80/20 Eating

I normally don’t suggest things I haven’t tried for long, but I’m too encouraged by the results to let this pass without comment. A few days ago I had lunch at Phillippe in downtown Los Angeles (the best sandwich shop in God’s country). Whenever I eat there, my self-discipline invariably goes out the window, and I find myself devouring enough to regret it immediately afterwards.

I ordered my usual French Dip, a bowl of clam chowder and a slice of chocolate cream pie. As soon as I set the tray down on the table, I found myself looking at the volume of food I was about to eat with different eyes. My intuition was raising a red flag against the act of hyperconsumption I was about to commit.

Staring at the food for a moment longer, a question suddenly came to mind.

What 20% of this would give me 80% of the satisfaction?

I wound up eating perhaps more than 20%, but well below half. I ate the full (small) bowl of clam chowder, less than half of the sandwich, and four forkfulls of the pie. I put the rest in a box, and repeated the process at home. It took me four days to finish a meal that I would have ordinarily pounded away in one sitting.

I’ve started doing this with everything I eat and drink now, and I not only have more energy when I’m finished, but the act of eating is more enjoyable. It’s not the mathematical proportion that matters. 80/20 is an arbitrary ratio in this context, and could just as easily be 50/50 or 90/10. What matter is the fact that I’m forced to pay attention to what I’m eating in relation to a standard of fulfillment, not consumption.

Like most Americans, I was raised to finish everything on my plate. This ethic carries a number of unexamined assumptions:

• Everything on a plate is worth eating
• The size of the plate is appropriate to the amount of food we actually need
• The plate needs to be loaded
• Food left on the plate is “wasted,” as opposed to turning to excess fat if eaten
• “Full” meals are served on plates, as opposed to bowls, skewers or napkins

The 20% Not-to-Eat list

While I’ve only been applying the Pareto (80/20) principle to individual meals for less than a week, I’ve had more experience with a different application. Last December, I decided to lose some weight. Being too lazy to maintain a real diet, I asked myself, “What are the 20% of foods that are causing 80% of my excess weight?”

It took about three minutes to realize that they fell into two categories: candy and pastries. I was surprised by how simple it was to drop these from my eating routine (Phillipe being the one and only exception), since I usually ate them to alleviate boredom anyway. Sometimes resisting the urge took a little emotional effort, but the alternative of counting calories or carbs would have taken much more. I always prefer making things easier before applying more effort.

Within two days, I noticed that my stomach no longer exerted pressure against my belt, and within two weeks, I noticed that I had to keep pulling my pants up. In six weeks I lost 11 pounds, with nothing to analyze or track.

The great thing about 80/20 analyses is that they apply at any level. If you’ve already eliminated candy and pastries, your 20% might be dairy products and meat. Whatever it is, it’s usually something that’s obvious once you focus on it as an issue.

from tools-for-thought.com