GETTING RESULTS BY CHANGING physical appearance and improving functional ability is not 80% nutrition and 20% exercise, but quite the opposite: 80% exercise and 20% nutrition.
We spend less time meal prepping than exercising during the week. Meal prepping makes up 2%, whereas exercising makes up 4 to 6% of the entire week. After prepping meals all there is to do is eat them. Exercising takes more time (and effort), even in preparation.
But the reason why most people have heard getting results is 80% nutrition and 20% exercise is that this ratio is used in reference to a bodybuilder’s lifestyle: eat, train, sleep.
Training is relatively the easy part for a bodybuilder because it is a pleasurable activity compared to around the clock high-performance nutrition to aid with recovery and promote increases in performance levels.
The latter ratio must be applied to the majority who do not find exercise pleasurable and do not adhere to the regimen of a bodybuilder. An 80% exercise and 20% nutrition ratio must be applied to a domestic 9-5 lifestyle: work, home, sleep.
Living a domestic lifestyle can make exercise difficult to become a priority in order to make it a habit and exercise well. Learning how to exercise well by allowing the body to adapt and transform itself is not 20%, but 80% (given the perspective that movement is what we were meant to do throughout our lifetime).
Learning how to exercise well takes time, which is how habits are formed. When a training session is more difficult to get through it is likely the case that one did not eat high-performance nutrition in regard to the right foods in the right amounts at the right time and often enough to allow the body to recover for the next training session. This recovery period, although ongoing throughout the day and night, would in fact constitute 80%. Eating high-performance nutrition meals definitely increases exercise performance and invariably aids in a series of body transformations.
However, the common belief that results are 80% nutrition and 20% exercise is scientifically unfounded. Studies show that exercising influences healthier food choices, not the other way around. Movement comes first, and eating better comes second. The fact is that when one exercises, then one will want to make better food choices in order to perform and function at one’s best. We eat for energy, but we exercise to change.
Yet, when talking about an 80/20 exercise and nutrition ratio it is more pragmatic to speak of a holistic 34/33/33 exercise modality, nutrition, and recuperation ratio that include all three components working together to increase performance and transform the body.