Stay Within Shooting Distance
Read on kevferrell.com
Welcome to Rewire | Reboot, a weekly newsletter where I share reflections from my ongoing personal growth journey and provide tested ideas, frameworks, tools and practices to help you create the life you want.
If you were forwarded this email you can sign up for the free weekly newsletter here.
In this issue:
- Consistency beats perfection
- Flipping the food pyramid
- Walk your way to better thinking
Rewire - Idea I'm Exploring
Consistency Beats Perfection
However you chose to start afresh this year - new intentions, resolutions, habits or routines - here’s the reminder worth repeating:
Progress is built on consistency, not perfection or intensity.
This applies whether you’re tackling a career goal, a new way of eating, an exercise routine, or a personal habit you’re trying to rewire. If you got started, that’s a win. If motivation is starting to fade, or you’ve fallen off track, that’s normal too.
You will miss days.
Perfection is not the standard - it’s an illusion.
What matters most isn’t whether you miss occasionally. It’s what you do next.
An unhealthy meal doesn’t ruin your nutrition plan.
A skipped workout doesn’t mean you stop going to the gym.
A bad day at work doesn’t erase your progress.
Put it behind you. Make the next meal a good one. Do the next workout. Take the next meaningful action in your work.
It isn’t all-or-nothing. Don't sabotage your entire plan because of one misstep. Just get back to it.
"The farther you drift from baseline, the harder it becomes to return. Tiny deviations are easy to correct. Massive ones aren’t."
I call this The Drift Principle.
Don’t get too far off course. Stay within shooting distance.
One practical rule helps prevent small slips from becoming full derailments:
Try not to miss twice.
The Real Goal: Sustainability
The focus also shouldn’t be on how intensely you start, but on how long you can continue.
We see this every January. Someone commits fully, joins a challenge for X number of days, goes all-out… and then stops completely once the challenge ends. That’s not true success. That’s burnout.
Even elite athletes and advanced trainers fall into this trap. It’s a New Year. Motivation spikes. Intensity increases. Exhaustion, or worse, injuries follow.
The goal isn’t short bursts of maximum effort.
The goal is setting a pace you can sustain for the year - or a lifetime.
When you’re still building the habit, still reshaping your identity, sustainable systems beat heroic effort every time.
Consistency is the steady application of effort over time. It compounds small actions into meaningful results, builds habits, neutralizes procrastination, and makes progress measurable.
People who succeed don’t necessarily have more discipline, willpower or motivation than those who struggle. It’s that they have found a system that actually works - and stayed with it.
Slow progress is infinitely better than no progress.
Reboot - Health & Longevity
Flipping the Food Pyramid
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, alongside the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
The timing is great, in that this is the time of year when many people are thinking about making healthier nutritional choices. It's also long overdue.
I wrote in a previous issue about most people not consuming enough protein and that the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) guidelines are inadequate. In that same issue, I noted that most people consume too many carbohydrates, in particular sugar, and ultra-processed foods, which we should strive to reduce - but not eliminate entirely.
These themes are a big component of the changes introduced in the new guidelines. And the core message is refreshingly direct:
Eat real food.
That may sound obvious, but in the context of a country where more than 70% of adults are overweight or obese, diet-driven chronic disease dominates health care spending, and metabolic illness is increasingly showing up in children and adolescents, clarity matters.
Here are the most important shifts at a very high level - and a quick take on what they get right and where there’s more work to do.
1. Protein finally gets upgraded
What changed:
Recommended protein intake rises meaningfully from a bare-minimum 0.8 g/kg/day to a more functional 1.2–1.6 g/kg/day, with an emphasis on whole-food sources across meals.
Why it matters:
This acknowledges that protein isn’t just about preventing deficiency - it’s foundational for building and maintaining muscle, metabolic health, satiety and aging well.
Where there’s more work:
The guidance could be more practical: clearer per-meal targets, stronger emphasis for older adults, and a sharper distinction between whole-food protein and ultra-processed substitutes.
2. Ultra-processed foods are finally named as a problem
What changed:
For the first time, the guidelines explicitly recommend avoiding ultra-processed foods, which now make up nearly two-thirds of calories in the American diet.
Why it matters:
This is a major win. The evidence is no longer just observational. Randomized trials show ultra-processed diets drive higher calorie intake and weight gain, even when macros are managed.
Where there’s more work:
The language is still cautious. “Avoid” is correct, but the public needs clarity that ultra-processed foods should be rare in the diet, not a daily default.
