How to Lose Fat Without Giving Up Foods You Enjoy (The 20% "Eat Anything" Rule) | Ep 410
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If your fat loss strategy involves eating "perfectly clean" and you find yourself swinging between strict dieting and weekend blow-outs, you're stuck in the perfection trap.
Discover why chasing 100% compliance is sabotaging your fat loss progress, how the 20% "eat anything" rule creates sustainable flexibility while still driving body composition changes, and why this middle ground beats both extremes of all-junk and all-clean eating.
Learn the psychology and physics behind why rigid dieting fails, how to define your 80-20 split in practical terms (daily vs weekly), and the crucial guardrails that keep flexibility from becoming chaos.
This evidence-based approach to nutrition helps you lose fat, build muscle, and maintain strength without guilt, restriction, or the all-or-nothing mindset that derails most people during fat loss phases, especially around the holidays!
Episode Resources:
Join the 3-Week Strong Finish Challenge - Kickoff today, starts Wed Dec 10: http://live.witsandweights.com/
Try my AI coaching app Fitness Lab for personalized nutrition tracking and coaching. Special 20% off link for podcast listeners.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Why you're struggling to lose fat
2:50 - A more flexible (and sustainable) approach
6:30 - What to include in your 20% flexible eating
10:38 - Why this works for fat loss (psychology and physics)
16:26 - The 3-Week Strong Finish Challenge
21:35 - Guardrails for flexible eating (protein, calories, intent, etc.)
27:48 - How to apply to fat loss, maintenance, and muscle building phases
32:37 - Travel, holidays, and weekends
36:24 - 4 common mistakes to avoid with flexible nutrition
40:44 - Identity, mindset, and next steps
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Philip Pape: 0:01
If your fat loss strategy involves eating quote unquote perfectly clean, and you find yourself swinging between strict dieting and blowing it on the weekends, this episode is for you. Today I'm gonna show you why rigidity is sabotaging your fat loss, how the 20% eat anything rule actually gives you sustainable flexibility while still hitting your body composition goals, and why this middle ground beats both extremes of all junk and all clean eating. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, and the founder of Fitness Lab, Philip Pape. And today we're tackling something that I see as one of the biggest derailers of fat loss phases, and that is the all or nothing approach to eating. It's a pattern that comes up in all of us, and even if you know that flexibility is the way to go, there's always a pressure toward trying to be cleaner or eating higher quality food, you know, avoiding what we might think of as junk or bad food. And when you do that, you inevitably slip up. You feel like you've then ruined your plan, and then things start to fall apart, especially this time of year around the holidays. Or maybe you've seen the it if it fits a macro, if it fits your macros crowd, right? Who eat the Pop Tarts and pizzas and donuts, and they're like, you could just eat anything and lose fat and live that way, and it's great. And you're like, that can't be right either, can it? And so the 20% eat anything rule, the idea of 80-20 from a whole foods to anything goes perspective, still stands up as a really good practical middle ground that works quite well for those of us who live real life, who are busy, who we still want the results, we still want to lose fat to build muscle, we still want to have a life. And it connects directly to our philosophy here, this physique engineering we like to call it, where we use evidence-based, flexible strategies that are backed by research to make sure the whole process is sustainable. And sustainable just means you can sustain it for months, years, or potentially the rest of your life. That's what we want to do. And I see so many comments on the YouTube videos and in Spotify about clean eating and well, I cut out all this stuff. I cut out all sugar and all this, all carbs, whatever, and I feel great, and that's the way to go. And usually my first reply is do you enjoy that? And is that working for you long time? Long time. Is that working for you long term? Right. And that's what sustainability is. So I'm gonna give you a quick preview of what we're gonna cover today. The first thing is why chasing this is a problem. Okay, what psychologically and based on this the evidence, what it what it prevents or what it holds us back from. Secondly, what the 20% rule truly means, right? If you want to put it into practice daily and weekly, what it looks like. And then third, are the guardrails that you need so this doesn't turn into a free-for-all, a binge restrict, emotional eating, cheat days, all the things that I see this devolve into often. And then I'm of course going to end up with troubleshooting when things aren't working to keep it really practical. So let's start with the why behind this. Why is this concept of eating clean or perfect eating or all high-quality foods killing your progress? Because I do