I didn't have enough time before work yesterday to prepare enough food for lunch, and ended up buying a slice of pizza to prevent losing my Cherub-like demeanor due to hunger. (Any "protein type" will understand.)

Most people are surprised when I have a pizza as opposed to my normal diet of organically grown, home cooked food, and in fact I have pizza probably less than 10 times a year.

Eating the pizza between clients got me thinking, however. One of the reasons people give up on a healthy nutritional plan is because they try to change the way they eat too radically, too quickly, and then can't stay with it.

I'll deal with making nutritional changes later, but for now lets talk about how to deal with sticking to your nutritional plan, and the 80/20 rule. According to this so called "rule," as applied to nutrition, if you follow a proper diet 80 percent of the time, you can slack off the other 20 percent. Unfortunately, this split is much too generous in favour of slacking off, but if you look at it in terms of a 90/10 or 95/5 it works much better.

In other words, if you follow a well structured nutritional plan, that works for your body, 90+ percent of the time, your body can easily handle eating off the plan without any negative side effects. And for those who have a hard time dealing with staying on a "healthy" diet it'll provide a nice reprieve to maintain your sanity and resolve.

Make sure, however, that the 90/10 doesn't turn into an 70/30, 50/50, 20/80...