3. Added sugar gets a hard stop
What changed:
The guidelines state that no amount of added sugar is recommended in a healthy diet. Children under four should consume zero added sugar. They also caution against heavy use of artificial sweeteners because that’s not an easy win.
Why it matters:
This directly targets one of the highest-impact levers in nutrition: sugar-sweetened beverages and refined carbohydrate overload. Stop drinking your calories.
Where there’s more work:
Implementation will matter more than intent. Without changes to commercial food production and marketing practices, sugar remains the easiest calorie to overconsume.
4. Fat quality replaces fat fear
What changed:
The guidelines step back from blanket saturated fat demonization and focus instead on fat quality and food context. For example, full-fat dairy is no longer treated as inherently harmful.
Why it matters:
This corrects decades of unintended consequences that pushed people toward low-fat, high-sugar “health” foods.
Where there’s more work:
Nuance matters. Saturated fat isn’t bad, but quantities and sources are relevant. Individual lipid responses still matter. These distinctions remain under-communicated.
Final Thoughts
It’s been a long time coming, but these guidelines are a big step in the right direction.
Eat real food, prioritize protein, limit highly processed foods and sugar.
Toolkit - Something I'm Doing
Walk Your Way to Better Thinking
When mental fog sets in, our instinct is often to push harder. The research suggests a better move: go for a walk.
A 2019 study examining the cognitive effects of a single bout of exercise found that moderate aerobic movement - around 20 minutes - significantly improves executive function, including attention, inhibition and processing speed. Longer sessions didn’t produce additional gains. More isn’t better here; there’s a cognitive sweet spot.
This lines up with a broader body of evidence showing that walking creates an ideal neurological environment for thinking. Moderate movement increases cerebral blood flow, elevates neurotransmitters linked to focus and mood and activates brain networks involved in executive control, without tipping into fatigue that can blunt higher-order cognition. So this also isn’t about intensity. Even short, regular walks outperform sporadic high-intensity sessions when it comes to cognitive return.
The result isn’t just sharper focus. Walking reliably boosts creativity.
Multiple studies show that people generate more novel ideas while walking than while sitting.
How I use this tool:
I have often been asked how I find time to write this newsletter and how I come up with the content.
One of my simplest yet most powerful tools is walking. Much of the time, my ideas shared in this newsletter come to me while I am on a walk - one I’d usually be doing anyway as part of my exercise regime. I will often even dictate the entire outline of a newsletter issue while I'm walking and the ideas are flowing.
I also find walking works well for improved decision-making and problem-solving. Stepping away with no distractions allows me to see things more clearly from a fresh perspective.
Tips:
- When stuck or mentally drained, go for a 15–20 minute walk, preferably alone and in nature.
- Keep it moderate. Fast enough to raise your heart rate, slow enough to think.
- Leave the podcast, music or audiobook behind. No distractions. Let your mind wander.
- Use walking as a reset. To clear your mind and return with better decisions.
If you’re looking for one of the highest-ROI tools for clearer thinking, better ideas, and sustained mental performance, it’s hiding in plain sight.
Step away.
Move your body.
Let your mind catch up.
Inspiration
“Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.”
— John C. Maxwell
One Action
Take a Walk
Take a 20-minute walk in nature. No distractions. See what emerges.
Let me know how it goes - just reply to this email.
Reader's Corner
Reader Feedback
Last week I wrote about the idea that this question prompted me to explore: “How are you feeling about 2026?”. It hit home for this reader who shared:
“I read today's newsletter and thought I am so aligned with Kevin’s approach to the question "How Are You Feeling About 2026?" and to his answer, that I wanted to share this positive message with you. You can delete this if you wish, read it if you wish, subscribe to his newsletter to read past and future issues if you wish - I am simply sharing because this message really resonated with me, and because of the respect I have for this gentleman. He is actually helping me be more positive, and I am leveraging these newsletters to guide me towards an even better overall life.”
I also provided a link to download my goal setting and daily habit tracker template, which gave this reader a spark:
“I’ve been thinking about how to hold myself accountable to the things I want to accomplish and the tracker is a great idea. I remember now how your mind works as I comb through the detail of the workbook. Might be a little too detailed for me, but I’ll have to adjust. Also, forces me to think about results and success. I will need some time to figure it out but it has sparked my thought process. Thank you!”
Ask Me Anything
Have a question about something in this issue? An experience you'd like to share? A topic you'd like me to cover or dive deeper into in a future newsletter or article? Reply to this email and let me know.
Want to share this issue? Just forward this email or copy and paste this link:
https://newsletter.kevferrell.com/posts/the-drift-principle?ref=Id
Until next week,
Kevin
Learn more about me
Follow me
