The Pareto principle says that 80% of consequences stem from 20% of causes, aka, the 80/20 rule. This is true in many categories of your life, be that work, study, diet, habits, practically anything you can think of. This principle can be used to help you lose weight fast!
Apply The Pareto Principle To Your Diet to Lose Weight
If you are overweight and want to see a remarkable change, just eliminate your biggest weakness. When your weakness is just one thing (like sodas) it is a lot easier to remove than all things of that category (like all sweets). If sodas are your weakness, get rid of them. Find something you like to drink that has zero calories instead. Surely there is something. For me, this weakness would be Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. These are very dangerous for me. I like them so much, I run the risk of eating an entire box in a day! So, I don’t buy them and eat something I like (Oreos), but that I seem to have some control over. If it truly is a weakness, don’t try to “just eat one”, but don’t even have them in your house.
Some people are sweet snackers, some are savory snackers, and some are beer drinkers. So, if eliminating one item within these categories doesn’t do much for you because you have 50 other choices, you may need to eliminate the category itself. You’ve been eating these things for years, so you may need to replace it with something healthy just to satisfy the habit.
The key to getting rid of your food weakness is discipline. If you can’t master yourself, be sure that you know yourself. That means don’t even bring it into the house if you know you won’t have the discipline to leave it alone. If there are others in your household who want it in the house, ask them to help you be accountable.
It is the simplest thing to do. Eliminate your food weakness, and you’ll definitely start losing weight.
This is no gimmick, and I’m not here to sell you the next great exercise machine for 4 easy payments! The key to a better body and great fitness is applying a few life principles such as “How to Eat an Elephant”, the “Pareto principle”, convenience, and most importantly, sustainability, to your workouts.
Most people start working out with workouts that are too hard, too fast, too soon. They will get so sore the first workout that they won’t come back for the 2nd workout, or at best do it for a few days. Working out less, but regularly, throughout the months and years will take you significantly further than those intense “P90X” extreme workouts that you will quit in a month if not a week. Sustainability is the key!
How to Eat an Elephant: Lets talk about how to eat an elephant first. You want to do something you can continue to do for the rest of your life without it becoming a drudgery. Let’s face it, lifting weights isn’t a whole lot of fun. But, if you break it up throughout the day, you can do it without even breaking a sweat. Building the habit is just as important as building the muscle. “Eating an elephant” means breaking up over sized tasks into manageable bites. Over sized tasks can be overwhelming in size or in difficulty. A big 1 hour workout can be too much to take on days when your a bit tired and/or busy. It takes time to rest between sets; time you could be doing something else besides wishing the workout was over. So, why not do your “3 sets” throughout the day instead of all at once? In the morning, do a set before you shower, a second set after you shower, and a final set when you get home from work. You’ve done your same 3 sets, and probably did each set a little better than if they were done all at once, and you hardly even notice you’d worked out. This is especially true these days when many of us are working remotely and can get a set in almost any time of the day.
Sustainable and Convenient Workouts: Your muscles definitely need a day between workouts to rest and repair. An easy way to do this is by doing upper body (chest, arms, abs, back) one day, and lower body (legs, gluts) the next day. You don’t have to have an expensive gym membership either. It is often said that the absolute best gym is the most convenient gym, and that is in your garage! Hurdles to working out must be removed, and driving to a gym bringing clothes, showering, etc. are all hurdles. All you need is an exercise mat, 1 set of dumbbells, and a good music playlist. For upper body, there is nothing better than push-ups which will work your triceps, abs, chest, shoulders all at once. You’ll still need some further ab work, but the pushups will allow you to skip those unpleasant planks. For your biceps and deltoids, get 1 set of dumbbells for curls and military press. For legs and glutes, try lunges and plyometrics to build muscle every other day, and racquetball, tennis, running, or Zumba for cardio/aerobic fitness. Granted, there is not a way to break up the cardio/aerobic fitness throughout your day, but everything else can be.
If you must go to the gym keep sustainability in mind there as well. I’m always tempted to lift heavier and heavier weights, or push a cardio machine further and further or faster and faster. This is unsustainable. If you don’t end up with an injury, you’ll burn out, get injured, or start skipping workouts. Do a moderate amount of weight or cardio and do it regularly. This will result in a sustainable workout that keeps you strong, lean, and feeling good. Don’t fall into the trap of forever increasing the weight or reps you are doing. We would like to think that we can curl an additional 5 lbs every month as our muscles grow. At that rate, in 5 years, starting with 20 lb dumbbells, we all be curling 320 lb dumbbells! If you are dreading the next set, you are probably doing too much. And, it’s not just that there is a maximum weight limit to what our muscles can do. We are human, and humans seek pleasure and avoid pain and this will limit the sustainability of our workouts if they are too painful in time or effort. If you are working out at your maximum capacity, you will find excuses to skip it for the day. You will definitely gain more muscle and fitness by a regular moderate workout than an extreme workout that you tend to skip.
