A few years ago, I was first introduced to the Paleo diet concept through Mark Sisson's book
The Primal Blueprint. It's a great introductory book for anyone interested in learning about the basics of an ancestral diet. One of Mark's key concepts in that book was called
"the 80/20 rule". The idea is that if you eat healthy and stick to the diet 80% of the time, you can have some flexibility for the other 20%. As Mark says in a
2009 blog post on the topic, "If you align your life with the PB principles 80% of the time, consider yourself on course." In other words, 80% adherence to the diet is good enough to get results. I guess I sort of glossed over it at the time; my mentality back then
was to go all out on this Paleo thing. Why would I hinder my results by
cheating 20% of the time?
But today, being three years older and just a little bit more mature, I understand the value of this 80/20 rule. Perhaps I misunderstood the intent, but Mark makes it very clear in the article referenced above... "Even though 100% compliance isn’t the exact everyday expectation, 100% commitment is the intention." Commitment is key. If you're committed at the core to living a healthy lifestyle, if that is who you are and who you want to be, then eating like junk once in a while is perfectly okay. The next day you'll hop right back on the wagon and keep on being you.
But beyond just the 80/20 rule being "good enough", I would argue that in many cases, the 80/20 rule is BETTER than adhering 100% to a diet. Why??
Holistic health.
You've probably heard the term before. "Holistic". When we talk about holistic health, we're normally talking about using food as medicine... allowing the body to heal itself by giving it the proper raw materials... eating an ancestral diet fits right into this paradigm. But I think we tend to forget what holistic health really means. According to
Merriam-Webster...
