Chocolate in your daily diet? We're all for it! Learn the 80/20 rule!

Exceptions to the diet, "small sins", cheat meals or cheat days are topics that appear in our fitness world all the time. How to eat healthily and maintain a beautiful figure when there are so many temptations around? How to live without huge restrictions and sacrifices? We know a great way! Read today's post, which will help you compose the perfect diet yourself, without having to give up your favorite products.

A "clean bowl", although healthy for our body, can take its toll on our psyche. Especially in the summer, when we spend more time outside, sipping cold prosecco (hopefully) in restaurant gardens, eating delicious, artisanal ice cream and typical waffles in seaside resorts. It's hard to watch with peace of mind how everyone around us enjoys the charms of beautiful weather, when we are on a reduction, eating clean and after all "we can't!". On the other hand, girls, it is what it is! Sooner or later there will be a breakdown, during which we will want to eat all the croissants from the local café and... most likely it will happen. This is not the best solution, so although we sincerely encourage a healthy lifestyle, we also warn against excessive perfectionism, which becomes extremely uncomfortable and over time can lead to orthorexia. Orthorexia is an eating disorder that involves obsessively focusing on eating only healthy food and strictly controlling the diet. Although orthorexia is a result of trying to achieve the best possible health and avoid any disease, it is itself a disease that requires treatment and leads to unpleasant health consequences. 

A very good solution, not only during holidays, is the 80/20 rule. This is the most optimal model of nutrition that we recommend especially because, according to experts, it can prevent binge eating that occurs when following very restrictive diets. 

In one sentence, the 80/20 rule says that our diet should consist of 80% healthy, unprocessed, wholesome products/meals (for the body and health) and 20% of so-called pleasures, i.e. products that we simply crave - sweets, ice cream, go wild! ;)

In practice, it looks like this: eating 1800 kcal every day, 360 of them can be spent on whatever we want, the so-called "eating for pleasure". It should be remembered, however, that this is of course not mandatory and works on the principle of an open door - if we only feel like it, we know that we do not have to wait for the next cheat day, we can just calmly include a given meal in our daily diet and enjoy the taste. We are sure that many people will not feel the need to eat their 20% every day, and will use the 80/20 rule in exceptional situations. What is also worth noting is the fact that 80/20 can be calculated on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis. Find your favorite way. 

Is 80/20 the same as a cheat meal?

Definitely not! A cheat meal or cheat day is often treated as a reward after a full week of maintaining a clean diet. It usually involves a calorie surplus and often involves "taking off the roller skates of madness" and eating whatever you can throughout the day. In this way, you often make up for the weekly deficit in one day, and then wonder "was it worth going crazy like that?". ;)

In the case of 80/20, we still stay within our calorie requirements, allowing ourselves the pleasures we want. This rule allows us to maintain common sense and develop good habits. After all, it is known that forbidden fruit tastes the best, and knowing that you can eat your favorite chocolate every day, it will most likely not become an object of your desire. :)

However, to make things less rosy, 80/20 has one downside - to be effective, especially when losing weight, it requires quite meticulous calorie counting. We consider this detail a minor flaw, but we are curious how you see it? Let us know in the comments below the entry.