How To Get 80% of the Benefits of “Healthy Living” with 1% of the Effort

Jonathan: Hey, what’s up everybody? Jonathan Bailor and April Perry back with another SANE show. April I’m really excited about today’s show because we’ve got an exceptionally good question from one of our awesome listeners that is a follow-up from one of our other shows, which I’m so excited to dig into. So can you tell us a little bit more about that?

April: Yeah, well we’ve been talking about the idea of being a ten, a ten out of ten in various areas of our lives. We talked about how we can’t be a ten in every area, and Andrea had just sent in this email that I just thought was beautiful and helps us to set the groundwork for what we’re going to be talking about today. Which is, is there pro to doing an 80/20, rather than living a hundred percent? What are the pros and cons? We’ll be talking about that.

So I would just like to read verbatim what Andrea said because I was so touched by her email. It’s really fun to be able to know that people are actually listening and going through this transformation to a SANE lifestyle. It’s really neat to see these lightbulbs come on for them, just like it has for me, and for you, through the process of all the study that you’ve done Jonathan. So here’s what Andrea said.

She said, “I just have to send you a quick note to say how much I love your podcast about losing the last ten pounds. Occasionally I have seen individuals, like mothers, father, spouses, begin to change their eating and exercise habits only to become so obsessed that they are more concerned about body image and being a naturally fit, as Jonathan calls it, than being healthy. In some cases, this has been a detriment to their families. Honestly, watching this has made me weary of the siren songs of fitness because I don’t want to become obsessed with something that will become more important than my family.”

“You are bringing it all back to the reason why we want to be healthy. It is for our families so we can spend more quality time with them. My kids have been asking a lot of questions about this new diet, or lifestyle, and I have told them several times that not only do I want to be alive when they have kids, but I want to be able to pick up their kids and play and interact with them. I’m doing this so I can live the life I want to live.”

Beautiful, she put it beautifully, that is exactly what we’re going for here, it’s long-health, it’s vibrancy, it’s living life for a purpose, not just having this perfect body. So take it away Jonathan.

Jonathan: I love that question as well because it really helps us to focus on, we talk about these siren songs and becoming obsessed. We also, in previous episodes, had talked about if you’re going to start to do something to help improve your health and wellbeing, you have to continue doing it. It sort of seems self-evident, but so often, I mean anything that’s the 21 day this, the 14 day this – what happens on day 22? What happens on day 15?

If you plan on living longer than 21 days, you better have a program that is going to work for you for longer than 21 days. But we talk about this obsession, there’s this concept of being a health nut, or a fitness nut. Or if you go on the internet you start to search around for health and fitness things. There’s all these people getting bogged down on the minutia.

I think when we talk about 80/20 there is a huge, huge amount of benefit that you can get from doing just 20 percent of the things we’re talking about. The reason you don’t hear more about that is because 20 percent is so simple that you run out of things to write blog posts about and to write terrifying news articles about. If all you ever said was just focus on eating double-digit servings of non-starchy vegetables, getting over six hours of sleep per night, walking and standing as much as you can. Eating so much of vegetables and nutritious proteins and wholefood fats that you’re too full for the 60 percent of processed junk that the average American is eating, that are getting 60 percent of their calories from processed junk.

If you just did that, if you just don’t do anything else until you do that, you will easily achieve 80, if not 90 to 95 percent of the benefits that we perceive healthy people have, just from doing those simple things.

April: Well that’s pretty exciting and that seems ultra-simplistic, it seems like it wouldn’t really work. But you’re right, I mean as I’m thinking about that and thinking back to where were my bad habits coming from? What was I doing that was causing me to feel tired, to feel frustrated, to feel stuck with weight loss, or feel overwhelmed. It really goes back to all those simple things. I have to say, for mothers, you can’t always get six hours of sleep at once, sometimes, that’s just not going to happen.

There are, of course, different times in your life where it’s easier to take care of yourself than other times. I think just one thing to remember in that process too is being gentle with ourselves, and not expecting so much of ourselves, but asking what can I do to easily and logically and safely move forward and be more healthy? Those are just really simple, beautiful answers.