still see on social media even some people I respect who kind of lean toward this as if any junk food at all is somehow a problem or opens the door to everything falling apart. And I think it's the opposite. I want to start with a hard truth. If you're trying to eat perfectly, you are absolutely setting yourself up for failure. Maybe 1% of people can do this, maybe with a lot of quote unquote discipline and willpower. And even them, I wonder if they're completely miserable doing it. That's a separate issue. But I've definitely worked with hundreds of clients at this point, thousands of people through listening to the podcast and telling me their stories. And I see this pattern all the time. So anecdotally, it's there, but in the evidence we see the difference between rigid and flexible dieting presents this as well. And that usually looks like this: you want to lose fat, so you have all the motivation in the world. And then you decide I'm gonna do it by cutting something out. It's always a either a quick fix magic pill approach, or these are the foods I can eat, these are the foods I can't, right? And for many people, that's no sugar, no more sugar, no more alcohol, no more eating out, clean eating only, the word clean. And for a week or two, maybe three, maybe four, you know, you crush it, you do it, you stick to it. But then that one Friday night rolls around, or the holiday, or there's a work event, or a family dinner, or just a long, stressful week, or, or, or you have a drink and some appetizers. And in your mind, you failed, right? You're already like, ooh, the door is opening now to, you know, blowing this thing, and I might as well keep going, at least for this dinner, and then I'll start again tomorrow. Now, I'm all for starting tomorrow, but I'm not for sabotaging yourself now because you're thinking ahead to, well, I can start tomorrow. And so, what was one drink or one appetizer or one snack or one piece of candy or one whatever think thing you think is, you know, a bad choice becomes an entire weekend of eating without any structure because you've already set in your mind that you didn't follow what you intended to do. And so why continue, at least for now? And then by the end of the weekend, you've undone most of the week's deficit if you're trying to mean a calorie deficit. And this is what happens very commonly. This is the perfection trap, right? The belief you have to be 100% compliant or adherent, or you failed, and it creates a false dichotomy. It creates a binary, binary thinking that doesn't actually exist in reality, because your body doesn't care about perfect days, right? Like it doesn't care that the entire day you ate quote unquote clean. It just cares about the overall inputs over time, the accumulation of it, the compound interest, let's say, your energy balance, your protein, your training stimulus, all of the little behaviors that add up over time, even when they're not perfect. They're far better than zeros, they're far different than what you would have done in the past as a sedentary non-athletic individual. And this is where the 20% rule comes in. And honestly, 20%, an 80-20 philosophy can apply to a lot of things in life. We've talked about the 80-20 rule for the Pareto principle, where 20% of the effort produces 80% of the results. We see this ratio a lot in reality. And whether it's 20% or 15% or 25, that's not the point. The point is instead of chasing 100% of something and then inevitably falling short, right? You build flexibility into the system from the start. And therefore, you're never really breaking a rule, are you? When you have dessert, when you have that ice cream, when you have that slice of pizza. You are using the flexibility you planned for. You have a buffer, you're operating within that already. And so that connects back to what I've talked about on the show regarding like all junk versus all clean eating, right? Both extremes fail. The all-junk approach, where you just eat whatever you want and track your macro, track your macros and calories, while technically possible for weight loss, for energy balance, it tends to leave you starving, low energy, nutritionally depleted, not feeling great, not great digestion, et cetera. Whereas the all clean approach that leads to rigidity, stress during social situations, and eventually you just blow up or blow out, right? And so the middle ground is to build in some of that. If you want to use the word junk, 20% junk, 80% clean, fine, but I wouldn't even use the labels. I would say the whole thing together, the idea of 80% whole foods and 20% other, which we're gonna get into next, is itself a healthy approach or nutritional pattern, dietary pattern, right? It's not about the individual foods. So let's move on to what the 20% rule means specifically. Let's define it clearly. It means that roughly 80% of your weekly intake, this is calories if you want to turn it into numbers, comes mostly from nutrient-dense, higher protein, we'll say minimally processed foods, generally things you get in the produce aisle or the meat department or the dairy department, right the edge of the grocery store, that supports satiety, that's keeping you full, supports