To lose weight, the formula is simple: eat fewer calories than we burn. This sounds easy on paper… but cutting calories becomes quite a challenge. Our friends at ActitudFem share more information about this 80/20 rule; follow it and lose weight. The ideal at any point in life is to do more than just dieting; it’s to change habits for healthier ones and gradually cut calories while replacing some foods with others. Just as you replaced white sugar with Stevia or Splenda, sodas with water, white bread with whole grain, etc., these small changes gradually reflect on your weight and, consequently, on your health. Today we found a new method to measure the calories you cut and help you organize better to continue losing weight. This technique applies whether you are just starting on this path to healthy habits or if you have been dieting for months. It’s called the 80/20 rule and suggests that 80% of the time you should be very careful about what you eat, applying all the health knowledge you have acquired during this time: fewer carbohydrates, healthy fats, pure proteins, zero white sugar… and for the other 20%, you allow yourself to eat whatever you want. To put it in simpler terms: if during the week you have 3 main meals, that totals 21 meals, of which you should eat as healthily as possible in 17 of them, leaving yourself with 4 free main meals a week. Remember that one of the biggest challenges when we are on a diet is the weekends and outings with friends; social commitments can undermine the other 5 days of dieting we have done. With this plan, you have 4 free meals, 4 opportunities to enjoy whatever you crave, allowing you to eat at a restaurant or indulge on a Friday night. For this to work, you must keep a close eye on what you eat in the other 17 remaining meals… The same formula applies to snacks. To maintain a balanced diet, you should eat 2 snacks every day, totaling 14 snacks. Of these, you can allow yourself to eat sugar and chips in just 3 of them. Ladies, it’s also not about eating the entire 500-gram bag of chips… This rule became super popular in Hollywood thanks to Jessica Alba's trainer. She asserts that you can’t be 100% on a diet, but you can be 80% on a diet, and that still represents a significant percentage of calories you are managing. Miranda Kerr is another example of the success of this rule, and openly the model has stated that following it has meant a new relationship with food: “Thanks to this, food is my friend, and discipline is the key.”