Mastering Consistency: The Key to Transforming Your Health and Fitness (And How to Build It)

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— drum roll— 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 versus struggling for about 20 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 20 years struggling to get it right. And in those 20 years, I really did want it. And I really did try very hard. I just wasn't 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. Here's a good example. If I slipped on my diet, I would then fall into a long cycle of binging on all types of foods that were bad for me. It was some type of weird "get it out of my system before I start again" behavior. But really, it was just self-sabotage. 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 it 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 timeframe if you want to get impressive results. Nothing else will work. So the million-dollar question: what's the key then to being able to be consistent over a medium to long timeframe? And 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 AM watch photo on X to prove his routine. They make it look easy. For most of us, though, 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 to today who is extremely disciplined and consistent with my foundational health habits, training, and nutrition week in, week out. And I can boil this transformation down to 2 key shifts that I had to make. And I know that 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, and you don't need to wake up at 4:30 AM every morning to do it. So let's dig into those two key shifts now. So the first shift is a framework that I use, which is super powerful. This framework has been instrumental in helping me move away from the shooting for perfection and falling off the wagon vicious circle that I would so often get stuck in. And I call it the Great, Good, Okay, and Bad Week Framework. And it goes like this: ensure all of your efforts over a week can generally be categorized into one of these 4 buckets: a great week, a good week, an okay week, and a bad week. Those are your 4 buckets. And the biggest shift that 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 that 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 that you want. In fact, ironically, aiming for perfection is a surefire way to not get the results that you want. You can absolutely afford some bad and okay weeks in the mix of things and still achieve incredibly impressive results. And what I want to do is give you a quick highlight of what great, good, okay, and bad weeks look like for me, as well as how many of each you probably want to aim for. So let's start with great weeks, the first bucket. And I'll let you into a little secret. Great weeks are actually kind of rare. I'm talking about those weeks where you just seem to have the Midas touch. You hit almost every single note, and it's hard to even find a crack in anything that you did. Great weeks tend to come around probably only about 10% of the time, actually. So that's literally one every 5 weeks or so. And for me, a great week would probably look something like this: 3 weight sessions with some good progression, 3 hours of Zone 2 cardio, an average of 10K steps. I would hit my calories target and I would eat on average 175 grams of protein. And I would eat over 70% whole foods. And overall, I would just have a very strong week for my foundational habits, probably 90% adherence. And this is just a picture-perfect week, and I couldn't wish for anything more. But as I said, great weeks really only show up now and again, probably one in every 5 weeks or so. And the stars 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 2 consecutive weeks. So that's the first bucket. The second bucket is a good week, and honestly, good weeks are the norm for me nowadays. And they tend to happen about 50% of the time. And 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 able to get half of my Zone 2 cardio done. My whole foods probably fell to about 60%. And on top of that, I might have struggled with one, perhaps maybe even two 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 just make it fairly obvious to point out where I fell short. And 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 it's not called a bad week. It's actually called a good week. It's a good place to be. And you can't be great at everything week in, week out. Life is just going to get in the way. Sometimes you'll make mistakes or have a lapse in willpower or discipline. It happens. And when it happens for a few things, it usually means that I'll have to settle for the week to be good. But not great. So the third bucket is an okay week. And for me, these tend to show up probably about 20% of the time. So again, as a reminder, that means about every 5 weeks or so. And on the surface, it sounds bad to say that you'll have an okay week every 1 in 5 weeks. It instinctively feels too frequent, but realistically, that's just how often they show up for me. An okay week for me is where I fall short on more than just a few things. I'm probably dropping the ball actually on maybe half of the things that I'm trying to do. Maybe I only got 2 weight sessions in. I only got about an hour of Zone 2 cardio in. My steps probably took a big hit and I only got 5K on average. And then nutrition and habits across the board were probably a bit hit and miss. So yeah, just okay. Definitely not a disaster. I mean, I still got 3 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, a fair few things to point towards that were good. So really just a mixed bag. Not good, but not bad. Just okay. And I look at okay 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 there to keep your head above water and to stay somewhat neutral. And I usually hit an okay week when I have a lot of stress in my personal life, or perhaps I'm starting to feel some burnout and I just need to rest. Or maybe sometimes when I have too many travel commitments or social commitments and then this will disrupt my routine and just make things harder. And as I've said a lot in this episode, that's just how it goes sometimes. You have to take the rough with the smooth. Some weeks you will feel okay and things will just be a bit flat and you need to just accept them and move on to the next week. Push to get another good or great week under the belt. All right. Now for the fourth bucket, and that's a bad week. And a bad week tends to come around probably only about 5 to 10% of the time. So roughly 1 in every 5 to 10 weeks. And it's fair to say that bad weeks are pretty much disasters. They usually involve quite low activity across the board, a fair amount of falling off the wagon when it comes to nutrition and habits. And these are just the sort of weeks that you just want to forget about. For whatever reason—burnout, bad sleep, stress, or maybe just simply losing your grip on things for a bit— the week just ends up being a bit of a car crash. And when these weeks happen, you just need to forget about them and put them behind you. Understand that they do not define you. Great, good, and okay 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. So on the whole, just see bad weeks for what they are—a blip. So a bit of a 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 that 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 that you fall short, you're going to feel terrible about yourself. This then leads to self-sabotage type of behaviors which will kill consistency in its track. And it kills consistency in this 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 to be consistent is to stack a mix of great, good, okay, and bad weeks at the type of realistic ratios I just described. And if you can do that over a long-term time frame, that will lead you to incredibly impressive results. So that's the first shift that you need to make. Let go of perfection. Use the great, good, okay, and bad week framework. And if you adopt this framework and this mindset, 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 on to the second shift, and this is where we're going to go back to foundational health habits. If you've listened to any of my previous episodes, this one is not going to be a surprise to you. Yes, foundational health habits will help you get 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 going to objectively improve your health and your fitness. But as I've said many times before, the direct health benefits you get from these 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— 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, I would have— it would have been unfathomable for me to imagine that for myself only 2 years ago. But today I just feel super well put together. I'm optimistic, confident, and I hardly have any anxiety. I have so much more energy. And I have a level of discipline that's not only been built from the journey I had to go through to build foundational habits in my life, but it's also a direct result of actually 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 it will help shift— sorry, 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'll 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 health habits, and particularly the compounding nature of several of them, will exponentially improve your discipline, and your ability to be consistent. So actually, the second shift is far more important than the first. Yes, the great, good, okay, 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 episodes where I detail what the 7 foundational health habits are and feel free to copy my approach to to tracking them. I can guarantee that you won't regret it because it will unlock a capability that has the potential to transform your whole life, not just your health and your fitness. And as usual, I'm just an email away if you want any help with it. So let's wrap the episode 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, Okay, 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 that you want. I hope you found this episode useful and good luck on your journey.