How The 80/20 Rule For Nutrition Is Ruining Your Results and Mindset
THE 80/20 RULE FOR NUTRITION
Is Ruining Your Results & Mindset
Written by Jonathan Fletcher
There’s a huge problem in the fitness and nutrition industry, and it has to stop.
Something that’s supposed to be a helpful concept for people trying to lose fat, get healthy, and live their best lives has gone completely wrong.
It’s the misunderstanding, bastardization, and abuse of the 80/20 rule.
The 80/20 rule came from an economist named Vilfredo Pareto. He noticed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by just 20% of the population and that just 20% of the plants in his garden were producing 80% of the fruit.
Basically, he noticed that there’s a disproportionate relationship between results and effort.
That means that not everything you put your work into pays off the same amount. I’ll give you an example.
Let’s say you go to a garage sale and pay $100 for a box of 100 baseball cards without knowing what you’re buying. You get home, check eBay, and find out that 80 of the cards are worth just pennies, but 20 of those bad boys are worth $20 a piece! Cha-ching!
Your $100 gamble paid off to the tune of $400, even though the profits came from just 20% of the lot.
Here’s another example:
You notice that with the cost of gas these days, your SUV is busting your monthly gas budget. To improve your gas mileage you do 4 things.
#1 - Feather the gas really lightly when you accelerate from a stop.
#2 - Switch your radio over to classical music instead of hip-hop.
#3 - Replace your vanilla-scented air freshener with cool mountain breeze.
#4 - Get a candy-apple-red paint job.
After a few months, you notice that your gas bill is already down $50!
You changed four things, but most (in this case all) of your results came from just one of those changes (feathering the gas pedal).
Good ol’ Vilfred called this concept the “Pareto Principle”:
80% of your results will come from 20% of your actions.
Sadly, Mr. Pareto is gone, and here we are today…
Coaches, influencers, fitspos, whatever you call them… are misconstruing things by saying garbage like this:
“If you’re 80% on track with your training and nutrition, the other 20% of the time when you’re off track is no big deal!”
Wait, what?
For starters, I have a deep disdain for the whole black/white, binary thinking surrounding being “on” or “off” track.
It compartmentalizes time frames into arbitrary chunks, that are really just justifications and self-soothing techniques that let you continue to make bad decisions until you are “back on track”.
BREAKING NEWS: YOU ARE ONE DECISION AWAY FROM GETTING “BACK ON TRACK”
It’s ridiculous really…
Imagine if you acted in your real life the way you do with fitness and nutrition.
“Yeah sorry I was doing 80 in a school zone officer. I’m just really off track with my driving right now…But I’m planning on slowing down and getting back on track on Monday.”
See you in jail!
Encouraging people to be 80% on track, and 20% off track is contributing to the all-or-nothing mentality that simply will not work to get and maintain progress with your fitness, health, strength, or mindset.
Another thing that drives me nuts about the way these influencers are presenting the 80/20 rule is that they give people the idea that so long as they are “trying” 80% of the time, they should expect to see steady progress.
I have some really bad news. That doesn’t work. Never has, never will.
The Pareto principle doesn’t say that if you show up 80% of the time you will get 100% level results.
It says that 20% of the things you are putting your efforts into will get you 80% of your results.
Do you see the difference?
The idea is that you should be darned near perfect on the 20% that matters the most, so that you can easily cash in on 80% of your results with just those things.
And then when you continue to put less focused effort into the other 80% of things that matter a bit less, you end up close to getting 100% results without having to micromanage the things that mattered less.
Your greens powder… That’s in the 80% that doesn’t really matter. Don’t turn your life upside to never miss a dose.
Eating in the calorie range that is right for your goals… That’s in the 20% that gets you 80% of your results. You should nail this one almost every day.
Making sure that you’ve properly activated your glutes for 10 minutes before you squat… That’s certainly in the 80% and probably matters zero.
Tracking your workouts to make sure that you’re using progressive overload to get stronger and build muscle… That’s some 20% stuff that you need to be nailing.
When applied correctly, the 80/20 rule is actually very freeing! I don’t have time to waste, do you? I didn’t think so.
But remember, you still give 100% effort. You just pour the majority of your time, intent, and money into the 20% that is giving you the most bang for your buck.
Maybe you’re a Type-A type who’s trying to turn this into a math equation. Stop it, it’s not. It’s a principle to increase your productivity, and maximize your results.
Let’s move on to another way that the 80/20 rule is being abused.
As humans, we are pretty terrible at keeping track of what we eat. Research has shown that people underestimate how many calories they eat by as much as 50%, even when they’re tracking it in an app and trying to be 100% accurate.
Let’s do some math on why the 80/20 rule is killing people who track their food.
If you’re of the mind that 80% is good enough, you log your food 5.6 days out of the week. (5.6 is 80% of 7 days) You feel like you’re winning. #80/20forlife
In my experience though… I’d put money on the fact that you logged more like 4.5 days if you’re an 80%’er. (Mon, Tue, Wed, Thur & half of Friday).
And then… Even on the days that you do log your food, you’re human. You estimate things, and say “that’s close enough”.
You forget about the bite you grabbed. You don’t log the leftovers on your kid’s plate that you polished off. The small taste you had of that dessert goes unaccounted for. You estimate your peanut butter and the dressing on your salad.
You’re not being malicious, it just happens.
So even during your 80%, you’re not actually giving 100%. But that doesn’t register in your mind, and therefore your expectations don’t adjust.
You are still expecting progress, under the false assumption that 80% is good enough.
In your mind you nailed the 80%, so you’ve earned your 20% baby!
Let’s goooo!! After all…The fitspo genetic freak on Instagram said 80/20 is the way! Pancakes for breakfast Saturday, burgers for lunch on Sunday, and drinks after dinner.
