What are the eight foundational health habits?

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 full introduction to the 8 foundational health habits I'm tracking on a daily basis. If you listened to the previous episode, you'll know that it's been quite a journey to arrive at these health habits, so I'm really excited to introduce each of them. Enjoy the episode. Hey, welcome to episode 2 of the Daniel Clough Podcast. In this episode, I want to lay out the 8 foundational health habits. Think about this as more of an introduction than an in-depth guide. I'll keep things pretty high level for now, and then I'll cover each habit in a lot more detail in future episodes. But for now, I wanted to introduce each of the habits, explain why they are foundational, and also what I'm striving for with each one. So let's get started. And the first habit that we're going to cover is sleep. Sleep, hands down, is my most foundational health habit. I say all of the time that my foundational health habits are the base of the pyramid for me. And without that base in place, I really struggle to operate at a high level with anything in my life. But when I'm consistent with these habits, the foundations are strong and I'm incredibly high-functioning. Whether that is with fitness, work, my mental health, or just any other part of my life. Now one thing that I haven't ever shared is that I always question whether sleep itself might actually be the base of the pyramid. And then the other 7 habits are actually all equally a second level of the pyramid. Sleep is literally that important. Not only in itself, but also how it influences how consistent I'm able to be with the other habits. When I don't sleep well for a few nights, everything else starts to fall apart. My discipline just starts to crumble. I end up skipping that gym session. I start to snack on processed foods, and bad choices just start to muscle out the good choices in my life. And maybe this is something that you've noticed in your own life. Think about it. When you're tired, do you find it harder to stick to good habits? I suspect the answer is probably yes. You don't just have to take my word for it. If you want to delve deeper into the relationship between sleep and willpower, I'd encourage you to check out Dr. Andrew Huberman's podcast on how to increase your willpower and tenacity. In that podcast, he spends a whole section covering how sleep affects the autonomic nervous system and how important a well-balanced autonomic function is to be able to consistently generate willpower. Simply put, he says, when we're not getting enough sleep, our capacity to call on tenacity and willpower will be diminished. And in fact, he goes as far to say that unless your autonomic function is working well, most other tools or protocols to try and improve willpower won't make that much difference. Again, very similar to my base of the pyramid metaphor. I'll put a link to the specific segment where he talks about this in the show notes. It's well worth a listen. And of course, aside from how a lack of sleep wreaks havoc with discipline, there are many, many benefits to being a well-slept, well-rested person. I'll get to these in a future podcast. But for now, just know, if you're not getting enough sleep, you're going to have a hard time keeping everything together, possibly even anything together, and your health is going to suffer big time. And that's why I have sleep as a foundational health habit. And why I hold it in the highest regard out of all of my habits. So what is my goal when it comes to sleep? Personally, I shoot for 6.5 hours. For me, that's just a very clear line. Anything less than that, I start to feel it the next day. And consecutively falling under 6.5 hours for a few days, God help me, it's going to start getting messy. Now, I definitely want to progress that to 7 hours at some point. I think that would actually be the sweet spot for me. But hey, one step at a time. I have quite a bit of work to do first before being consistent with the 6.5 hours. The second habit is alcohol. And alcohol is a biggie. I have two main things to say on alcohol. The first is that alcohol consumption is undeniably bad for your long-term health. And there's no shortage of studies that link alcohol consumption with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. I'll actually put one study from Kieran Biddinger in the show notes. This study sets out to assess a link not only between alcohol intake and cardiovascular disease risk, but also how different amounts of alcohol consumption affected that risk. And in short, the study found that consuming alcohol at all levels was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Probably not that surprising. Now, I know I've started off a little bit gloomy when it comes to alcohol. But there is actually a piece of good news with this study, which I'll come back to in a minute, so hang in there. The second thing I want to say about alcohol, and this is particularly important when it comes to habits, is that it affects the quality of your sleep. You know, the habit I just talked about and considered the most important, and not in a good way. Alcohol will fragment your sleep, and it also blocks you from getting into restorative phases of sleep. So in short, if you're going to prioritize sleep, and you should, alcohol is going to put 1.5 hands behind your back. And I want to also back that up with a real life, real life example. Before I was sober, every time I would have a few drinks, the next morning my health metrics on my Whoop band would be in the gutter. My resting heart rate would be sky high, my heart rate variability would be low, and my respiratory rate would also increase. And I would always wake up with a low red recovery score on my Whoop app. Telling me that my body wasn't properly rested. So the link between having a few drinks and how my body was feeling the next day was crystal clear for me to see. And actually, here's an actionable thing you can do to see it for yourself. If you don't have a health wearable, try wearing one for a couple of weeks. You can either grab a cheap Fitbit or, like me, something more advanced like a Whoop band. You will start to see a very obvious correlation between drinking the night before and a set of horrible health metrics the next day. And again, one of the biggest reasons for this is that alcohol destroys the quality of your sleep. So in the same way that a lack of sleep will wreak havoc in my life, alcohol is arguably just as disastrous. And