THE ONE TWEAK THAT WILL INSTANTLY CHANGE YOUR WEIGHT LOSS RESULTS

Perfecting your nutrition can be like balancing on a knife’s edge. There are few other places where success and failure are so delicately poised. Each meal is an opportunity for progress, but lose focus and results that have taken days can be undone in minutes. Perfection is not a prerequisite for success, but how many times can you take your eye off the ball before it affects your weight?

The 80/20 rule is a proven formula for success. Direct your focus on the important few. Worry less about the trivial many that contribute very little to your success.

This rule, the Pareto Principle, commonly drives business success.

But, in weight loss, the 80/20 rule doesn’t work. No one meal is more important that the other. They each carry equal weight to positively or negatively change the result.

I can tell you now that applying the 80/20 rule to your nutrition is the most frustrating place to be. The rule that has created success in so many other aspects of your life just isn’t enough.

When you apply simple logic, if you execute your nutrition plan 80% of time you should get 80% of the result. But the truth is, you don’t get 80% you often get none.

That’s right 0%.

Executives who are living the 80/20 rule are often disappointed with their weight loss results. They are putting in all the effort but their results are going no where and they tell me that “but I eat healthy”.

I believe them. They are telling the truth. But when it comes to weight loss, ‘eating healthy’ if often not enough.

WEIGHT LOSS STARTS AT 85%

Generally I prescribe three meals and two snacks per day. Those five meals per day give you 35 meals per week. The magical mark where weight loss begins is 30 correct meals per week. 30 meals out of 35 is 85%. There is no science to back this up. This is just based on experience from training hundreds of executives through this system.

WEIGH EVERY DAY

I believe winning at weight loss requires taking a look at the data and basing your decisions on what that data is telling you. That is why I require all of my clients to do the unpopular work of weighing everyday.

When you are eating at 80% what you are actually doing is losing the same kilogram over and over again.

Weigh every day and you will see weight loss Mon — Thur and then weight gain Fri — Sun. The net result over the week is zero change in the scales. But that doesn’t show the progress that you made earlier in the week that was undone on the weekend.

WRITE IT DOWN

People who record what they eat lose weight. This is just science. This is the data game that you need to play to be able to make the right decision. Often people ask me ‘can I eat carbs?’ Or ‘do I have to give up alcohol?’

I answer ‘I don’t know — do you?’

I’ve had clients who have drunk 5 alcoholic drinks (and sometimes more) each week and lose 20kg in 90 days. I’ve had other clients drink no alcohol and then have to fight for every kilogram. The data will tell you what you need to do. I can’t help you until you write it down.

To put it simply, the tweak that you need to transform your results is to lift your execution. You cant eat whatever you want for 20% of the time and expect to achieve 100% of the result.

How much leeway you’re allowed I can’t tell you. Working that out takes one-on-one problem solving and your own personal data.

What I can tell you is that if you want to mitigate the damage the one rule that you should always follow when eating off plan is — portion size.

You can get away with small amounts of food that are off the plan, but when you combine poor food choices with large portions…well, that’s probably what got you in trouble the first time around.

If you liked this post please click the like button below. If you want to learn more about the nutrition program that allows deconditioned executives to turn into athletes you can download a free chapter sampler of my book here or on the website www.executiveathlete.co