your performance, like lifting and you feeling great, your biofeedback, and of course your body composition at the same time. The remaining 20% can be foods you enjoy simply because, now here's a shocking concept: you enjoy them. That's it. As long as your total calories and protein targets are still met. So I don't like pigeonholing that 20% into your macros per se. I want to make sure that you are on track to hit your calories, macros, micros, all those things with the 80% so that the 20% truly has maximum flexibility. Now, let me be very direct about what this is not. It is not 20% of the time going completely off the rails. It is not an excuse to ignore energy balance. So it's not like you're saying, well, 20% of my week in terms of, I don't know, time or number of meals, I'm just gonna go hoggle out and eat thousands and thousands and thousands of calories. No, it's it's 20% roughly of the calories for your week are taken up by this flexible framework that still respects the hierarchy, right? Still calories first, protein second, food quality third, timing and preference fourth, and not always in that order, right? So think of it like a system with built-in margin. When we design systems, we did we don't build them to handle exactly the expected load, right? We don't design a bridge to handle just the expected amount of traffic. We build in safety factors for real world conditions. So the 20% is your margin of error for being a human with a social life, stress, cravings, everything else that comes with it. Now let's turn it into numbers. So let's say you're in a fat loss phase eating 1800 calories. All right, and you can just scale this up or down depending on who you are. 80% of 1800 is 1440 calories coming from nutrient-dense staples. Lean proteins, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fat, you know, fats from whole foods. The remaining 360 calories, that's your 20%. Now, 360, this is in a given day. That's not nothing. That's still a decent amount of calories to allocate. And, you know, whether you drink alcohol or not, that's part of the calories. Maybe it's a small dessert, maybe it's a slice or two of pizza, a couple slices of pizza could fit in there, alongside, you know, your lean foods, whatever. And you can think about this either daily or weekly, depending on your personality and your schedule. If you're very routine-oriented, I think daily 80-20 works great. You know that each day you've got that buffer. And then if your life is a little bit more variable, if you tend to shift calories around, if you have a lot more challenges on the weekends, let's say, if you have social events that are clustered on the weekends, like many, then thinking weekly could make more sense, where you hit the 80% mainly during the weekdays. And then the 20% is more on the weekends. And that works for a lot of people. And again, I want to think of cheat days here. Cheat days are like unfettered, nonstop, zero control. This still has a sense of control to it and planning and intention. Now, here's what belongs in the 80% versus the 20%, just to give you specifics. The 80% is gonna be lean meats, eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, whey, heck, tofu, if you're you know vegan or you like tofu, and that's where you get protein. Your fiber and micronutrient sources like vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, your fats like olive oil, avocado, nuts, fattier cuts of meat, all the foods that keep you full, that support your training, that help with the hormones and digestion, that make hitting your targets practical in terms of your macros, your calories, all of those things. That's the 80%. It's still a lot of delicious, amazing foods. And for many of us who start to eat that way, we almost don't feel we need the 20% as much because of the 80% tasting so good. The 20%, however, that would be ice cream, pizza, burgers, fries. And again, there's there's some wiggle room here. Like when I say burger, I mean a little bit more on the greasy spoon fast food side, right? If you're making your own burger at home, it could still fit into the 80%, depending on what's in there, right? How processed it is, etc. So French fries, candy, chocolate, chips, pastries, maybe alcohol for some people. Again, I discourage alcohol as much as possible because we know it has no benefits, but it's part of many people's lives. And so I put it in this category. Uh, restaurant meals that are more indulgent. And I say it that way because some restaurant food or meals, you know, still may fit in your 80%. So whatever you actually enjoy eating that doesn't fit the nutrient-dense category, the key is to fit these into your framework, and that's calories, macros, micros. You're not adding them on top, you're just keeping room or space for them. So I hope that helps define the 80-20. Now, I want to get to the next section on how why this works so well, why psychologically and physiologically this actually works just fine. And you've got to stop listening to the extremists out there who are like, nope, I cut sugar, that's gonna solve it. Nope, diabetes is caused by too much red meat. I don't know. Nonsense claims that you hear online all the time. Just insane claims that are either you know patently incorrect or they are inferring from something and interpreting the research incorrectly. So, does this actually work for losing body fat? Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, if look, if eating just Pop-Tarts can lose for work for losing body fat, even though it's not at all optimal for many other reasons, then we know anything less extreme than that can also work. And when we talk about fat loss, we're not just talking about energy balance. We're also talking about the process of going through that deficit over several weeks or months. And can you do that successfully mentally, physiologically, and practically? And so the answer is yes, AD20 works, and it usually, in fact, almost always works better than a more restrictive approach in either direction. And here's why. First, energy balance is at the end of the chain what drives fat loss, not how clean or high quality or quote unquote good your food is. The type of food actually doesn't matter just for pure fat loss. Okay, you can eat the cleanest diet in the world. And if you're in a surplus, you're gonna gain fat. You can gain fat eating too much of anything. You can include less than optimal foods, and if you're in deficit and you have enough protein, remember, protein's still important here, you're gonna lose fat and preserve muscle. That's the physics of it. Calories always determine whether you lose weight, whereas protein and lifting determine whether you keep the muscle while losing fat so that you change your body composition. So that's that's a simple thing to understand. But second, and maybe most more importantly, is the psychological sustainability. And that's as, if not most important as the precision of your diet. In fact, I'm coming to find over the years that if you can get this part right, it often takes care of the first part, the energy balance, the calories, the macros. Believe it or not, you can shift your diet to be sustainable and feel great. And then naturally it's a lot easier to hit the calories and macros. And so this is something that I emphasize all the time. If I'm going to go back to positive psychology, the perma model, I did a whole episode on this in the past. Oh man, what does that stand for? I'm not gonna go through it here, but the perma model where basically positive emotion and enjoyment are part of any plan that lasts. And if people say, Oh, you you shouldn't think of food as enjoyment, right there, you've lost me. I'm sorry, you've lost me. If you're, and by enjoyment, it doesn't mean it, it doesn't mean hedonism or unfettered indulgence, right? There's a difference between that and thinking of food as a positive aspect of meaning in your life because we eat food every day. We need it to survive and to thrive. So if your fat loss approach doesn't include some element of reward and pleasure, it is not going to stick. That I am unequivocal about. And the 20% bucket is your built-in positive emotion lever. It lowers the guilt, it reduces the all or nothing thinking, and it supports your long-term adherence. Right? We're not talking about 100% compliance, we're talking about adhering to what you've set up for yourself, where if you set up an 80-20 approach, it's gonna be a lot easier to adhere to that and to be quote unquote compliant to that. And then the third piece here, so we we, you know, first was energy balance, second was psychological sustainability. The third piece is that this adherence over time, this consistency, right? Not perfection, but just consistency, is what compounds into your real body composition changes. A moderate deficit that you stick to for 12 weeks is always gonna be an aggressive, restrictive diet that you can only maintain for three or four weeks before you have inevitably have that binge episode. And the 20% rule increases your probability of sustaining the approach. That increases your probability of reaching your goal. You see how this all ties together so nicely. Now, I want to be clear, this is not permission to be sloppy. The 20% still fits within your structure. If you're eating 1800 calories for fat loss and your 20% eat anything foods push you to 2,500 calories regularly, well, you're not doing the 20% rule, are you? That 20% has now become a bigger percentage of the total pie because you're just overconsuming. You're eating without awareness. The flexibility exists within the boundaries, not instead of them. Does that make sense? So it's always like intention, flexibility, and planning, but the flexibility is built into the plan. So speaking of flexibility within structure, I think this connects perfectly to something that we are kicking off today. All right, we're kicking it off today. It technically starts Wednesday, but we're kicking it off today. It's called the three-week strong finish challenge. This is specifically designed to help you make progress, be focused, maintain your strength and body composition through the rest of the year, through the holidays, from this Wednesday the 10th through the end of the year, right before New Year, when everyone else is backsliding, right? And it's perfect with this