Why Your Habits Are Slipping — and What to Do About It

All right, off the bat, I want to share one of the most surprising truths about building habits, and it's this: even your strongest habits are always one rough week away from slipping. Now, I used to think that once a habit was locked in, that was it— job done and on to the next, right? But recently I've realized something really important: habits don't stay fixed, and even the most well-ingrained ones fade if you're not intentional. And when they start to slip, it can feel like you're failing, like you're going backwards. But remember, the goal isn't perfection. You're human, after all, and you're not infallible. In fact, you should actually expect them to slip. Now, what matters most is noticing when it's happening and then regrouping and recommitting. And that's how you turn a step back into two steps forward. So with that in mind, I wanted to do a quick check-in on where I'm at with my own foundational health habits. Now I haven't done one of these in a while, and honestly I stopped because it started to feel a little bit self-indulgent. But actually, I think this kind of update can be really useful because it shows the reality behind the scenes. And the truth is this: I've had some really big changes in both my personal and my professional life recently, and I think updates like this shine a light on what it really looks like to keep pushing forward with foundational health habits whilst life is just chucking things at you. So I'm going to run through each habit quickly— where I'm at, what's working, what's slipping, and what I'm focusing on next. And I'll, I'll also cover how I'm doing with my brand new 8th habit. So let's jump into each of the habits, and I'm going to whip through them pretty quickly, I promise. So the first one is alcohol. Super easy. My 4-year sober milestone is next week, actually. So I still write alcohol down, I still tick it, have done every day for the last 4 years. But I mean, like, I'm 100% and I'm never in danger of slipping from that. So alcohol is a kind of rare habit for me that it doesn't really fall into the bucket of moving around. I do well on it, I don't do well on it, I'm just always going to be sober for the rest of my life. And therefore alcohol is an easy one, 100% in a great place. Of course, sleep Sleep is an interesting one. So over the last couple of months, I've managed to take my average sleep up from half— probably from about 6.5 hours up to about 7.5 hours. But as I said earlier on in this episode, actually, things can change and just move around. And actually, in the last 3 or 4 weeks, I've noticed a pattern of going down to just under 7 hours. And that's just because I've had some changes going on in my life. Uh, it's summer, the light is shining through in the bedroom first thing in the morning, etc. And there's just been some other things going on that have affected me getting good sleep. Now I'm still getting around 7 hours, maybe a little bit below, so it's still quite improved from where I was, say, 3 or 4 months ago, but it's taken a slight dip. And really the big thing I'm focusing on for sleep is making sure that I have a really good wind-down routine, because most of the time my sleep falls below 7 hours. I'm dicking around doing something in the evening, uh, I will use the phone, or I'll just procrastinate and watch a movie or something, and I'll go to bed like far too late, and it will affect my sleep. So really, the big thing for sleep is to get that back up to 7.5 hours, or at least well over 7 hours consistently, and to focus on the evening routine. The next one is protein. Protein is great, like 150 grams I'm shooting for. It's always been in a pretty good place. I don't struggle with it at all. It's It's, uh, I would say it's kind of being pushed a little bit at the moment where I have— where I'm eating a reduced amount of calories. So at the moment I'm in a calorie deficit, and calories are the most important thing to me. So if I'm faced with a decision where I'm not going to hit my target for protein, and if I need to hit my target for protein, I'm going to go over on calories. I'm always going to prioritize calories over protein, and I'm happy to go underneath my 150 goal. But the reality is it doesn't really happen that often. And I still should easily be around 80% on protein. So other than this kind of moment where I'm in a deficit and I might see a little bit of a dip and see it challenge— see the 80% mark challenged a little bit— protein's in a really great place and I'm not really struggling with it at all. Caffeine is the same. The— again, 80% consistency. My goal is 2 cups before midday and none after that. Any time I break that, I strategically do it and I know I'm doing it. So the key really there is just to make sure that I don't do it more than 6 times in a month, which I rarely do. So no problem on the caffeine. And caffeine is quite similar to protein. Just don't struggle with it. And same goes for water, actually. 