Jonathan: It’s easy to say oh that’s simple, I got it, check. But we’re not to next actions yet, go to the other episode. But I would really, honestly ask every single – because I can’t tell you how many, even wellness professionals, I’ve met – I got to these conferences, I meet people who spend their life talking about wellness. You ask them, on average how many servings of green vegetables did you eat per day for the last week? The answer is always, I don’t care, unless you’re Joel Fuhrman, he’s the only person I’ve met who actually does this consistently, other than myself, in the wellness world. That is just are you eating double-digit servings of vegetables per day? That’s it. You could compare nutrition labels and talk about vitamin D and all this stuff, but just are you eating those vegetables?

It’s really cool because then we don’t have to get into conversations about eliminate this from your diet, and you can never have this again, and this is toxic and addictive, which is true, but focus on eating more vegetables. Just do that, once you have that we can come back, we can talk about a bunch of other stuff you can do, but if you can just do that it is going to transform your life so, so much.

April: You know, I have just been thinking recently, as I’ve been talking with a lot of people about SANE and about eating vegetables. I had no idea I would become such a raving fan of vegetables, as I have now. It was interesting because I was reading a message that a friend of mine posted on Facebook the other day, she said, hey I’ve been eating SANE, we’ve been eating a ton more vegetables. Then she said something interesting, she said, I’m wondering if this is why my children didn’t get as sick this last winter as they normally do. I thought wow, that’s a really great question.

Then I started thinking back to my own family and my own life, and thinking man, I haven’t been sick in a long time, I can’t even remember the last time I was sick. Then I was talking to my 12 year old son, he’s been eating a lot more vegetables as well. We used to give him, I’m not kidding – it looked like a suitcase, it was one of those, I think, a Tupperware container that had a little handle on it. So it’s a big, square, it was like this suitcase. I would fill one with pretzels and I would fill one with tortilla chips. Then we would have Graham Crackers and Animal Crackers in the pantry, and that’s what my boys used to eat just non-stop. They’d get home from school and they would just shovel through all of these empty carbs, right?

Now they’ve been eating a ton more vegetables and my 12 year old son said, hey mom – he just started 7th grade – hey mom, I’m noticing that I’m getting faster at PE. Like, I run faster than the other kids do. I mean he was always a good runner, but he’s just noticing where he lines up in the pack is that he’s starting to become faster. That’s going to happen, when you’re feeding your children vegetables and a really healthy diet, and when most of the world is not eating a healthy diet, it can’t help but manifest itself in their ability to move their bodies, to run. This difference is only going to become more pronounced as our children get older.

Jonathan: Here’s how, we talk about 80/20, I would actually even argue that this is more – if you think about all the stuff you’ve heard about health and wellness and fitness and exercise, this is probably one percent. One recommendation – eat double-digit servings of vegetables, and don’t think about anything else until you – like take all the energy you’re going to spend on wellness and focus it on that. Here’s exactly why, not exactly why, we don’t have enough time to talk about exactly why. But here’s mostly why that one percent will give you 80 percent of the benefits. Here’s just a couple of examples.

One, as you start eating more vegetables, April as you said, you are going to take in more nutrition than you ever had and you are probably going to address vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which cause chronic – like if you don’t have enough vitamin C, you get scurvy, or rickets, or one of the two things. If you don’t have enough vitamin B12 your spinal cord will deteriorate. There’s a reason we call these things essential, if you don’t have them, life goes poorly. So you will immediately address many of the vitamin and mineral deficiencies you probably didn’t even know you had, you probably didn’t even know your children had.

Two, you will start to crowd out insane foods without even trying. That’s the key thing. So often we eat just because we need to fill up space in our stomach, or we just want to chew on something, or we just want to snack on something. Just by focusing on eating more non-starchy vegetables you will automatically, effortlessly, and unintentionally avoid a lot of the stuff that we talk about. You know, don’t eat all the processed starch, and nonsense, and blah, blah, blah. You could approach the problem saying, oh my gosh, here’s all the stuff I can never eat again, this is terrible. Or you can just become too full for those things, then effortlessly avoid them. Which is brilliant.

Then last, but not least, as you start eating more non-starchy vegetables, two things are going to happen – one, and maybe this has to be a separate episode, but you will start – because we don’t recommend that you just try to always eat raw vegetables, that’s gross. You’ve got to figure out ways to make vegetables delicious. The easiest way to make vegetables delicious is to eat them along with delicious fats – like bacon fat, or butter, or something, sautéing them. That’s going to help you start to get more of your energy from fat, versus sugar, which is going to help normalize your blood sugar, going to help normalize your energy levels, going to help your kids not be bouncing off the wall, because they have a maintained level of energy, rather than peaks and valleys.