topic today, because instead of trying to be perfect during the craziest time of the year, the highest chaos time of the year, when everybody else is starting to gain all their weight and get off track and everything goes out the window, we're using what I call the flex framework. Talked about it before, not gonna go into it here, but it's having three different levels optimal, minimum, and bailout to keep you moving forward no matter what December throws at you. Plus, you're gonna get two coaches that are gonna coach you. You're gonna have accountability, weekly check-ins, lots of great resources, strength training templates to lose fat and build muscle. All of these things are included in this challenge to end the year. And the kickoff call is today, Monday, December 8th at 5 p.m. Eastern. Now, if you're hearing this too late for that, the there is a replay that you will get if you register anyway. So we're giving you a couple day buffer before the challenge starts. And heck, even if you're listening to this Thursday or Friday this week, you could still join because it's a three-week challenge. Okay, the kickoff calls today, live.witsandweights.com. The actual challenge starts uh Wednesday, so we're gonna get you all the resources and answer your questions to get ready for that. You've got two days then to join us, grab one of the 50 spots, and watch the replay if you can't make the live call. Live.witsandweights.com. This challenge is about proving to yourself that you can maintain and even gain new progress at the end of the year, even when life is messy. And we're not gonna make you do a restricted diet. We're not gonna make you do a fat loss phase if this isn't the right time, which for most people it's not, with all the holidays happening. You're not trying to have three perfect weeks. That's the whole point. We're trying to help you build the system to survive the imperfect conditions. So go to live.witsandweights.com to register for the challenge. Kickoff is today, Monday, December 8th at 5 p.m. Eastern. But if you can't make it, the replay will be there. And the actual challenge starts Wednesday. You're gonna have full accountability and support in our community. It's a private community just for people who register at live.wits and weights.com. Link in the show notes, and you'll get everything you need to succeed, including direct access to coaches, a custom nutrition plan, strength training templates designed for this time of year, including if you have limited equipment or are traveling, all of that, live.witsandweig.com. All right, now that we've covered the what and the why, let's talk about these guardrails. Let's talk about this idea of structure with flexibility, because without the guardrails, the 20% can become 40%. And then you're confused about why you're not losing fat and why I just did what Phillip said and it's not working. The first guardrail is that protein and calories are still gonna rule the day when it comes to energy balance and holding on to muscle. Your 20% flexibility exists within those targets. So you'd still have to know generally what calories you're hitting. Now, I've mentioned before, even if you're not tracking calories and protein and you're making sure that you are eating predominantly whole foods that are high satiety, high nutrients, you're gonna naturally be able to hit calories and protein anyway. But of course, I'm a big fan of tracking as much data as you want or need. So if including the dessert means you're over 400 calories for the day, that's not the 20% rule working for you. That's just adding extra food. So let's be clear. The hierarchy doesn't change. Okay, we have the energy balance, it is really the first driver weight loss. Protein is the driver of body composition, and everything else supports that. The second guardrail is this is a starting point. It's not a law. I know I've used the word rule, but in this case it's colloquial. It's not a law that you have to stick to 20%. For some people, 10% might be better, right? Because they just love eating whole foods and 10% is more than enough, and that's all they need. For others, they might want to creep it up a little bit, 25 or 30%. We're still not talking 50, 60% processed foods like the average American. We're still talking far more shifted in the direction we want to be. The principle, remember, what is the principle? Is that most of your intake is aligned with your goals, and the minority of the intake is very, very highly flexible. And let's be honest, even the intake that's aligned with your goals, the 80% is still super flexible. There's a lot of foods that fall under there. You're not cutting out any food groups or macros, right? You can still have bread and pasta and other potatoes and fruits and stuff like that in there, but that more highly processed stuff fits into your 20%. You get to choose, really. And it's an experiment. You treat it as an experiment, and then you adjust based on the actual results and how you feel. Okay. And if you're in our challenge, if you're in a three-week challenge, that's a great place to test and share with the world what's happening and get feedback. Like, hey, I'm having trouble