I was reminded of this just last week while travelling for work. The place I was going to had the best food imaginable for lunches, and dining out every evening was beginning to take a toll on my waist line. I had been doing pretty well at eating manageable portion sizes, but the food was just too rich. So, on Wednesday, out of guilt, I did a lot more exercise than I normally would, trying to make up for it. Thursday and Friday, I could hardly move without excruciating pain and didn’t do any workout at all. Saturday I was still extremely sore, but finally was able to do 1/2 of what I would usually do. You will end up working out less if you do too much. So, start out pretty easy, and gradually work yourself up to bigger workouts, larger reps, more sets, etc. Remember to find a moderate level of workout to stay at permanently too. You will only set yourself back if you do too much too soon or if you keep adding to the workout.
Pareto Principle: Muscle burns calories, and the more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn even when at rest (your metabolism will rise). So, to lose weight, you need to build muscle. I have found that no matter how much cardio exercise I get, I don’t lose much weight unless I include some weight training to build muscle. To apply the Pareto principle to your muscles and your workout, think about your biggest muscles as well as what will enhance your looks the most, if that is your goal for working out. One little muscle in your forearm might be important for a body builder, but probably not worth the time to isolate and work by itself for the rest of us. It can get worked as a side effect of working something more important such as your biceps, triceps, or chest muscles. 80% of your improvements in metabolism and looks can be done by working 20% of your muscles.
Glutes and Legs – these are your largest muscles and can increase your metabolism the fastest. If you do nothing else, work these muscle groups as a minimum and you can get results.
Make It Fun: I mentioned earlier in this article that lifting weights is just no fun and therefore unsustainable for most people. The same goes for exercise machines. I feel like I have a fair amount of discipline, but it is just too mind numbing for me to get on a treadmill or just about any exercise machine 3 times a week for any amount of time. What I do love to do for large lengths of time is play a sport like racquetball, tennis, badminton, etc. I will do this for hours on end without ever noticing I’m “working out”. Another thing that is almost as good as a sport is taking a class such as Zumba, Dance Blast, etc at my local fitness club. Once you get over “dancing in public” without a beverage to relax your inhibitions, it’s a lot of laughs and a lot of unnoticed exercise.
Injury prevention: I see people taking huge risks all the time with their workouts. I see people pushing their bodies beyond what they were made to do all the time. Things like straight arm weight lifting (imagine a slow motion jumping jack with heavy weights in hand). Yeah, it really works the shoulder muscle hard, but one day that shoulder is going to give out on you. Then, you are not going to work out for 6 months while you have surgery and recover. There are hundreds of safe ways to workout every muscle on your body, so why risk an injury? Think twice about the leverage stress and strain you are putting on your joints before doing an exercise. Shoulders and knees are what I see people risking the most often. Take plyometric jumping for example. I see people jumping on and off platforms, usually very unsteady platforms, or even worse, bleachers! They are really asking for it. And by “it”, I don’t mean a staring role on Funniest Home Video’s. You don’t need to take this risk. Just jump as high as you can from solid ground, reaching for the stars. Do 3 sets of 12 of these and see if you aren’t completely wiped out. You get the same exercise, and almost zero risk of injury.
In summary, work your biggest muscles, one set at a time throughout the day, in safe ways, and increase reps/sets gradually to a moderate level. Also find some fun activities that you can do regularly and trick yourself into a workout.
The Pareto principle was named for Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, and states that 80% of consequences stem from 20% of causes. Vilfredo discovered that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He also found that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. Like Vilfredo, you will find percentages like these in many aspects of your life. They can be found in your work, study, diet, habits, and practically anything you can think of.
Focus on the 20% of what you are trying to accomplish that will have 80% of the impact. Master the main concepts that will be tested on an exam first and fill in lesser details as time allows. Don’t try to memorize every little detail. 80% of the exam will probably be on the 20% of the material that were the main concepts.
Lose Weight and Gain Fitness Easily
Work on your largest muscles first to get a better body in minutes per day, and leave the rest to nature. Work on the 20% of muscles that are largest and you’ll get 80% of the looks and metabolism gains you are searching for. The Pareto Principle will help you lose weight fast by eliminating your main food weakness. Your main food weakness may very well be 80% of the reason for your current weight though it is only 20% of what you are eating.
Apply the Pareto Principle to everything you do to save time, make your work more productive, and make your work sustainable. There simply isn’t time or energy to do 100% of the things in your life, 100% of the time.