It’s going to readjust your taste-buds because you are going to be eating more bitter foods, and that will re-sensitize you to sweet. So things that used to taste not so sweet, will start to taste sweeter. Things like regular soda will taste too sweet and become unappealing. So you’re addressing vitamin and mineral deficiencies off the bat, that happens instantaneously. You’re crowding out a bunch of other nonsense. You’re helping your body to become more accustomed to running on fat, versus sugar, which is going to help it burn fat more easily, which his going to help you slim down, which is great. And you are going to automatically retrain your palate to detect sweetness, to be more sensitive to sweet, which will help you to avoid nonsense foods and to enjoy delicious, healthy foods – sorry, healthy foods and to perceive them as delicious. So that’s how that one percent can give you 80 percent of more of the benefit.

April: Okay, so what I’m seeing now is that you’ve basically outlined the how-to. If someone really, really wants to be getting their body mostly healthy, just being able to consume vegetables, being able to just make these really simple changes, that’s how we’re going to do it. Let’s talk a little bit about how we can then prioritize our lives in a way that really works for us. I just have to say that just this, the conversation that we had in the podcast about losing that last ten pounds, was really healing for me. Maybe it’s just as a woman, but every time I look at myself in the mirror, I totally judge myself. Do men do that?

Jonathan: Some men do, I absolutely do. We can talk about how I do it in a later episode.

April: Okay, so I totally judge myself, and prior to our conversation I would always be thinking, I should have more toned arms, I should be more fit. I don’t know, I would just tell myself these things. What I found is that as I’ve shifted my priorities and my goals, not really shifted, just kind of maybe clarified them and come to understand them more. I’ve been able to say to myself, I am really healthy and strong and happy. I’m spending my time doing the things that are most important in my life.

So I think that number one, just being able to get our nutrition under control, being able to have that nutritional serenity, that enables us to really live our priorities and be able to feel so much happier just on a day-to-day basis. I mean even just notice, since our last recording, I judge myself less, I’m happier when I look in the mirror, because no one else is really looking at me. It’s just really interesting how that one little shift, because I know I’m giving my body the nutrition it needs, now all of a sudden, I feel like I’m good with where I am.

Jonathan: That focus, that’s why – I’m going to bring it back to vegetables – the National Vegetable Association of America, if such a thing exists, should be calling me up after – we need to start that up. What people don’t actually know is I have a huge stock investment in the National Spinach Growers of America – this is a huge secret that’s going to come out, it’s going to be a big scandal. Jonathan and the insider spinach scandal. Spinach-gate.

So anyway, tying this back, April your point is brilliant. When we think we have to be a ten out of ten at everything, we end up being a ten out of ten at nothing and we feel really bad and that’s not good. Same thing applies to our health and wellness goals here. So if you think, oh my gosh, I need to make this change, and this change, and this change, it’s too much and you’ll never make any progress in any of those directions. If you just say, I am going to focus on this week, I’m going to carry sticky notes around with me and just write down every time I eat vegetables. Then next week I’m going to try to make that higher, and the week after that I’m going to try to make that higher.

Maybe my kids were eating zero servings of vegetables, this week they’re going to eat one, next week they’re going to eat two, after that they’re going to eat three. That stuff is so powerful and will make you feel so good, because as you start to make and keep those simple commitments, you will gain momentum and it will spiral. It will become this self-fulfilling thing because you’ll feel better, people will start seeing results. There is nothing more motivating than results. Once you start seeing results you’re like, now I want to do this. But you will never see results unless you get focused, and you won’t see results unless you’re focused on the right stuff.

So where to start, how to start, how to prioritize, how to feel good about yourself and how to get 80 percent of the benefits for one percent of the effort is to focus on increasing that vegetable intake.

April: I love that. Now can we talk a little bit about that initial healing phase, versus maintenance? I have a lot of friends who are now going SANE and, for some people, it’s like quick, obviously they start losing weight, they’re feeling so excited. For other people it takes longer. Can we just talk about this initial healing, kind of what’s going on as we’re bringing these vegetables into our lives?

