Iteration Four - Fundamentals & Habits

· health, fitness, tracking

I’ll be straight with myself: I’m impulsive.

I run on bursts of hyper-enthusiasm that arrive with full conviction and then quietly fade, season after season. That’s not entirely bad - each episode has moved something forward. But they never stick. And I’ve always wanted something that does.

So here I am. Iteration Four.

The track record First iteration - over 500km of running in a year. That was a genuine breakthrough — proof I could do it. Second - weekly 10ks for a few months. Third - gym and diet together, which taught me far more about nutrition than exercise. But every single time, the ending was the same. The routine would slip, the binge eating would creep back, and I’d watch it all unravel.

Disappointing every time.The last twelve months were different. I wasn’t chasing a performance goal — I was trying to build the quieter kind of discipline. Slowing down. Doing the thing. Being okay with where I was. It worked, somewhat. Now I’m back for round four, this time going after diet and body together. I have a goal that still excites me a month in — which, for me, is already a good sign. And for once I think I have realistic expectations: of what I want, how long it’ll take, and what it actually requires.

Data motivates me. Objective progress motivates me. So I am refining a system around that.

My setup — as of June 2026

A public health dashboard sits at the center of everything. It tracks five things I care about:

Discipline fundamentals — rituals and cadence that fuel motivation Body fundamentals — weight, sleep, energy, heart rate Activity fundamentals — steps, floors, movement Nutrition fundamentals — protein, fiber, water Weekly summary — consistency as the habit-builder

Following is my tech setup

  • Welling AI - For meal tracking, I tried Welling AI — decent, but more than I needed. So I built my own lighter version called piHealth, which plugs into Apple Health and does exactly what I want, nothing more
  • Apple Health + Fitness - Apple Health handles passive health tracking well enough. The Fitness side feels limited though — I may shift to Strava.
  • Seven App - Workout app For morning workouts, I use the Seven app: quick, no equipment, seven to fifteen minutes.
  • Google Sheet - And a Google Sheet pulls everything together — I publish it as a live public CSV and update it manually each day with both objective numbers and a subjective read of how I’m doing.

Habits baked into the day The bigger unlock has been stopping treating fitness as a separate activity. Instead, I’m folding movement into things I already do:

Walk to work. Takes longer, adds real distance, and quietly handles a chunk of my daily goals without needing a separate session. Always take stairs. Sounds small. Adds up to double-digit floor counts every day without thinking about it.

Morning workout. Short, no gear, done before the day has a chance to get in the way.

Evening walk. Even a short one. Just the act of going outside, regardless of distance.

Weekend hikes. Occasional longer ones — something with terrain, planning, maybe company. It scratches the adventure itch and brings in the big distance numbers naturally.