Natascha, these are your personal targets for each of the 7 lifestyle pillars, set for your body type and your answers. Tap a pillar to see what to do. You asked for help with hot and cold, sunlight and environmental toxins, so start with the pillars marked Start here. Change two or three things at a time, and give each change 2 to 4 weeks.
Hot and cold
Pillar 3 · your personal targets
- Your target once you're used to it (build up first, see below). Cold shower finish: 2 min 56 s at 15 to 16 °C, 4 times a week.
- Weekly cold total for your body type: 11 to 14 minutes. Work towards water at 11 to 14 °C, and once you're used to it, progress by lowering the temperature, not by staying in longer.
- Your target once you're used to it (build up first, see below). Hot bath (39 to 41 °C): 12 minutes a round, 2 to 3 rounds with 10 to 12 minutes cooling down between them, 3 to 4 times a week. Drink 700 to 900 ml in the hour before. In the second half of your cycle, shorten rounds to about 11 minutes.
- When: Cold 4 times a week, in the morning or after cardio. Hot bath 3 to 4 times a week, short rounds.
- Cold, start at Week 2: shower 45 to 60 seconds at 18 °C, 4 to 5 times a week. Move up one rung at a time, colder or longer but never both in the same week.
- Heat, start at Week 2: 8 to 10 minutes a round, 2 rounds, 3 times a week.
- Start with cold showers before any plunge, in the morning only, never alone, with long slow breaths out as you get in. Sauna is often the better first tool for you.
- Contrast option: 5 to 8 minutes hot, then 1.5 to 2 minutes cold; 3 cycles.
- Safety: never get into cold water alone, and never breath-hold or over-breathe before getting in. Get out at once if you lose finger dexterity, numbness spreads, your breathing hasn't settled after a minute, or you feel chest pain or confusion. In heat, leave if you feel dizzy, sick, get a headache or palpitations. No alcohol before either, including the night before. After cold: dry off, dress in layers, move gently, and avoid an immediate hot shower.
Sunlight
Pillar 5 · your personal targets
- Morning light: 20 to 30 minutes outdoors within an hour of waking, without sunglasses while UV is low. Never look straight at the sun.
- Daytime outdoor light: 45 to 75 minutes a day in total. It can be combined with your walking.
- April to September, when UV is 3 or more: 20 to 30 minutes of midday sun on uncovered arms and legs, at least 3 times a week, stopping before your skin turns pink. Then cover up, find shade or use SPF 30 or more, reapplied every 2 hours. When UV is 7 or more, use the lower end.
- Long summer sessions outdoors: before 11 am or after 4 pm.
- From October to March in the UK the sun is too low to make vitamin D. Keep the morning light for your body clock.
- Vitamin D3: 1,500 IU (38 micrograms) a day from October to March, and 600 IU from April to September. Take it with a meal that contains some fat. Don't go above 4,000 IU a day without a blood test.
- Check your skin monthly for new or changing moles (Asymmetry, Border, Colour, Diameter, Evolving).
- Eyes: Sunglasses optional; recommended when UV is high. Use UV400 or 100% UVA/UVB lenses at midday.
Environmental toxins
Pillar 7 · your personal targets
- Your next 3 swaps: 1) Use fewer personal-care and cleaning products, fragrance-free where easy, and ventilate when cleaning. 2) Eat oily fish weekly, but limit large predatory fish (tuna steaks, swordfish, marlin, shark). 3) Wash fruit and vegetables; buy organic where affordable for the highest-residue crops (strawberries, spinach, kale, grapes, apples). We'll add the next one when these are habits.
- Fibre: 38 g a day. Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kale, cabbage, rocket, sprouts): 6 to 7 servings a week.
- Lose fat steadily, no faster than about 0.9% of your body weight a week (about 0.6 kg), within your nutrition plan.
- Alcohol: aim for 7 to 10 units a week or less.
- Protein powders, creatine and pre-workouts: choose third-party tested products (look for the Informed Sport or Informed Choice mark).
- Fewer personal-care products overall means less phthalate exposure.
Water and electrolytes
Pillar 1 · your personal targets
- Drink about 2.0 L on training days and 1.7 L on rest days. This is drinks only: water, tea, coffee and milk all count. Water in food is already allowed for.
- Start with about 500 ml within an hour of waking, then larger drinks anchored to your meals, with planned extra in the heat.