3 liters of water a day is the goal. I pretty much always hit it. I don't find it challenging at all, and it's usually over 90%. So water is in a really solid place. So actually, if you look at the habits I've gone through so far, alcohol, amazing. Sleep is definitely still a little vulnerable and I'm, and I'm challenged a little bit with it at the moment. And then protein, caffeine, and water, super, super solid. Protein just getting pushed a little bit as I'm focusing more on calories. Whole foods, that's a struggle still, although it has been getting a little bit better. And actually, I expect it was a little bit better last month, and I think that this month it's already trending to be a little bit better, but I'm still hovering around that 50-60% consistency zone. I can't quite figure how to get into kind of 60, 70, maybe even 80% consistency, which is the goal. Yeah, it's, you know, it's weekends and Fridays that kind of hit me and bring the average down quite a lot. So really, it's just— that's just something I'm going to have to continue to work on. Whole foods is my kind of nemesis habit. It's really the one that I struggle with the most. So for me, it's just kind of chipping away. Trying to make sure I get as many days where my whole foods are over 80% as possible and to basically just try and clean up that weekend a little bit. If I clean up the Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, my whole foods will probably push into the 60-70 area. So that's my focus for whole foods. Whole foods is one of the newest habits that I've been focusing on. So that's why it's kind of still in that middle ground of me trying to figure out how I break through into the 70s and the 80s with it in terms of consistency. Steps is a great example of one, actually. So that's my 7th habit. Steps is a great example of one that's taken quite a dip lately. So steps are always a little bit vulnerable, but I managed to get it up to the point where I was mostly hitting 80%, but it would sometimes dip to like 70%, 75%. And actually, over the last couple of months, it's fallen back down to kind of 60%. Now, a lot of that has— is because of a change of routine. And I'm now looking after my daughter by myself quite a lot. And what that means is that it's quite hard to get steps in when I'm doing that. She's, she's not keen on super long walks. So, uh, a lot of me is just figuring out that change of environment. How am I going to make sure that I get my steps in for the days where I have my daughter? And a lot of that is making sure that it kind of happens during the day because often I have to wake up early, I take her to school, I pick her up from school, and then from that point, it's like I'm in childcare territory and it's very, very hard to get a load of steps in. So if I don't get them in between 9 AM and 3 PM, I'm basically screwed. And that wasn't the case before. I had the luxury of being able to go out late at night, etc., etc. But, you know, because of a change of situation, I can't do that anymore. So step— it's basically that change has caused my steps to push back down to kind of 60%, um, So yeah, I'm really kind of making, making sure that on the days where I look after my daughter, I'm very focused on making sure I get my steps in between 9 and 3, and that should really get me back up to 70, 80%. And then my last habit, meditate, meditation. Hey, I'm like, what, 8 days into it? I think I've done 5 out of 8. So pretty good going actually. Like I'll get one in actually after recording this, which will basically be like 6 in 9. So I'm trending towards kind of like 60, 70% already with it. And I've actually really enjoyed sitting down and doing the meditation sessions. And yeah, I feel like the meditation is going to be a habit that gets up to 70 or 80%, probably more quickly than any other habit that I've worked on, certainly more than Whole Foods. So yeah. And then with meditation, the main thing is really getting it done in the morning. Obviously, like most things in life, the later you push it out in the day, the less likely it is to happen. But, uh, yeah, um, we'll see. I'm not struggling with that one at the moment. So look, if you take a look back through all of my habits, you can see there's a lot going on there. Some of them are super solid and, you know, really are at no risk of dropping under 80%, really ever. Maybe many— well, there are a few which have dropped below 80%, which perhaps I didn't expect to. Um, and at the beginning of this episode, that's what I said. Life chucks you things. Sometimes good habits start to decay, and then you have to kind of be aware of that and work out, well, hold on a minute, why did they decay and what am I going to do to get them back up to that level? And, you know, steps are a great example of that. Sleeps are— sleep is a great example of that. Both of those habits have progressed a little bit, and I think last month I hit 70s on those. So I've really got to think about how I can