Is The 80:20 Rule Really A Good Idea?

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝What is your philsophy on eating 80% healthy and 20% not, is it better to try to eat 90% or 100% healthy?❞

Short answer: what works for you, works for you (if it works for you)!

More helpful answer: it depends on what each dietary approach ends up looking like for you. For example, there are important differences between:

1. Someone who carefully measures their food to get 80% of calories from whole-foods plant-based nutrient-dense food, and the other 20% from anything they like, healthy or not
2. Someone who eats what looks like a healthy diet for 80% of their diet, but falls for a lot of greenwashing and things that look healthier than they are, and then 20% things that look unhealthy (and probably are).
3. Someone who considers that dessert is just one small part of the day’s eating, so that triple-chocolate ice cream caramel sundae with waffles and syrup and candy sprinkles must be fine (and then similar the next day, and the next, and…)
4. Someone who works out their daily calories, and dutifully calculates “ok, I’m consuming 1600 kcal per day, so 1600/100 x20 = 320, so if I eat healthily the rest of the day, I can have 6 shots of vodka before bed daily
5. Someone who applies the 80:20 rule in one of the above ways Monday to Friday, and then at the weekend, declares that 20% of the week and anything goes

As you may gather, some of those are definitely overly optimistic in their understanding of what will bring (and maintain) good health.

We’ll be clear: option 1 is not bad, 2 is next best, 3 and 4 are going wildly off-piste in similar but different ways and neither are doing their health* any favors, and 5 is using the 80:20 rule as an excuse to do whatever they want.

*The main problems with 3 and 4 are the damage to the gut microbiome, the damage to the liver (and associated metabolic problems, which will ultimately hit the heart and pancreas, amongst other organs), and the increased risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Depending on alcohol tolerance, there is also an increased risk of harm by accident/incident in the alcohol version.

Let us assume that you, dear reader, are not doing 3 or 4.

What about 5?

The thing with 5 is… If you want to eat that way, you don’t need an excuse. You don’t have to justify it to anyone, including yourself. Just, it might be better to make your peace with the fact that you have simply decided that eating healthily isn’t important to you. And that’s your choice!

Practical example: there are many people who, for one reason or another, have good cause to believe they will die soon regardless of what they eat. It could be because of a terminal diagnosis, or very advanced age, or some other reason, but the relevant thing is: in such a position, there really is a limit to the worst that can happen from eating that triple-chocolate ice cream caramel sundae with waffles and syrup and candy sprinkles, even with a side-serving of 6 shots of vodka, if they so choose.

If you, dear reader, are health-conscious and hoping (and reasonably expecting) to not die soon, then that leaves us with 1 and 2.

2 will put you—guestimating here; we don’t have hard figures—easily into the top quartile of healthy people. That’s not bad at all. It could be better, and if you’re in that position, we’d say that the best thing you can do is exactly what you’re doing: gradually build your knowledge of what is actually healthy vs what just looks healthy, and gradually adjust your grocery-shopping habits accordingly.

1 has a very wide range, but if you get about it in a smart way, it can be super-healthy. We say “it has a wide range” because technically, 1 in its broadest interpretation could include 4 (since the 6 shots of vodka will indeed fit in that 20%). But most people, hopefully, don’t do that.

To go about it “in a smart way”: remember that the “whatever you want” doesn’t have to be unhealthy. It just means that if you’re going out for dinner, ordering a thin-crust pizza with mostly vegetable toppings isn’t going to derail your health plan. You can take a flute of champagne at that wedding, if you find yourself so inclined. And so forth.

You don’t have to “fill” that 20% with unhealthy things. It’s just there if you need to dip into it to avoid inconveniencing yourself.

The best tip

Redefine what “treat” means for you. For this writer, for example, a treat on my birthday means I buy the more expensive coffee if I want to. On my last birthday (let’s just say, it was a number ending in zero, and thus merited extra attention) my main (and only) course of my birthday dinner was shchi ← Russian cabbage soup; sounds terrible, looks worse, yet is my favorite comfort food.

Perhaps you don’t care for coffee and are alarmed at the prospect of eating cabbage soup on a special day.

But, what do you love? For an ex of mine, it was prawn cocktail salad with pomegranate. How about you?

The only limit is your imagination—it doesn’t have to be unhealthy to be good!

Here be science

There is some merit to avoiding slippery slopes by declaring an entire category of food/drink forbidden, so that you’re not tempted to have just a bit, and then more, and then more, and before you know it it’s your new habit, again.

But there’s also merit to allowing wiggle-room for sustainability, because otherwise it’s easy to give up when things are difficult/inconvenient/unpleasant.

Previously at 10almonds, we’ve looked at two fairly opposing schools of thought when it comes to managing what we eat, and the relevant science for each of them.

First we looked at:

What Flexible Dieting Really Means

…and the notion of doing things imperfectly for greater sustainability, and reducing the cognitive load of dieting by measuring only the things that are necessary.

And then in opposition to that,

What Are The “Bright Lines” Of Bright Line Eating?

…and the notion of doing things perfectly so as to not go astray, and reducing the cognitive load of dieting by having hard-and-fast rules that one does not second-guess or reconsider later when hungry.

Either way, intuitive eating can be a very strong method. It means listening to one’s body, and responding to hunger signals, whether those signals are saying “time to eat” or “time to stop”.

A common recommendation is to “check in” with one’s body several times per meal, reflecting on such questions as:

• Do I have hunger pangs? Would I seek food now if I weren’t already at the table?
• If I hadn’t made more food than I’ve already eaten so far, would that have been enough, or would I have to look for something else to eat?
• Am I craving any of the foods that are still before me? Which one(s)?
• How much “room” do I feel I still have, really? Am I still in the comfort zone, and/or am I about to pass into having overeaten?
• Am I eating for pleasure only at this point? (This is not inherently bad, by the way—it’s ok to have a little more just for pleasure! But it is good to note that this is the reason we’re eating, and take it as a cue to slow down and remember to eat mindfully, and enjoy every bite)
• Have I, in fact, passed the point of pleasure, and I’m just eating because it’s in front of me, or so as to “not be wasteful”?

See also: Interoception: Improving Our Awareness Of Body Cues

And for that matter: Mindful Eating: How To Get More Out Of What’s On Your Plate

Finally, you can combine even seemingly opposing methods!

For example, maybe you want to go with the WHO recommendation that “the only safe amount of alcohol is zero”, and consume no alcohol ever, but are happy to be flexible about other things.

So, ultimately—after a detour through the methods, and now some links in this last section to the science of various approaches—we come back to our short answer up top:

❝What works for you, works for you (if it works for you)!❞

So, just make sure that it does, and do it mindfully and with well-informed intent!