Jonathan: There’s more than two buckets, and we would definitely want to talk about this in much more detail in a later episode. But there’s at least two buckets – one is the bucket my mom fits in, for example. Wonderful lady, actually was recently on The Power Moms, that was awesome. She’s like, Jonathan I’m pretty happy with where I’m at. I’m in my 60s, I don’t have diabetes, I don’t have any chronic health problems, I’m doing pretty good. Can I see my abs? No. Should I be able to see my abs? Absolutely not. So she’s like, but I am, I’m trying to eat a little bit more vegetables, I’m trying to do that, but sometimes it doesn’t really work out. Is she seeing transformative results? No. Is she putting transformative effort into it? No. But is she radically less likely to get diabetes in 15 years? Absolutely.

So bucket one is, hey I’m just trying to eat more vegetables, cool. That’s great and you will live better because of that. That’s like the smoker who was saying, I smoked two packs a day, I’m going to smoke one less cigarette. Yeah, they will get lung cancer more slowly. It’s better, it’s better, it’s absolutely better. Now if you’re like, I’m all in, I want to go SANE. I think that’s the key difference, if you want to go SANE and transform your health as quickly and efficiently as possible, then just saying I’m going to eat one more serving of vegetables per day is not how you get there. That’s a different path.

So that initial healing phase – the initial healing phase doesn’t apply to anybody who’s just like, I’m going to start to make simple changes and gradually work my way into this. But people also need to understand, that just like anything in life, if you’re like I’m going to gradually learn how to play the piano. You may or may not ever become a world class piano player, right?

April: Okay, so I think this boils it down to actually a question I’ve heard from a lot of people, is it possible for me to – let’s say I’m 50 pounds overweight. Is it possible for me to lose that weight by going SANE slowly? Or do I need to just go full in and health my metabolism and then I can later decide if I want to incorporate more non-SANE foods? What would you say to that?

Jonathan: You can absolutely do it slowly, the only disclaimer I would give to you is that it might be so slow, that after a while you start to say, this isn’t working. We have countless stories of – to be very clear, if you’re trying to drop 50 pounds healthfully and permanently, that should take at least six months. If it’s not, there’s something else going on there. Can you just gradually lose 50 pounds over the course of two years? You absolutely can, but anything that takes that long you might not even realize you’ve lost 50 pounds. It’s such a gradual thing. I mean I guess you would notice, but I don’t know if that answers your question.

April: No, I think that’s good, I think it was just I’ve heard this from a lot of people, because I’ve had friends who have said, hey I’ve just gone SANE, I’m kind of SANE. Like I’m still eating some of these foods that I know I probably shouldn’t be eating, that Jonathan doesn’t recommend, they talk about you a lot. So that’s part of it, but then they’ll say, these are the exact same people, who I’m hearing say, I’m not really seeing progress. So I feel like, what you’ve just said, if you want to see progress, you want to go all in. It doesn’t mean that you can never eat a favorite food ever again, but it means that you’re committed enough to heal your body and put in the effort it will take to do that. You’re going to see those results and you are going to feel more motivated to keep going.

Jonathan: At the risk of stating the obvious, it you are in New York and your goal is to walk to California, or to get to California. You could certainly get to California by walking, you can, you can get there.

April: You’d probably give up though – you would give up along the way.

Jonathan: Yeah, and it just takes a longer time. So like anything in life, the more lax and casual your approach, the slower the results will be. I mean of course that’s true. You’ll still be healthier, you’ll still be fitter, it’s still a good thing to do. But SANE eating is radically easier to do than starving yourself, and it’s radically more health-full than starving yourself. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t require effort. Any change, I mean even negative habits take effort when you’re initially developing them, but once you develop them that’s when the effort goes away. Unless it’s something totally unnatural, like starving yourself, because hunger never gets easier. But enjoying vegetables does get easier, you acquire a taste for it. So your results will be directly proportional to the effort you put in to going SANE, just like your results will be proportional to the effort you put into anything in life.

April: That’s a quotable right there. Okay, so now as we kind of outline some ideas for this, you had typed in addictive versus non-addictive personalities. What does that have to do with going SANE? I couldn’t make that connection, help me out here.

