The No More Excuses Diet (44 page)

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SATURDAY:
Rest

Your
nutrition component is 80 percent of your results while your fitness is 20 percent. Food is the fuel that operates your body. Your body is set up to think, sleep, exercise, and move, and it needs food to do all that. Most of all, food is at the heart of every family event, holiday celebration, and special occasion. Food is an integral part of our lives, yet that single factor may be holding you back from reaching your best body. There are many quick fixes, detoxes, and extreme diets marketed today, but the only thing that works is an eating plan you can stick to in the long run. If your food intake isn’t realistic, flexible, and achievable, then you haven’t got the good eating routine you need for success and you will eventually fall short of meeting your goals.

I remember years ago watching Oprah Winfrey and seeing her guest, professional organizer Peter Walsh, say that we use 20 percent
of our clothes 80 percent of the time. Wow! I thought about my favorite pair of jeans, workout pants, and tops and I had to agree. It was a big revelation for me and I began applying that formula to my health and fitness philosophy. My 80:20 outlook on exercise and diet coincides with the economic percentage known as the Pareto Principle, coined by Vilfredo Pareto in 1897, when he observed the pattern of distribution between wealth and income. He saw his society naturally divided into the “vital few,” the 20 percent who had money and influence over the bottom 80 percent, who lacked resources. This relationship can be seen in many professional, personal, and physical settings.

In the past I thought I could outrun a bad diet. I would often treat myself to a sweet dessert after a hard workout! I thought that diet and exercise were equal, a perfect 50:50 in value and results. But after many failed diet attempts and more weight gain, I realized that diet is far more important than I originally thought. Even eating something seemingly healthy, like my favorite Subway sandwich with baked chips and a large raspberry ice tea, was more calories than I burned on my 3-mile run. If you are working out weekly and still drinking fancy coffee drinks, snacking on evening ice cream, and skipping breakfast, then you will see minimal results. Eighty percent of your weight-loss success will stem from your nutritional input, and the last 20 percent is from your exercise output.

The 80:20 principle doesn’t mean you have to be perfect. As a past perfectionist who has struggled with her weight, I constantly felt like a failure when I splurged on my favorite foods several times a week while watching TV, enjoying happy hours, and attending family events. Indulging unexpectedly several times a week felt like a never-ending “starting line,” where I would start anew every Monday, hoping to be perfect on my diet and exercise plan, only to finish the week in last place.

When I began incorporating the 80:20 principle into my life,
though, I became more forgiving of my small setbacks—in fact, my setbacks began to be part of the plan! I began succeeding by eating healthy 80 percent of the time and allowing splurges 20 percent of the time. This new way of thinking allowed me to eat healthy throughout the week and to enjoy small planned treats during a weekday lunch or weekend event. Most of my friends and family were surprised I was losing weight while indulging at parties, not realizing that the majority of the time—when they rarely saw me—I was eating balanced, nutritious, and healthy meals.

The No More Excuses diet is a long-term healthy lifestyle. It’s about striving to become a better person. But it includes failing—yes, failing! The idea is that you conduct S.P.E.E.D. trials in your fitness and nutritional goals and see what works. Then, you set your nutritional goals, plan your meals, envision your success, execute your plan, and deliver the results. Did you eat enough? Did you snack too much? If you want to succeed, you need to be forgiving of your occasional setbacks and flexible with your goals—and even your timeline. I know this from experimenting with nearly every diet that exists, and I finally found what works. I completed my S.P.E.E.D. strategy and I revised it weekly. There are a lot of dieting tactics out there, and all of them can become confusing very fast. Instead, I’m going to keep this chapter simple (just the way I like it).

Before I begin, let me say this:
I am not a nutritionist. As I always say, your diet, like achieving fitness, is a progression. You need to incorporate small daily changes by making healthier choices. Sometimes diet information can be so overwhelming or confusing or contradictory that most people don’t even know where to begin. For example, there are a lot of books promoting diets of no meat, no gluten, even no foods that are not right for your blood type! There is general truth in all of the studies to back up these theories, but you have to figure out what works best for you. I can tell you about my diet—just like I can tell you about my workout—and that
might set you up for complete failure. How can I ask you to eat tuna if you hate fish? It seems as crazy as telling you to run 3 miles when you’ve never run 1 mile. No, you need to figure out what works for you. It can take time to discover the nutritional balance that best complements your life, plus those needs will likely change as time goes on.

I don’t have a perfect diet, and every week I make goals for that time to progress toward making better food choices. And that’s the approach you should take, too. Your job is to experiment with your options, eliminate what is holding you back, and execute to the best of your ability, week by week.