sticking in this 20%. It's creeping up much higher than I expected. What do I do? And we can give you some great ideas. The third guardrail is to just distinguish between this deliberate flexibility and what I'll call chaotic eating. So eat anything within your system means you choose foods that you enjoy and you account for them and you adjust your day around them accordingly. So again, there's planning and intention. Maybe you want a 400-calorie slice of cheesecake at dinner. So you look at where 50 to 60 grams of carbs and 10 to 15 grams of fat come from your day and make it work, right? Keep the protein high because now obviously the protein's not going to be in the cheesecake. Well, it'll be a little bit, but not very much. And that's how you are deliberate about it. So this idea of eating anything is deliberate and it's not chaos. Chaos is when you're not tracking or thinking, you're not aware, you're using it as an excuse, etc. And that's the classic, you know, I was in a deficit Monday through Thursday, and I undid it on the weekend. Pattern that we're trying to avoid. All right. The fourth guardrail is if you are someone with a history of binge eating, emotional eating, very rigid kind of mindset or dieting, the 20% might need extra structure. And what this looks like is pre-deciding, pre-planning what the 20% is. Maybe it's one dessert per day, right? A lot of us are in that mode. I'm often in that mode because my wife cooks dinner and we like to have a little dessert most days. And so I just plan it in. Maybe it's two indulgent meals each week, right? You get to decide what that 20% is. And then you eat those fun foods mindfully. You know, you sit down, you eat them, you portion them out, whatever makes sense, you put them in a bowl. You know, you don't just chaotically graze and say, well, okay, I'm up to my 20% now. Where's the bag of Cheetos? Let me just start eating. It's not that. So you can start with a smaller percentage if it helps you feel more structured. If you have a history of this, start with 5% or 10%. If you're a classic, like clean eater and you always try to eat clean, maybe for you mentally, it's better to not jump right to 20% because you might feel like you lose control. Just titrate it up to the right level for you. And for some people, it might always be 5%. You just love to eat a lot of Whole Foods. It's fine. I know farmers and ranchers that eat that way. This connects to what I've discussed in other episodes about hidden triggers and emotional eating. We want to use data and awareness to diffuse those triggers. We won't want to create new triggers. And then a quick note for special populations like if you have celiac disease or severe food allergies or medical conditions that limit food choices. And I've spoken to a lot of you out there who I feel really bad, right? Because there's a lot of foods you just can't eat. Your 20% still exists, but it's within your safe options. You're not going to just use the 20% to say, well, now I'm going to eat the thing that I don't usually feel great with, but it's my 20%. Well, that by definition, you're not going to enjoy that, are you? So the principle of flexibility remains even when your specific foods happen to be constrained. So let's make this all practical. Let's tie this up into some practical guidance for some different situations, which I know people have been asking about with these podcasts. So in a fat loss phase, we're going to do fat loss maintenance or body recomp, muscle building, and let's say chaos like travel and holidays coming up. Okay. In a fat loss phase, the 20% rule is going to help you stay on that deficit and not feel as deprived, right? Your calories are already lower. So by so math-wise, the 20% portion is still smaller in absolute terms than when you're not in fat loss, right? The actual calories are less because it's still 20% of a smaller amount of calories. And that's fine. It just means that your flexible foods are going to be a smaller amount of stuff or a smaller portion of the ice cream, or you know, it's not a pint, but it's a small bowl, etc. It's the psychology of knowing that you can have something you enjoy that's more valuable often than the actual food itself. Let's be honest. Now, you can just quick side tangent. You can almost trick yourself here by picking something that you find enjoyable that's actually not a 20% food, let's say strawberries with some homemade whipped cream, and it's really not that many calories, but it actually psychologically feels like part of the 20%. That's a really cool trick to use for yourself as you start to shift and make swaps, especially in fat loss when the calories are lower. Okay. So you're still kind of thinking 20%, but some 80% stuff's leaking over into that 20% if it makes sense. All right. Now, what about if you're at maintenance or what if you're doing body recomp? Well, you obviously have more room to work with because the calories are a little bit higher. So your 20% is a little bit more generous. And this is a lot of times where people find their sustainable long-term eating pattern, kind of that routine that they can stick with for a long time. They're not restricting for