that's why I have it as a foundational health habit. Now, as for my own goals with alcohol, that one is really simple. I abstain from it entirely. And I'll definitely cover why I made that decision in a future episode. But to get back to that piece of good news from the Kieran Biddinger study, one of the conclusions they drew was that whilst people who consume alcohol at low levels do have an elevated cardiovascular disease risk relative to those that abstain, this increase in risk is actually fairly small, and it may even be mitigated or offset by other factors. So it's not necessarily about completely abstaining, although to be clear, I do think that this is ultimately the best decision you can make for your long-term health and to be able to stick to a set of foundational health habits. But it's at least about being mindful to have a low level of alcohol consumption. And you must set really clear limits you can track your consistency against. Okay, now on to the third foundational habit, and that's caffeine. Now caffeine is a funny one because it has a range of positive and negative side effects. And actually, in the grand scheme of things, it seems that most experts tend to err on the side of it being a net positive. For example, it can help boost our brain function, our mood, and our metabolism. And it may even protect against heart disease, diabetes, and a number of other diseases. However, it's also associated with things like anxiety, headaches, high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, and trouble sleeping. And it's the trouble sleeping part that's the main reason I make it a foundational health habit for me. I want to do whatever I can to protect my sleep for the reasons we've already talked about. Now caffeine has a quarter-life of 10 to 12 hours, and what that means is if you have coffee at midday, you can still expect about a quarter of it to be in your system at midnight. And we know for sure that caffeine is a sleep disruptor. Like alcohol, it fragments your sleep and stops you getting into restorative phases of sleep. For example, leading sleep expert Professor Matthew Walker points out drinking just one dose of caffeine in the evening can decrease the amount of deep sleep by 20%. And to put that in context, that type of reduction in deep sleep would usually happen over a period of aging 15 years. So that's a big deal. Now, it appears that we all have different levels of tolerance when it comes to caffeine. But on the whole, it's sensible to limit both the amount of caffeine that you consume as well as when you consume it. For me personally, I limit my caffeine into— intake to a maximum of 2 cups per day and never after midday. This tends to keep me on the right side of getting a good night's sleep. If you want some further reading and listening, I've put two resources in the show notes. One is a Healthline article which covers both the positive and the negative side effects of caffeine. And the other is a short video in which Professor Matthew Walker talks about how caffeine decreases our deep sleep. All right, the next habit is steps. The number of steps you walk per day is a really powerful habit for a number of reasons, but really the reason I have it as a foundational health habit is for the active lifestyle element you get with it. When you commit to hitting a decent number of steps per day, you're just an active person by default regardless of what you do around it. And this is why it's a foundational habit for me. It's that important. When I go on holiday, I often pick only 3 health habits to stick to. And steps is one of those habits because at a baseline, it helps keep your head above water for being active. It also happens to be the absolute easiest and most accessible form of exercise. I mean, virtually everyone is able to do it and it's free. I mean, you just have to go outside and walk. It's also very safe because it's easy on the joints and therefore has a very low risk of injury, which makes it the perfect place to start if you want to have a more active lifestyle. The other benefit to bringing in a habit of steps is that it can be very effective for helping you lose weight. If you commit to a decent number of steps per day, and even if you change nothing else about your routine, you are going to significantly increase the number of calories that you burn every day. And I've heard quite a few stories from people who have had an impressive weight loss story purely only from adding walking on a daily basis into their lifestyle. And not only that, it's also a great addition to have alongside a structured training and exercise program. Now, if all of that isn't enough, check this out. There is a study on the Lancet Public Health Medical Journey, which I'll put in the show notes. They took a look at 15 individual cohort studies, and they found out that taking more steps per day was associated with a progressively lower risk of death. And we're not talking by a small margin either. Even getting your steps up to 5,800 steps per day can help reduce one's risk of death by 40%, and this increases as you increase your steps further. So in— so simply, walking will make you live longer. As for my target for steps, I shoot for 10,000 steps per day. That for me feels like the right amount of activity when I consider the other forms of exercise I do. Okay, the next habit up is protein. Most people don't expect to see protein as a foundational habit, but let me explain why it has to be. Building muscle should be an important goal of yours, no matter where you are in your fitness journey. Not only is it one of the keys to being metabolically healthy and capable person now, it's also a highly predictive metric of the quality of your life as you age, and how long you're going to live. Now, I won't get into the weeds for how protein builds muscle in this episode, other than just to say that when you consume protein, it is broken down into amino acids. And your body then uses these amino acids to create new muscle tissues. So to build muscle, you need to eat enough protein. And building muscle aside, protein is also super useful for helping control the quantity and the quality of the foods that you eat. Something which pretty much all of us find a challenge. And that's because firstly, protein is incredibly satiating.— it can make you feel full, and therefore helps you to eat fewer calories overall. I'll always remember listening to Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, talk about this in a nutritional seminar he gave.

