What Does it Mean to Live an 80/20 Healthy Lifestyle?

Today we are going to talk about the 80/20 lifestyle. Be 80% good and 20% bad when it comes to food choices and allowances. As we know, it’s important to make healthy choices when you are at home AND when you are away from home, but it is also important to let yourself indulge every once and a while. That is why you should allow yourself to live an 80/20 life!

Make good food choices 80% of the time and allow for indulgences 20% of the time. You can’t be perfect all the time, so don’t try. If we can’t be perfect in any aspect of our lives, why would we expect to be perfect regarding food?  It IS okay to have that cookie sometimes. Friend’s parties, dinners, special lunches, and all of the other “special” events can mess with your healthy lifestyle. You can’t be perfect all the time. Control the food in your house, and what you order. Don’t worry about what you can’t control. 

Make sure you don’t allow yourself to overindulge! Giving yourself the 20% allowance does not mean you should eat ALL the cookies. Just have one instead of none.

Bring a healthy side dish and eat before you go to a party. Don’t go over there starving. Create a balance and make an allowance for cookies. Believe that you are a disciplined person that enjoys their life. Don’t feel guilty about eating junk food as long as it falls in your 20%. Create a healthy balance between fun, and discipline.

This is the experience with food we are really after when we see chocolate. Unfortunately, most of the time we care more about getting the next Hershey kiss into our mouths that we don’t savor this one. We can apply this kind of eating to all foods. We need to learn how to enjoy food and enjoy our rewards.

When you make the choice to change your life and start living a healthy lifestyle you will have a few setbacks. There are tools to help you to be successful such as scales, body fat testing, circumference measurements, and the fit of your clothes. You have to decide which of those tools will in fact help you and encourage you and which of those tools will hurt you.  Over time you will know what to do. One tool that you may consider using is a scale. For some, you will need to just throw out the scale. If you decide to use a scale you CANNOT let yourself obsess about the number. You should not be weighing yourself every day because weight can fluctuate so much. Weigh yourself once per week at the same time each week. You will see results over time, but not daily. You also need to know that if you are looking better and feeling better the number on the scale will still naturally fluctuate. Scale numbers fluctuate due to levels of hydration, hours of sleep, time of day, bowel movements, and water retention. You could be gaining muscle and losing fat, and the scale doesn’t reflect it at all. As women, we tie up too much of our worth in that number. We need to disconnect from that measure of value. Don’t be discouraged by the scale. Let the fit of your clothes, and the way you feel be your judge. Don’t let the scale send you into a failure mindset anymore.

Remember that making a momentary allowance is ok because it’s part of your long-term plan. If you find that you are falling back into a 50% good 50% bad day. Think of this day as a momentary set back in a long-term plan. You don’t gain weight from a momentary set back. You gain weight when you stay in an unbalanced 50/ 50 lifestyle. One Thanksgiving meal doesn’t make us gain weight; days of leftovers make us gain weight. Strive to create a healthy balance in your life that contains both health, and treats. Remind yourself that it is ok to have a glass of wine with your husband, and a piece of birthday cake with your friends.

It’s all part of your plan.