fat loss, right? They're not keeping the calories tight. They're also not pushing calories and trying to eat extra for muscle gain. You're just living your life while maintaining your physique. This is a nice place to try this out and see what that is for you. Okay, because effectively you should be able to do it without tracking eventually and just maintain your physique that way and your weights. Well, it may not be your body weight. Your body weight's gonna flex up and down. And then during a muscle building phase, the 20% helps with that. Coherence as well, but in a different way. Because when you're eating more food in general, it's easier to hit your protein and then still have room for enjoyment. Right. Because that's a little bit more of a challenge in fat loss. When you're doing the 20%, you're like, but I still need to make sure I get my protein in. The challenge during a surplus is making sure the 20% doesn't creep up just because you have the calorie budget for it. I've seen this with, you know, some people struggle to get enough food, but a lot of people will get enough and they'll actually start eating more and more and more and kind of feel like the there are no more guardrails because, oh, well, I need so many calories. I'm not going to exceed my calories. So I'm just going to eat more, you know, chips ahoy cookies and more ice cream and more Pop-Tards and more of these snacks. And it ends up being just a lot more processed food in your diet than you really want long term, because it's going to be hard to back off from that. And I'm not saying there's not more room in general for that stuff. There is, just numbers-wise. But you still want 80% of your intake to support your training, performance, and recovery because you're trying to build muscle and you're trying to partition those nutrients to the best place in your body, right? You're still moving, you're still building, all of that. And then the last scenario here is travel, holidays, just busyness in general. And again, as we end the, as we end the year strong here, joining our challenge is a great way to test all this out. But this 8020 really shines during this time of the year because if you think of it as a week, you know, think of it on a weekly basis over the rest of the year. You know that you have, for example, a work dinner on Thursday and a family event on Saturday. Well, maybe those two days become your 20% for this week. And then you have the Christmas holiday here and the New Year's thing here. Those are your 20% for that week. Or, you know, Monday through Wednesday, you're at 90% nutrient dense, and then you're at like 70% on the weekends, right? So as long as it averages out over the seven days. So what what about how do people mess this up? Because I want to tell you about four mistakes, actually, that that um I see a lot. The first mistake is I've alluded to this already, but it's the 20% turning into 40%. And this usually happens when you're not tracking or when you've jumped into this for the first time and kind of not even sure what 20% is, if that makes sense. You don't even know how many calories you should be eating. And then you rationalize a lot of your choices that are you're not super happy with as part of the 20%, and then it ends up blowing up. So the fix here is simple. Just measure. Just measure. Okay. If you're eating 2,000 calories a day, that's 400 calories of foods. And you don't have to do this forever. Like measure for a bit, for a few weeks. You know, use my app Fitness Lab or use MacroFactor or just do it manually, it doesn't matter. And track everything and see where it falls in terms of the percentage. Okay. Is it 20%-ish or are you creeping much higher than that? All right. Mistake number two is using the 20% as an emotional coping tool instead of genuine enjoyment. And this is why I mentioned positive psychology earlier. I think there's a difference between meaningful positivity and enjoyment and hedonistic emotional coping type, where you say it's enjoyment, but it's not really. That is emotional eating that's dressed up as some sort of strategy. Don't let yourself fall for it. The 20% should be deliberate choices that you make for enjoyment, not reactive eating to numb your feelings. So if you're if you're if you're aware of this pattern, as I say it out loud, be honest with yourself that that's what's happening, because that'll allow you to disconnect the two. All right, mistake number three is not adjusting when the data says that your progress is slower than you're expected. So, for example, if you're doing the 20% and you're trying to lose fat, but your weight trend is pretty much not changing, like you're not losing fat, then something's off with energy balance. Okay, either your total calories are higher than you think, or your 20% estimate is actually more calorie dense than you think. I have seen this interesting phenomenon where it seems like it's you could be more accurate tracking whole foods than tracking processed foods. You would think it's not the case because of barcodes and such, but it happens. It happens for a variety of reasons, because of extra bites, because of mislabeled packaging, and you're