And in fact, I'll play that for you right now: Remember Entamans, that fucking fat-free dessert? You ever watch TV and cut a half-inch off that fucker, and another half-inch, and another half-inch, and then you're just pounding that pound cake, right? Where'd it go? Licking the wrapper, Shit, yum, fat-free. No one has ever had a couple of scrambled eggs and then 2 more, then the 4, the fucking carton's gone, I'm going to the store for eggs. Nobody, nobody. Where you're like, what am I fucking doing? It's, it's high glycemic carbohydrate every time. Somebody stop me.

It's so true, isn't it? Foods high in protein don't make you feel like that. They just leave you satisfied. The other thing about protein is that when you prioritise protein, it has this magical way of cleaning up your diet. For example, let's say you want some breakfast. If you think of protein first, you're probably going to think of eggs. So you drift towards making an omelette, maybe chucking some vegetables in it. Or maybe the first thing you think about is eggs. So then all of a sudden you're having eggs on sourdough and perhaps some avocado. When you don't think of protein first, it's all too easy to drift towards things like cereals, toast, or pastry. All of these are very low in nutritional value. The same thing is true for lunch and dinner. When you prioritise protein, you tend to eat meats, potatoes, vegetables, and generally more whole foods. And when you don't, it's sandwiches, pasta, and stuff like that. Basically, more processed foods. So to summarize, protein helps you build and maintain muscle mass. And it also helps you improve the quality of the food you eat, and makes you less likely to overeat. And that's why I have it as a foundational health habit. Now, the amount of protein we need is a bit of a controversial topic. And there seems to be a wide range of opinions on this. I tend to listen more closely to experts who advocate for building lean muscle, people who look the part, and also tend to be very transparent about their health biomarkers. And the advice from this crowd tends to be double the amount of grams for your body weight in kilograms. So for me, that equates to about 150 grams of protein. So that's a target that I set for myself. Okay, on to the next habit. And the next habit is fasting. I'm going to keep fasting short and sweet. On the surface, it feels like kind of an odd habit to have as a foundational health habit, but let me explain why it's here. Fasting forces a healthier and more intentional relationship with food. When you go through periods where you're either allowed or you're not allowed to eat, it's now on your terms. You set the rules, and you start to realize it's okay to feel a little hungry and not react immediately. You're in control. It now becomes an intentional and a conscious process. And this is actually very different to how the vast majority of people eat, where food is just always around us and it's always up for grabs. The other thing about fasting is that it helps you to better control your calorie intake, something which a lot of us struggle with, and it ends up leading to weight gain and a whole host of other health issues. And fasting helps with this because you're eating in a smaller time window. So it just stands to reason, with less time available to eat, you tend to eat less. And personally, I've found fasting incredibly powerful to regain control over my relationship with food and maintain a healthier body weight. My target for fasting is 16:8, which is commonly referred to as intermittent fasting. It basically means a 16-hour fasting period and an 8-hour eating period. And I tend to do this by skipping breakfast and then usually eating between the hours of about 1 PM through 9 PM every day. All right, now on to the 7th foundational health habit. We're nearly there. And the 7th habit is water. And you'll be surprised at how broad the benefits are to being well hydrated, and particularly how being dehydrated can negatively affect some of the other foundational health habits. I like to think of the impact of being well hydrated in 3 main buckets. 