Skip to main content
Back to Blog

Exercise is only ½ the battle, you’ve got to keep focused on healthy eating, too:

80/20 Diet Rule

Remember – the nutritional part of maintaining a healthy weight is about 80% of the battle. While exercise matters for quality of life, ability to live well into our older years, and feeling alive, it’s only about 20% of losing/gaining weight. This is because exercise is good at helping us use up calories (aka stored fat) but only if we aren’t putting more into storage.

Check out this great video on the 80/20 Rule:

Fuel Source for the 80/20 Diet

In addition, exercise often creates more hunger – you are using more calories therefore you need more fuel. If you are eating your fuel via junk food, you are only filling your tank with junk. The body then struggles to help you rebuild tissue and have what it needs to make sure you are strong and ready for your next workout.

Planning your meals and making sure to follow the 80/20 rule when choosing foods is important. Here 80% of the time you are on track for your goals (weight loss, maintenance, or gain) and 20% of the time you eat what you want. This can be looked at according to the hour, day, week, etc.

Healthy Meal Planning

Check out E-Meals for help making healthy meal planning easy!

If you are following the 80/20 rule on food and making good, healthy, whole food, nutrient dense choices, you can be pretty sure your also following the 80/20 rule when it comes to the way diet and exercise work together to create a healthy weight for you.

This video goes over a case study of someone who works a lot, isn't able to find the time to exercise, and is starting to have physical problems as a result of being about 100lbs overweight. He outlines where to start and how to stick with it.
If you liked this article - check out these:

More on food choices: Eat Well, Feel Well

OR

Making sure your workouts are fun and interesting: Cycling Your Workouts.

Back to Blog Home Page

Thank you for taking the first step in your journey to shift your eating habits.

Taking time to eat healthy IS HARD but once you start doing it, it becomes a lifestyle.

Learn more and reach out!

And as always, if you are struggling to engage fully in your life and would like to see how psychology might be able to help you contact me today!

15 Minute Q&AFree Life Assessment with Studio B

Stay Connected & Follow Me on Social Media

Author: Stacy Reuille-Dupont: Dr. Stacy Reuille-Dupont, PhD, LAC, CPFT, CNC, licensed psychologist, addiction counselor, personal trainer, and nutrition coach. She’s passionate about helping people create a vibrant life using psychology and physiology. With over 25 years of coaching people to be their best, she understands how to make living healthily easy while finding adventure, inspiration, and balance.