get them back up to 80, as I explained earlier on. All right. So that is where I'm at with each of my foundational health habits, where I'm at, and also which ones are slipping and where I'm putting my energy to make sure that where I am slipping, I bring things up. What I want to do now is just quickly share my overall kind of last 3 years of progress. And the reason I want to do that is I just want to— it's a really great example of how this whole thing is not linear. So here you can see I'm kind of a geek with tracking habits, right? So I track them on paper and then at the end of the month I put them into here. It doesn't take too long. It kind of looks pretty complex, but you can just see over time, like you've got 2022, '23, like really nice little period there where everything was nearly green. Then you can see sleep started to dip a little bit. My steps have started to dip a little bit. You can see I put my Whole Foods habit in and, you know, I've been working on building that back up. And actually, look, look at this more recently in the last kind of like 6, 7, 8 months, particularly around this kind of December, January, February, March kind of zone. That is where I experienced some really big changes in my professional life and also some big changes in my personal life. And you can see there that like that is the dent that it has caused. Now, it's nothing too catastrophic. You know, I haven't lost control of them or anything like that. But you can see my sleep has dipped to 70, whereas it used to be pretty significantly, always over 80. And as I said, my steps dropped to 57% and I've been at 50%, 52%, 60%, 54%. It hasn't been a great look for steps over the last 3 or 4 or 5 months. And that's again a change in my environment. So this is a great example that it's not linear and it doesn't just go red, orange, green, done. Things can go green and they can go back yellow again. Hopefully they never go red because red is sub 50%, which is, you know, pretty bad place if you have a habit that was good, that goes back down to that. It's okay if you're building it right, it's going to go red to orange to green. And then you would hope that basically things oscillate between green, sometimes dip into orange. And then that's your— that's my moment of self-awareness to say, hold on a minute, what's going on here? And if you look at the month of June, it pretty much matches what I said a minute ago. You know, alcohol, amazing, 100%. Sleep and protein dropped to 70%. Um, as we talked about, caffeine and water solid at 83 and 90, and then my steps really took a hammering, and my whole foods are still hovering around 50%, and I'm struggling to work out how to get it to that 60%. So like, this is all like work in progress, and I really hope that July, August, September can start to push us into more greens. But then I'm also mindful that we have the summer holidays, I have my own holidays where I'm going away and stuff like that. So You know, we'll see how all of that goes. But the key is I'm going to really push to kind of move some of those oranges back into greens over the next 1 or 2 or 3 months. And as I just talked about, I understand why some of those have slipped and where I'm going to be putting my energy next. All right. So here's the thing. I no longer think of each habit as something to hit 80% consistency with, and then I just move on from it. That's just not how it works. This is a forever journey for me, and the whole thing is actually entirely fluid. What it's about is doing your best based on where you are in life at any one time, and most importantly, having the self-awareness to notice where you're at and then being intentional about where you want to focus next. And actually, if I could boil all of this episode into the simplest, highest-level piece of advice, it would be this: push for as much green on the board as you can. And this should reassure you, actually, because if you have slipped, that's okay. I'm generally slipping on one or two habits at any one time also, as you've just seen. And as I said before, you have to expect to slip. What matters is noticing, regrouping, and then recommitting, because that's what allows you to be intentional. Now I'm going to leave you with one final thing. You have to get clear on which foundational health habits you want to build, and you have to track them. And that's really the call to action for this video. I want you to write down each of the 8 foundational health habits I talk about, and I want you to start to track them daily on paper and very visually. Literally start there, and then keep looking at the picture that you're building and adjust as you go. And by the way, if you're already tracking habits, that's amazing. And if that is you, I would then ask you this: what are the 1 or 2 habits you thought were solid but actually need your attention right now? And where might you focus to bring them up a little bit? All right, hope that was helpful, and see you in the next episode.