2 are specific and the other one is related to the broader impact it has on my other foundational health habits. So the first bucket is cognitive performance. And even slight levels of dehydration can make you feel fatigued and give you brain fog. But when you're well hydrated, you engage your sympathetic nervous system, which in turn helps to increase your energy, your focus, and it will help reduce brain fog. In short, you're going to be sharper. The second bucket is physical performance. It's well proven that being well hydrated increases your performance when you're exercising. And who doesn't want the best bang for buck from your efforts in the gym? This can make a meaningful difference to your results over the mid to long term. And the third bucket is that broader impact that it has on my other foundational habits. There's a lot of cellular processes in the body that rely on having the proper electrolyte balance. That's enough sodium, magnesium, and potassium. When these are off, it can really mess up with things like your digestion, your cognitive performance, and it can even disrupt your sleep. But when you drink enough water and keep yourself hydrated, you're much more likely to have a proper electrolyte balance. So how much water do I drink? Now, there's no exact science in determining exactly how much water you should drink. And it can actually depend on a bunch of other factors. Things like how active you are, whether you're exposed to heat, etc. I ended up coming to my own number by listening to Dr. Andy Galpin, who is a well-respected authority in the health and fitness space. And his recommendation is super straightforward: aim for half an ounce of fluid per pound of body weight per day. Now, I weigh 175 pounds, so that equates to 88 fluid ounces. And when you work that back into liters, you end up getting to 2.5 liters. And then I just ended up rounding that up to 3 liters just to be safe. So that's where I sit with water. And we're now on to the final habit, the 8th habit, which is whole foods. Now, whole foods is another one I can keep fairly short and sweet because everything about it is pretty obvious. And it's actually a new habit that I brought in only this month. And that's because over the last few months, I've been getting a growing feeling that I need something to bolster the nutrition side of things and to hold me accountable for better food choices. And look, here's what it comes down to. When I eat a diet mostly consisting of whole foods, it becomes much easier to be in good health, control my weight and body composition, build lean muscle. And quite frankly, I just feel amazing when I'm eating mostly whole foods. And on the flip side, when I've been in periods of my life where I've eaten a lot of ultra-processed foods, the opposite is true. I tend to get sick. I struggle with my weight and my body composition. And I just feel lousy. So what do I mean by whole foods? Well, basically foods that tend to have one ingredient, haven't been heavily processed. So stuff like meat and fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts, milks, eggs, potatoes, oats, things like that. And that means avoiding foods outside of that definition, which I'll call either processed or ultra-processed foods. These are the foods that tend to have over 5 ingredients in them. They usually come in packages, and they usually have a long shelf life. So think of the obvious stuff like ready meals, cakes, biscuits, ice creams, and chocolate bars. But even things not quite so obvious like fruit-flavoured yoghurts, instant soups, fizzy drinks, mass-produced white bread, breakfast cereals and bars, things like that. And whilst I'll cover the whole food topic in more detail in future episodes, for now I would recommend a really great documentary called The Magic Pill on Netflix. They take a handful of different types of people struggling with health problems, and they put them on a paleo diet for 30 days. So basically fruits, vegetables, lean meats, fish, eggs, nuts, and seeds. This is pretty close to the whole food definition. And in just 30 days, a lot of their health problems are reversed. And it really highlights the power of making good food choices. It's well worth a watch. I remember when I first watched this, it really turned me on to the paleo diet and the power eating whole foods. And my goal when it comes to whole foods is to have 80% of my calories be whole foods, and that gives me about 20% leniency to sort of drift away from that and have a little bit of freedom. And already having this as a daily habit that I track is highlighting just how much work I have to do. I suspect I'm going to come in at less than 50% consistency for the month of February, so watch this space for future improvements. And there you have it, my 8 foundational health habits. I'll quickly summarize them again: sleep, alcohol, caffeine, steps, protein, fasting, water, and whole foods. When you figure out how to keep these things in check most of the time, you're going to be a completely different human being. You're going to build that solid base of the pyramid I talked about at the beginning of the episode. Now, of course, it's one thing knowing that, and it's another thing being able to do it. But luckily for you, that's why I started this podcast, and I'm looking forward to sharing more about these habits with you over the coming months, especially some of the strategies that will help you build foundational health habits into your own life. But for now, thanks for listening, and see you in the next episode.