you end up eating a lot, if you're eating a lot more processed foods, it tends to throw the error off even more. So if it's not working for you, don't blame the 8020. Look at energy balance and tracking and some of the other things, right? Look at the data and figure out where that gap is. All right, and then the last mistake, number four here, is using cheat day language. Please don't do that. Please don't. I don't like the word cheat at all because it implies you're breaking a rule. Well, with the 20% rule, you're not cheating. And again, maybe this is a problem of even me using the word rule for this. You're actually using flexibility built into your system. And I mentioned already it could be 10%, 15%, 30%. It's not really a hard and fast rule, is it? It's just a guideline. Cheat days, however, come with a different mindset. It's like a permission mindset. Like, oh, I have permission to do this, and uh, and then that leads to excess. Whereas the 20% rule keeps you in control even with flexibility. So if you didn't pick up what I'm putting down, notice that this isn't about food. The 20% rule is not about food, it's about your identity. It really is. Because when you follow rigid diets and rules, which are the vast majority of diets promoted in the space today, I mean, have always been, then your identity is I'm someone on a diet. I am on a diet. And diets end. And when you use a flexible system instead, your identity becomes, I'm someone who knows how to manage my nutrition, or something like that. That's a permanent thing. Whereas a diet is a temporary thing. The person who can have a slice of pizza at their kid's birthday party and log it or at least be aware of it and plan for it, and then adjust their day around it, and then be move on without any guilt or anxiety. That person has a very different, fundamentally different relationship with food than the person who skips the party or eats half the pizza because they already blew it, or even goes to the party and deliberately withholds from eating pizza, thinking it in terms of a guilty pleasure or something that they cannot do. All right. So that's why we do what we do build building systems that work for real life. Right. It's a it's like a pressure valve. It keeps the whole thing sustainable because you got a pressure release valve. And then when you combine that with the right lifestyle, lifting weights, adequate protein, moving, getting your steps, right? Those basic things that take work and effort, they do, they're not automatic. Nobody's gonna do them for you. And then you track some level of data that gives you that awareness. And then guess what? You adjust based on that data and feedback. That's how you build yes, a body, but also a relationship with food, with yourself that is going to serve you for the rest of your life. So here's your action for this week. Just look at your eating pattern and estimate what percentage of your intake is genuinely nutrient dense versus flexible. Because if you've been trying to be 100% clean, then think about what it would mean to build in 20% deliberately that's maybe not so clean, if I'm gonna use that word, even though I don't like that word. And if you've been all over the place, start tracking, see where you land, and then adjust from there, right? There are things that are gonna move the needle that you have to be aware of calories, protein, food quality, flexibility, they all work together. And this is exactly again why the three-week strong finish challenge is going to happen. All right, kicking off today starts Wednesday. We are heading into the hardest three weeks of the year for most people, trying to at a minimum maintain what they've got. And for many, they don't want to backslide, but most people do. And so instead of pretending that you can be perfect this holiday season, we're giving you a system that works when things are messy and chaotic like they are. And you'll get coaching from human beings, you'll get training programs, custom nutrition plan, you get all that great stuff, along with the accountability, the ability to check in and say, hey, how are we doing? Are we winning here? So that we're ready for the new year. And no guilt, no shame. You're gonna feel great about yourself, you're gonna have more energy, be super, super confident. So the kickoff is today, 5 p.m. Eastern. Challenge starts Wednesday, but definitely join at live.witsandweights.com so you get in in time and get all the resources and figure out, hey, what strength training program do I want to follow? If you're not already following one, we can give you some guidance on that. And by the end of the three weeks, you're gonna know your sustainable baseline. You're gonna know it. You're not gonna wonder about it and think that you have to white knuckle it in the new year, because you'll be ready to go. Go to live.witsandweights.com, link in the show notes. Let's finish the year strong while everyone else backslides. Go to live.witsandweights.com. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, the best approach is not the strictest one. It's the one that you can sustain. This is Philip Tape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.
