well as the last couple of years' worth of numbers all in one place, check out the link in the show notes where I link to my master spreadsheet of everything. And my goal for March is preferably 6 habits in the green and then Whole Foods moved into the orange and hopefully much closer to 60% consistency. And on that note, I will see you next month.