80/20: Life After The Challenge

When a plane takes off, destined to bring its hundred tons of metal up into the air, the pilot has to crank the turbines up to full throttle. It’s the only way to generate enough thrust, lift and momentum for flight. Of course, once a cruising altitude is reached, up high where the air is a little thinner, where the going is just a bit easier, pilots throttle back some, allowing inertia to do it’s thing. In fact, running those turbines for the whole flight at the same intensity as with takeoff is a surefire way to burn them out and cause some big, big trouble.
It’s an analogy.
It’s a good one.
You’ve spent the last few weeks getting airborne. Good for you for getting there. It took a tremendous amount of focus and sacrifice. There really wasn’t any room for compromise, because when you’re trying to build new habits and break old, bad ones, there aren’t a whole lot of options; you either do or you don’t. You’re in or you’re out. For this reason, we always encourage challengers to be as strict and rigid with their diet and exercise as possible so long as the challenge is still going.
That being said, you’re not invincible, and it’s not only unrealistic, but also unhealthy to run your engines this way for the rest of your life. You’ve got to find your cruising altitude.
As we near the end of the challenge, I’d like to introduce you to the 80/20 rule, which states that “thou shalt be dialed in to your diet and exercise with great discipline no more than eighty percent of the time, allowing twenty percent of your life to be full of other, simpler, though perhaps not idealistically healthy joys”.
Please don’t be at your nephews birthday party counting out almonds in your pocket while your friends and family are stuffing cake in their mouths.
Alchemy aims to help people feel alive. Exercise and nutrition are great levers we can pull to help this along. But there are other levers, too. Desert after dinner, a cocktail with friends, taking a lazy day to sit on the sofa and watch movies with your kids, traveling to Italy and eating a hundred pounds of fresh pasta and warm bread… they’re in direct conflict with the diet and exercise plan you’ve just rolled out for yourself, but are integral to your long term happiness and indeed, the long term success you desire for your health.
There are a number of ways to live the 80/20 lifestyle. Some people designate days of the week to cut loose. Some people are more relaxed with their exercise than their diet, or vice versa. Either way, no matter how you cut it, you’ve spent the last weeks getting airborne, and now that you’re at 36,000 feet, it’s time to consider throttling back. Don’t get me wrong, you still need to stay up there, but you probably don’t need to keep climbing. The machinery isn’t cut out for that, and it probably won’t get you to your destination any faster.
So, once the challenge really winds down, be prepared to shed the guilt. Test yourself just a little, get to know your capacity for a small dose of chips and dip without going overboard, figure out if it feels ok to take a day off from training, and when Monday rolls around, kick back into gear. This is what 80/20 is all about. It’s healthy, it’s sustainable, and I’m willing to bet it will make you happy.