- Before each main meal: 300 to 450 ml of water, about 20 to 30 minutes before eating. It helps you feel full.
- Training days: 350 ml to 500 ml in the 2 to 4 hours before training; 150 to 250 ml every 15 to 20 minutes during (never more than about 1 litre an hour); afterwards 1.25 to 1.5 L for every kilogram lost, with some salt or a salty meal.
- Ease off in the last 1 to 2 hours before bed so you don't wake to use the toilet.
- Salts from food each day: sodium 1800 to 2200 mg, potassium 4000 to 4700 mg, magnesium 380 to 450 mg. Potassium: potatoes, beans, lentils, leafy greens, avocado, bananas, yoghurt. Magnesium: pumpkin seeds, almonds, leafy greens, pulses, dark chocolate.
- Low-carb days release stored water and salt: add 300 to 500 mg of sodium and 300 to 500 ml of fluid on your first low-carb days.
- In the second half of your cycle you may hold 1 to 2 kg of water. Go by urine colour, not the scales.
- Check: urine pale straw for most of the day, and about 5 to 8 toilet visits a day.
De-stress
Pillar 2 · your personal targets
- Every day: 17 to 20 minutes of stillness (breathing, meditation or a body scan) and 30 to 40 minutes of easy movement such as walking or mobility. This is on top of your training.
- Breathing: Physiological sighs, plus breathing in for 4 seconds and out for 6 seconds.
- Walk 10 minutes after 2 of your meals. It helps your blood sugar.
- Caffeine: no more than 300 mg a day, with your last one by 09:45. As a guide, a mug of instant coffee is about 100 mg and a mug of tea about 75 mg.
- Keep hard stressors (a cold plunge, fasted training, high caffeine, a very hard session) to 1 to 2 on any one day.
- Unstructured downtime with no screens and no tasks: 2 to 3 × 30 minutes a week.
- At least 120 minutes a week in green or blue space (parks, woods, water), in one go or several.
- A 10-minute worry window in the early evening: write down your worries and one next step for each. Check the news once a day. Start with breathing before trying meditation.
- Put your downtime in the diary as a fixed appointment, and use timed practices rather than open-ended ones. This isn't another target to hit.
- Solo practices and quiet nature walks suit you best, with recovery time after social events.
- In the 5 to 7 days before your period, keep caffeine lower and avoid stacking hard stressors.
- A calorie deficit is a stressor too: keep it moderate and protect your sleep.
Sleep
Pillar 4 · your personal targets
- Time in bed: 9 h a night, aiming for 7.5 to 9 hours of actual sleep.
- Get up at 03:45 every day, weekends included (within 30 to 60 minutes). Lights out at 18:45.
- That's earlier than your usual 20:00: move lights-out earlier by about 15 minutes every few days rather than all at once.
- Wind down for 45 to 55 minutes before bed (from about 17:45): screens off, lights dim and warm.
- Finish your last main meal by 15:45 to 16:15.
- A warm bath or shower (about 10 minutes at 40 to 42 °C) finishing 90 to 120 minutes before bed, around 16:45.
- Finish vigorous training at least 2 hours before bed, by about 16:45.
- Bedroom at 16.5 to 18.5 °C, dark and quiet, phone out of reach. Light, breathable bedding.
- Daylight within an hour of waking (see Sunlight). No alcohol within 3 hours of bed. If you're awake for more than about 20 minutes, get up, sit somewhere dim and quiet, and go back when sleepy.
- In the second half of your cycle, drop the bedroom by 0.5 to 1 °C and add 15 minutes to your wind-down.
- Screens are the first thing to move out of your last hour.
- Blackout blinds or an eye mask for the light that gets in.
- Protect your sleep above everything: short sleep halves the fat lost on the same deficit. No late eating.
- Naps: none for now. Keep all your sleep pressure for the night.
- You're a natural early riser: train in the morning or early afternoon and protect an earlier bedtime.
- Write a 10-minute worry list in the early evening, and use long slow breaths out in bed.
Social connection
Pillar 6 · your personal targets
- Move with other people 3 times a week, one-to-one or in a small group. Ideas that often suit you: strength communities, group circuits, team sport.
- See someone close to you in person at least once a week, ideally several times.