Jonathan: A lot of people say, well I’m just going to eat sweets occasionally. Like I’m just going to have one Hershey Kiss, and that’s okay. But we have to distinguish between different types of people. So there are people that can do that, just like there are people, I know people, who smoke socially. I don’t understand how that’s possible because nicotine is extremely addictive, but they only smoke during social occasions. So if you’re the type of person who can eat junk in – if you can eat a little bit of junk and it doesn’t make you crave more junk, we need to put those people in the non-addictive food personality-type bucket.

Then there are people, like me, where if I just take a bite of a donut, I will want that donut more, radically more, than if I ate none of the donut. So is it okay to eat just a little bit? Well you tell me, there are some people who can smoke socially, there are some people that can drink socially. But then there people who, if they take a drink, they’re going to fall down, because they won’t be able to stop. So it’s what works for you in that instance.

April: I love that, and I think what we’re coming around to is really each person needs to assess his or her own goals, and figure out what is it that I want for my life? What is it that I want for my nutrition? What is the best way for me to achieve those goals? I think that’s such a simple way to phrase it. One of the experiences I had recently with this darling girl that is a friend and she lives in our neighborhood. She started going SANE and her mom would say to her, hey honey, come on over here, we have a little desert, it’s fine you can have just a little bit, you’ve eaten healthy all week, you deserve a little cookie, or something like that. I think she’s probably more on the side of eat one cookie, you want to eat all of them. She said, no mom, I am all in – I am all in going SANE.

I thought this girl, she’s going to be successful and she’s going to reach her goals, I have no doubt. It’s just okay, she’s decided here’s the foods I’m eating, and here’s the foods I’m not going to eat, I’m going to reach my goals. I think what’s so exciting about SANE is you can actually tell people, yes you will see results. Yes, your body is going to change. Yes, you’re going to start feeling energetic and excited about life again, and you won’t need to carry around all the extra pounds and feel sick and feel frustrated. That this is actually a roadmap that people can follow and trust it.

I think that’s why we’re talking about this right now and why we’re encouraging people to give it a try, to go in, go all in, if you really need the results and want the results. The challenge has been in the past is that I would be given a roadmap from someone who didn’t know how to get me where I needed to be. That’s what I feel like I’ve been handed my whole life, honestly. I feel like I have received maps from 50 different people telling me if you want to be fit and healthy, here’s what you do. I will follow those roadmaps and I will get nowhere. It’s like I’m walking to California, except I’m in California right now, so that doesn’t really work. But honestly, now I feel like now that I have SANE, this is the roadmap I can follow, I can trust. I can tell other people if you want to get healthy, here you go.

Jonathan: That’s the key April, is now you have not only a correct map, but channeling I know someone we both are big fans of, and hopefully our listeners are fans of as well, which is the late Stephen Covey, you have a compass. Which actually means, no matter where you are, it’s going to point to true North, or it’s going to point to the right direction.

Now it is totally up to you how quickly you walk. I mean some of us – we want to get in a jet and we want to just jet there as fast as we can. Some of us might just want to take a casual stroll, and we might even turn around and walk backwards sometimes, and that’s our choice. But at least now you know that you’ve got that compass, you’ve got that map, and the choice truly is yours now, how quickly you take that journey. How dedicated you are to that journey – that’s up to you, but the option is there. So I think that’s really exciting. So what’s our next action with that awesome compass and map metaphor on mind?

April: Alright, well our next action here is to identify our two roles or goals, where we want to be a ten out of ten. This is just giving us a chance to step back, look at our priorities, and figure it out for ourselves. Where do we want to be a ten? What is it that really matters to us right now? Now if nutrition and getting our bodies full in shape, if that’s one of those things, then here you go, go SANE, be all in.

If right now you have other areas where you want to be a ten out of ten, where you’re putting most of your focus and you want to maybe do 80 percent SANE, you want to slow down a little bit over there – totally fine. Totally up to you what you want to do. I think what we’re encouraging you to do as this next action is be deliberate about that choice. Decide what it is that’s most important to you, decide what your health goals are, and then decide what you’re going to do to be able to get there.

Jonathan: Boom, I love it April. Everyone’s going to be – we’re going to be one percent effort in 80 percent of the benefits, or 100 percent of the effort in, and 100 percent of the benefits. Either way, it’s all good. So thank you for joining us today, it is excellent as always. Jonathan and April Perry signing off. Remember – stay SANE.