The 80/20 Rule
Dr. David Rahm encourages his patients, clients, and readers to follow the 80/20 rule. Basically, instead of having some hard and fast diet that you stick to to the death (and then when you mess up one time you completely cave in and fall off the wagon) to basically make margins for not being so strict on yourself.
In line with the post on lifestyle changes, as you are “dieting” through this contest, try to stick to your principles 80% of the time. the other 20%, don’t go crazy, but give yourself a little breathing room. Your results will be FAR BETTER than going 100% for 10 weeks then back to hardly any principles after that. It is much better to each well four out of 5 meals, or 4 out of 5 days, then on the off day or that off meal, in moderation, treat yourself to a reasonable amount of something you like.
Blessings on Your Journey!
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Great rule! Jim Rohn loved the 80/20 rule. I’ve never heard it related to a diet though so very interesting. Usually it’s applied to business but I love the idea that focusing on your diet 80% of the time will keep you from burning out.
That’s not really the 80/20 rule, though. The Pareto Principle states that 20 percent of what you do produces 80 percent of the value. Were you to apply it to dieting it would mean that if there are 100 things you are trying to do to improve your diet, probably only 20 of them would produce 80 percent of the positive results so you should focus on those 20 things instead of the other 80. I’d love to see how this would work in a diet, because it would simply things greatly and produce results with less effort.
Sandy,
A different spin on the 80/20 rule! I definitely don’t think the Pareto Principle would work with diet, or with sleep for that matter. Could you imagine sleeping two hours a night and feeling like you got 8?
Interesting thoughts though.
Jon
It wouldn’t work with sleep, but it could work with diet.
For instance, let’s say that avoiding white flour is one of your goals. Perhaps by sticking to that and that alone, you’d drop a few pounds a month.
Then say that avoiding eating past 9 PM is another goal. But you notice that this goal is not really making much difference.
So the white flour thing is part of the 20 percent that makes the difference, and the 9 PM eating is part of the 80 percent that doesn’t.
It could be that there are different things for different people based on metabolism, blood type, genetics, whatever. I know for me that white flour and sugar are part of the 20%. High intensity interval training is not, because I get next to zero benefit from it.
I see what you are saying, and agree. And I think that is much along the lines of what Dr Rahm is saying too.
And yes, not eating late really, in my opinion, isn’t too significant in the grand scheme of things. It is WHAT you eat not WHEN you eat it.
Thanks for your input!