- A few short, friendly exchanges every day: a neighbour, a colleague, the person at the coffee counter.
- Shared meals: plan your portions before social meals.
- Build towards 3 to 5 people you could call in a crisis. Quality matters more than number.
- Join one group with a shared purpose within the next month: a club, class, choir, team, faith or volunteer group.
- Helping others for 1 to 2 hours a week, laughter, and hugs with family, a partner or pets all count.
- In person beats video, video beats a call, and a call beats text. Messaging real people helps; scrolling tends to make mood worse.
- Two in one: a walk with a friend outdoors counts for social, daylight, movement and de-stress.
- Fewer, deeper contacts suit you: small groups and side-by-side activities, with quiet time to recover afterwards.
Reviewed and approved by Terry Fairclough · Your Body Programme
Progress Tracker
Morning weigh-in
On waking, after the toilet, before food or drink. Same clothes, same spot. Record it without judging it.
All weigh-ins
This week at a glance
Weekly check-in
Same day each week. The notes explain any odd numbers, so be honest about the salty meals and the glass of wine.
All check-ins
Record your measurements
Measurement history
Log a key lift
Your coach picks 3 to 5 key lifts. Keeping or increasing strength on these while losing weight is the clearest home sign that muscle is being kept.
How strength is compared
Each set is converted to an estimated one-rep max so that different weights and reps can be compared fairly. The tracker uses the weight lifted and the reps you could have done (reps plus RIR).
Your last two weeks are compared with the two to six weeks before. A drop of 5% or more at the same effort, lasting two weeks or more, counts towards the muscle-loss check.
One poor session means very little. Sleep, stress, food and timing all move it.
Key lifts
Estimated one-rep max (kg)Lift history
My details
These set your targets, your measuring schedule and how your numbers are read.
What you need
A digital scale, a flexible tape measure (a self-retracting body tape is easiest to use alone), a phone camera and 10 minutes every two weeks.
Thigh diameter. The tape goes around the thigh as normal. The tracker divides that circumference by π (3.14) to give the diameter. This treats the thigh as a perfect circle, which it is not, so read the diameter as a trend figure rather than a true width. Because it is about a third of the circumference, a 1 cm tape change shows as about 0.3 cm of diameter.
The first time, measure and write down the fixed distances used for the arm and thigh, so they are identical every time. If possible, film yourself once so your coach can check the tape positions.
Your data
Your entries are stored in this browser on this device only. They are not sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data, or using a different phone or computer, means they will not be there.
Copy a backup now and then and keep it somewhere safe, such as an email to yourself.
Progress Tracker
Morning weigh-in
On waking, after the toilet, before food or drink. Same clothes, same spot. Record it without judging it.
All weigh-ins
This week at a glance
Weekly check-in
Same day each week. The notes explain any odd numbers, so be honest about the salty meals and the glass of wine.
All check-ins
Record your measurements
Measurement history
Log a key lift
Your coach picks 3 to 5 key lifts. Keeping or increasing strength on these while losing weight is the clearest home sign that muscle is being kept.
How strength is compared
Each set is converted to an estimated one-rep max so that different weights and reps can be compared fairly. The tracker uses the weight lifted and the reps you could have done (reps plus RIR).
Your last two weeks are compared with the two to six weeks before. A drop of 5% or more at the same effort, lasting two weeks or more, counts towards the muscle-loss check.
One poor session means very little. Sleep, stress, food and timing all move it.
Key lifts
Estimated one-rep max (kg)Lift history
My details
These set your targets, your measuring schedule and how your numbers are read.
What you need
A digital scale, a flexible tape measure (a self-retracting body tape is easiest to use alone), a phone camera and 10 minutes every two weeks.
Thigh diameter. The tape goes around the thigh as normal. The tracker divides that circumference by π (3.14) to give the diameter. This treats the thigh as a perfect circle, which it is not, so read the diameter as a trend figure rather than a true width. Because it is about a third of the circumference, a 1 cm tape change shows as about 0.3 cm of diameter.
The first time, measure and write down the fixed distances used for the arm and thigh, so they are identical every time. If possible, film yourself once so your coach can check the tape positions.
Your data
Your entries are stored in this browser on this device only. They are not sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data, or using a different phone or computer, means they will not be there.
Copy a backup now and then and keep it somewhere safe, such as an email to yourself.