And by the end of the weekend, you’ve actually made zero progress. Whatever credit you earned by being 80% “on track” has been debited (and then some) by the 20% you were “off track”.
You feel deflated, blame yourself, and give up after a few cycles of this pattern.
Then there’s the crowd on social media that is telling you not to give up. Don’t quit!
“As long as you don’t give up you cannot fail!”
I’m sorry. That’s total B.S.
Think about this… If you keep pouring money into failing investments are you going to be shopping for Bugatti’s next year? Negative.
If you keep doing squats to get bigger arms, is it ever going to work? Nope.
You can’t keep sinking time and effort into a losing plan, with the expectation of eventually winning. Even if you don’t give up. Sometimes you have to cut your losses and come up with a better plan.
When you combine the distorted version of the 80/20 principle with “just get back on track and you will win”, you’ve got the perfect recipe for never actually getting results, or developing belief in yourself.
It’s ludicrous, and I’m not talking about the rapper.
Here’s your wake-up call friend. If what you’ve been doing is not in fact working, you are free to quit, without being a quitter. I have your back.
The best way to use the 80/20 rule with your nutrition
Nutrition is the main way that people struggle with the 80/20 concept, so let me give you a healthier way to apply it.
First, follow the original intent of the rule. Give 100% effort every day. Some days that won’t end up happening, but the intent needs to be there every day.
What I mean is that you can’t be straddling the line between who you are now, and who you want to be. You have to be mentally all in, and you have to accept the fact that you may need to adjust your lifestyle, and take different actions to get what you say you want.
That might mean saying “no thanks” to the things that are holding you back. In an age where discipline and sacrifice have become dirty words that can get you canceled… I’m here to tell you the truth. You are going to need both. Sacrifice, and discipline to win.
With that out of the way, forget the idea of being 80% on track and 20% off track with your nutrition. I’ve already established that you won’t get results, and you will trash your mindset with all-or-nothing thinking.
Here’s a healthier way to apply the non-Pareto version of the 80/20 rule to your nutrition that won’t leave you sad and frustrated.
Make 80% of everything you eat highly nutritious, easily identifiable, single-ingredient, minimally processed foods.
Things like meat, eggs, vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, oats, legumes, beans, and dairy.
Let yourself use the other 20% of what you eat for the more processed, harder to know what you’re eating, less-nutritious stuff.
Stuff like crackers, chips, snack bars, pizza, alcohol, and sweets. Are you wondering about “healthy” stuff like Quest protein chips, protein bars, or pseudo-health foods like veggie chips? They all go into the 20% category.
There are two important things I want you to pay attention to here.
First, I didn’t tell you what you could or couldn’t eat. Nothing is off-limits. Nothing is out of bounds. Nothing can push you into feeling “off-track” if you eat it.
If you don’t feel there are “forbidden” foods, you’re less likely to build them up in your mind as something you want to go crazy eating should the opportunity arise.
Because the reality is, any food can be a part of your overall nutrition. Yep, even that one. The question is, how much are you having, and how often are you having it? That brings me to the next point.
When I say that you can have 20% of your diet from less nutritious foods, what I mean is that 20% of the calories you eat can fall into that category.
I didn’t say that 80% of your food decisions should be “healthy”, and the other 20% of your choices can be junk.
I didn’t say that 80% of your week you should eat salads, and 20% of the week you should eat chicken wings and ice cream.
I said that out of all the calories you eat per day, let’s call it 2000 for easy math… about 1600 (80%) should come from highly nutritious foods that walked on or grew out of the earth. And then the other 400 calories (20%) should be set aside for flexibility with less nutritious stuff if you want it.
Over the course of the week that’s 11,200 optimally nutritious calories and 2,800 potentially less than nutritious ones. Do you see how the ratio is skewed towards food that are better for you? It makes the “less-healthy” options a small percentage of your overall diet. And that’s what matters.
If you follow this version of the 80/20 rule you’ll be eating a ton of real, whole, filling, delicious, vitamin, mineral, protein-rich food… And you won’t be on a “diet” that doesn’t let you have any fun.
An important note about the size of food vs. the calories in it
If you’re not counting your calories, which is totally fine… You still need to be aware of the fact that the size of the food you eat doesn’t necessarily translate to how many calories are in it.
When you’re thinking about your 20%, don’t go by how big it looks on your plate. Two small chocolate chip cookies might very well be 400 calories. But if you were to put those 400 calories of tiny cookies next to the entire 1600 other calories you ate that day they would certainly be less than 20% of your food for the day.
Here’s a visual for you.
This entire 1 lb box of spring mix has less calories than 1 tablespoon of peanut butter.
SAD, I KNOW.
My point is, when it comes to less nutritious foods… They pack a calorie punch that can easily derail you if you’re saying “It didn’t look like that much food”.
Bring some awareness into your life by flipping over food packages and reading about the serving sizes, and the calorie content of what you’re eating.
In summary…
I’m sick and tired of fitness coaches and influencers misleading people. They tell you that if you are consistent 80% of the time with your workouts and nutrition you should expect results. It’s not true, and it’s leading you to a lot of disappointment.
I’m also fed up with the “If you don’t give up, you’re golden” lie. If you keep doing what’s not working, you’ll never get what you want. Sure you need persistence, but only if you’re following a solid plan.
The Pareto Principle was meant to help you focus your efforts on the things that matter most. Not to lead to binary, black-and-white, on-track/off-track thinking.
If you want results, you still have to bring the effort every single day, not just 80% of the time.
You work hard, you deserve results.
If you’re ready to see what you’re capable of with the right plan, and coaching we can help.
