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It’s all A Learning curve
How do you stop counting calories forever? You make your decisions about food intuitive. How do you do this? Experience, learning, time, and patience.
Consider when you learned to drive a car. At first you had to use a lot of willpower and effort, consciously thinking and acting. But now...you almost drive instinctively and it is likely you do not drive like you were taught. You have taken what they taught you and adapted it to your personality (e.g. you may drive slightly faster than you were taught, you may turn corners one handed). The same process happens when starting a diet.
At the beginning of a diet, you are learning. It takes a lot of willpower and discipline. However, as time goes by, you learn a lot more about the diet and begin to adapt it to your lifestyle. In addition, the amount of discipline and willpower needed decreases. Let’s explore what this journey looks like.
Rules vs Principles
I know some people love writing every calorie down, it gives a real sense of reward that they have stuck to their diets religiously. Whereas I know others (myself included) who find that to be a massive chore and would prefer just to eat within tolerable margins of error. This is where the principles versus rules comes in.
Attempting the diet by ‘rules’ entails recording all your food, how many calories and the types of foods (carbs/protein/ fat) and monitoring these on a regular basis.
‘Principle’ based dieting is adhering to certain guidelines while being tolerant of adaptations that may be required (no more counting calories!). This comes from experience, knowing roughly how many carbs are in each food, and how to stay near the carb limit while staying within the total number of recommended calories.
I personally prefer principle based eating. I know that I am within 80% of my total calories and carb intake, which is good enough to keep me healthy and happy.
The key question is what is “good enough”? Are you preparing for a wedding/holiday where you feel you have to be in your “best” condition, or are you just looking to be healthy and are happy with a few tolerances?
I would always recommend people begin with rules as only experience can provide you with the “principles” that you need. For example, how do you know how many calories are in a bit of cheese unless you have been recording it (rules based) for a few weeks? I would recommend using a rules-based approach for about 3-4 weeks and then moving to onto principles based. This will provide you with a strong fundamental knowledge and also confidence to follow your diet.
“80% is good enough in 80% of situations, 80% of the time.”
Dan Sullivan – 80% Approach
