80/20 Principle

Currently I am reading a book about the 80/20 Principle and it's application in a business and financial sense but it makes me wonder how it would be applicable for weight loss and general fitness.

I am someone who has planned my meals Monday to Thursday with Friday being a bit loose as I usually go out for lunch at work and then from there on things start to slip on weekends. Unfortunately this probably does more damage than I am able to recover during the week Monday to Friday. The 80/20 principle states that 20% of your effort has 80% of the effect, this case the "20%" of the weekend has the effect of 80% of my diet as usually the calorie intake and output is much higher than what I'm able to achieve during the week. This essentially means we shouldn't be worrying so much during the week, the fact we are at work we are able to easily perform routine health and fitness activities and it's during the weekend that we should be focussing 80% of your effort.

During our health and fitness adventures we should celebrate those moments we are achieved something remarkable such as achieving your first 5km in 10 years or reaching a goal weight you had not been at for many years. Instead of focussing on the average achievements we are able to gain a lot more from celebrating the bigger achievements which took more effort but had a bigger net positive result.

A successful fitness plan is a simple fitness plan where individuals are able to take short cuts to achieve more with less effort. A simple "short cut" could be planning your meals for the weekend rather than thinking on the fly. By having a fitness plan we are able to exercise control over our lives with the least possible effort because the planning of our weeks allows us to act with minimal thought.

By focussing on weekends primarily we are able to strive for excellence in the time that counts most, spending more time worrying about the weekday health and fitness won't result in anywhere near the same positive results for you.

We should look for help as much as possible, by out sourcing certain tasks such as exercise (personal training) or food (youfoodz/light n easy) we are able to remove further stress from our lives in not having to think about those certain elements in our health and fitness plan.

More importantly, our health and fitness plans should have things that we enjoy. There is no point eating stacks of fish if you don't like fish.

Finally we must enjoy the journey. We must calm down, work in an efficient manner (what's the point of exercising every day?!) and set a limited number of valuable goals where the 80/20 principle will work for us. An example of a very simple goal could be, on weekends I will only have one bad meal on Saturday. By focussing on the areas where we slip up most we are able to negate the most damaging aspects of our lives. Health and fitness shouldn't be a chore, it's something fun and it's only when one has fun is where they will see their results compound. Treating it as a chore will get you no where as you will constantly find ways to have a negative perspective on your journey.