The 80/20 Rule Of Fitness & Nutrition

Pareto’s principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) states that 80% of the effect, comes from 20% of the causes.

This law has dodged scrutiny and has been accepted as truth.

In business, 80% of profits are driven by 20% of customers.

In legal circles, 80% of crime is committed by 20% of people.

What does this have to with fitness and nutrition?

In fitness, you don’t need to be doing hundreds of different exercises and plans to lose weight and add some lean muscle. The more complexity you add to your training, the less likely you’ll be to follow through on your plan.

Keeping it simple with compound lifts (think squats, deadlifts, push ups, pull ups, etc) and high intensity interval training (HIIT) will be the 20% you need for the 80% of the effects.

For nutrition, keeping it simple is best again.

Low carb. Keto. Intermittent fasting. It doesn’t matter. The goal of all weight loss is to eat less calories.

No one is overweight because they eat too much fruit and vegetables.

Just because a banana has more sugar than strawberries doesn’t mean that bananas are bad.

Rather than sweating the small stuff, you can just choose to focus on your intake of calories, carbs, fat and protein. The 20%.

It’s easy to get caught up in the latest social media “influencer” or the latest trends in Hollywood. Most of the time, the answer can be found with simple solutions.

Be careful, simple doesn’t mean easy, which is why some people tend to look for shortcuts that ultimately are difficult to transfer into life long healthy habits.