3523: Apply The 80-20 Fitness And Nutrition Principle And Win At Weight Loss by Elly McGuinness on Healthy Habits

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[00:00:58] Prevent any disease. This is Optimal Health Daily. Apply the 80-20 Fitness and Nutrition Principle and Win at Weight Loss by Ellie McGinnis of elliemcginnis.com. And I'm Dr. Neal Malik, reading you some of the most popular health and fitness blogs out there, with permission from the websites, of course, and always with a bit of my commentary at the end. All right, and with that, let's jump right in and hear our next article and continue optimizing your life.

[00:01:29] Apply the 80-20 Fitness and Nutrition Principle and Win at Weight Loss by Ellie McGinnis of elliemcginnis.com. You may have heard of the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 Rule. This principle states that 80% of your success comes from 20% of your efforts. It's also known as the principle of least effort. While there's a lot of merit in this principle, when used in a certain context,

[00:01:56] the 80-20 Lifestyle and Health and Fitness Circles is somewhat inversely proportional to this. Oh, and throughout this post, I'll refer to it as 80-20 Fitness. Now, there are a couple of ways that 80-20 Fitness is often discussed. The first is that 80% of your efforts should be focused on nutrition, with the other 20% focused on exercise. 80 diet, 20 exercise is not necessarily a principle I follow.

[00:02:24] This is because I believe that additional factors need to be considered when optimal health is your goal. These include stress levels, sleep, thoughts, and relationships. These form part of a holistic health and fitness model. The second way we talk about 80-20 Fitness is the one that resonates strongly with me. Unhealthy behaviors are everywhere in modern society. These range from making poor food and exercise choices, to the other end of the spectrum with food and exercise obsessions.

[00:02:52] Both extremes are unhealthy. Excessive exercise and food obsessions are not conducive to sustainable long-term results. They are generally not enjoyable and can make for a restrictive lifestyle that's difficult to maintain. 80-20 Lifestyle The 80-20 Fitness principle that I like to follow for long-term results is as follows. Put in a top-notch effort 80% of the time in order to obtain the health and fitness results you desire.

[00:03:21] For the remaining 20%, don't sweat it. This might sound easy. Maybe you think that by allowing yourself to relax for 20% of the time, that you won't achieve the results you're after. The opposite is in fact true. Now let me explain why. First of all, 80% of the time is a very large proportion of the time. For every 10 meals that you have, aim for 8 of them to be as nourishing as possible.

[00:03:47] This means consuming meals made from whole or think real foods. Vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains, lean meats, and eggs fit into this category. This is what some people refer to as the 80-20 diet. You're allowed to live life. For the remaining 20%, you can allow yourself to eat in a way that doesn't follow the exact guidelines. When you're a healthy person who largely follows such guidelines,

[00:04:17] the 20% won't be a full slip-up. What do I mean by this? When you sufficiently change your lifestyle so that you eat healthfully the majority of the time, you're really not going to be drawn into gorging yourself on an unhealthy fast food meal or eating a full block of chocolate. If you're getting cravings to this degree, just keep working on healthy choices. Eventually, these unhealthy binges will become a thing of the past.

[00:04:43] Believe it or not, in time, you won't get cravings for these sorts of foods. Even if you do, once you start eating them, you'll realize that they're making you feel sick or they just don't taste like real food anymore. And if by chance you do go ahead and eat something like this, you're likely to get a sore stomach or feel low on energy later. Then, you'll probably crave the delicious healthy food you're used to eating. Examples of the 20%.

[00:05:10] For healthy eaters, the 20% of the time might include eating an appropriate portion of dark chocolate rather than a whole bar of Hershey's chocolate. It might not involve worrying about what you will be served when you go to a friend's house for dinner or having a glass of wine with dinner. And when you go to lunch, you'll make an effort to select a healthy option but won't stress about it if it doesn't exactly follow the guidelines. Perhaps you might have some grainy bread with a bowl of soup.

[00:05:37] Although bread is a highly processed food, usually made from refined flour, the occasional slice is not going to hurt most people unless you're really sensitive to things like wheat or gluten. Additionally, you can usually opt to have a less processed grainy slice rather than a high glycemic index slice of white bread. Remember that these examples are for the 20% of the time, not 80%. Overall, 80-20 fitness or the 80-20 rule diet, as some people call it,

[00:06:06] is a great principle to go by on your quest to burn fat for good. Your results come from what you do most often, not what you do occasionally. This applies to both nutrition and exercise. It's a long-term lifestyle. To further cement the meaning of 80-20 fitness, consider the following. Eating one healthy meal or doing a two-week juice detox does not make you healthy. It will not result in long-term success with health and fat loss.

[00:06:33] In the same way, eating one unhealthy meal or even falling off the wagon for a week or so will not have a huge impact on your health and fat loss results if you're eating well week after week, month after month, and year after year. If you put healthy eating habits in place, they become easier and easier to maintain over time. And similarly to what I just mentioned, doing an exercise session from time to time or enrolling in a bootcamp style program for a few weeks will not achieve long-term success.

[00:07:03] Enrolling in a bootcamp program may be a great kickstart to achieving your goals. However, you must have a plan in place to continue to move forward if you're serious about your health and fitness. The 80-20 diet means that you won't feel like you're depriving yourself of things by saying, I can never eat that. In small, infrequent amounts, most foods are not going to disrupt your goals. Instead, it's the person who tells themselves that they can't have something

[00:07:31] that later feels deprived and binges in a way that will hinder their progress. Look at the big picture. 80-20 fitness means that you don't need to be hard on yourself if you missed a planned exercise session. Think about what you can do to make up for it over the next few days or address the reasons behind the slip-up. That way you can plan to minimize the likelihood of future slip-ups. First, remember to be kind to yourself and that it's just one small day in the overall big picture.

[00:08:04] You just listened to the post titled Apply the 80-20 Fitness and Nutrition Principle and Win at Weight Loss by Ellie McGinnis of elliemcginnis.com And I'll be right back with my commentary. Now, it's just me and a small team behind this show. So I get how much the right hire matters. When you need the right person, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Stop struggling to get your job post even seen on other sites.

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[00:08:59] at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Hey, Washington, D.C. Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear?

[00:09:29] Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits. Handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Crocs store today. Dr. Neal Malik here for my commentary. If you want to make the 80-20 math a bit simpler on yourself, you can use the days of the week as a starting point.

[00:09:58] For example, Monday through Friday, plan your meals and try to prepare dinners at the very least at home. Of course, everyone is different and we need to account for food allergies and intolerances. But for the most part, these dinners should include a lean protein, lots of green, red, and orange vegetables, and a whole grain. Then, on the weekends, you can be less strict with your meals. Now, we don't need to go completely off track and indulge by eating an entire medium pizza

[00:10:27] by ourselves like I once did, but we can still have some of those foods we've been craving or missing. Same goes for exercise. Get in those structured activity sessions Monday through Friday. Then, use the two weekend days as recovery days. Now, on these recovery days, you can go for a leisurely walk at the beach or perform some light yoga or perform some stretching exercises. Then, when Monday comes around again, we start the pattern over again.

[00:10:53] Now, if you do the math, following this five days on, two days off pattern is actually closer to a 70-30 ratio instead of 80-20. But hey, close enough, right? All right, that'll do it for today. I'll be back here tomorrow for our usual Friday Q&A, so stay tuned for that where your optimal life awaits.