What is the 80/20 Rule? Can it be applied to keto?

Whether or not 80/20 can work for you depends on why you’re doing keto. Some people genuinely need to stay strict all the time in order to manage a health condition.

Do you need to follow a keto diet strictly a hundred percent of the time to get the results you want? Is it possible to be more relaxed with your food and still lose weight, be free of heartburn and brain fog, maintain normal blood sugar, and reap the other benefits keto is known for? What if you’re strict with your food 80% of the time and flexible the other 20%? 

Let’s explore how the 80/20 rule can apply to a keto diet.   

What is the 80/20 rule?

In the context of diet, the 80/20 rule means following your plan strictly 80 percent of the time and using the other 20 percent to enjoy foods that are off-limits or allowed only in very small quantities. This can be applied to any way of eating, but in the context of keto, it would mean keeping your carbohydrate intake ultra-low most of the time but including some higher carb foods once in a while.

What does 80/20 really mean?

The 80/20 rule isn’t precisely defined. For example, would you stay keto 19 hours a day and include more carbs during the other 5 hours? That’s 80/20! Would you be strict five and half days a week and be more flexible on the remaining one and a half days? 

When applied to diet, the 80/20 rule is a general concept, not a precise mathematical formula (despite the numbers). Don’t get hung up calculating down to the hours and minutes. The overarching principle is that you follow your plan most of the time and include off-plan foods on a limited basis.

Is the 80/20 rule right for you?

If you feel a bit deprived on keto and find yourself longing for high-carb foods, the 80/20 rule probably sounds great. Eat keto most of the time but also enjoy the foods you miss once in a while? Yes, please! It sounds good, but is it a good idea for you?

Whether or not 80/20 can work for you depends on why you’re doing keto. Some people genuinely need to stay strict all the time in order to manage a health condition. For example, for people who are ultra-sensitive to the biochemical effects of carbs, straying even just a little could trigger a seizure or migraine, or possibly trigger a mental health episode. 

For those using keto as an adjunct to their cancer treatment, being too generous with carbs could potentially interfere with the desired outcome.

On the other hand, if your main goals with eating keto are losing weight, reversing type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, improving insulin resistance and related conditions such as PCOS, or just supporting good overall metabolic health, you probably have the flexibility to include more carbs in your diet once in a while and still get good results. 

Not everyone needs ultra-strict keto to lose weight or improve their health. The question is, how much carbohydrate can you have, and how often?

The downside of the 80/20 rule

The 80/20 rule sounds reasonable in the context of diet, right? After all, you shouldn’t have to be perfect a hundred percent of the time to get where you want to go. There’s a tradeoff, though. 

Including higher carb foods here and there might make your desired results come more slowly. If this helps you to feel less restricted and allows you to enjoy your diet more, this is a reasonable exchange to make and is likely to help you sustain it longer. 

And that’s what you need to find: something that works for you and that you can stick with for the long term. It doesn’t matter how effective keto is if you hate low-carb foods and every meal makes you miserable. 

How to experiment with the 80/20 rule

The 80/20 rule is a concept, not a commandment. Since there’s no exact definition, you can apply it in whatever way feels right to you and that doesn’t prevent the progress you’re hoping to achieve.

One way to do it is to stay strict keto during the week and include higher carb meals on the weekends. Not every meal all weekend, every weekend. That’s the keto equivalent of taking two steps forward and one step back every week. 

Be selective about what you eat and how often. Another way is to enjoy higher carb foods on specific holidays and special occasions while staying strict all other times. But remember: special occasions aren’t that special when they happen multiple times a month! If your 80% has morphed into 70% or 60%, you may not be happy with your results.

There’s no right or wrong way to experiment. But if you’re new to keto, I recommend staying strict for at least the first few months. And if you’re looking to lose a lot of weight or your health is highly compromised, don’t mess around with carbs until you’re closer to your goal(s). Think of keto as a therapeutic or corrective diet. 

If your health still needs a therapeutic intervention or you’re still trying to correct something, then it’s best to stick to what keto authority Dr. Eric Westman calls “prescription-strength keto.” Don’t take the training wheels off your bike when you’re still learning to ride. 

Which foods should you include if you go 80/20?

The higher carb foods to include when you’re being more flexible depends on how you’re wired. If you have trigger foods – foods that make you want more and more … and more! – it’s best to avoid them altogether. 

But there may be specific foods or food categories that are “safe” for you to include because they’ll hit the spot without leading to insatiable cravings for more. For example, if things like candy, cake, and chocolate turn you into a ravenous, sugar-seeking monster, then stay away from sweets, but maybe you can include starches (like potatoes, beans, rice, and pasta) without any issues. 

Salty, crunchy snacks like chips and pretzels might be your kryptonite, but dense, creamy things, like ice cream or cheesecake, might pose no problem for you.  

You likely already know what your trigger foods are, so do yourself a favor and keep them off-limits even when you’re being flexible. Remember, the principle of the 80/20 rule is that you follow your plan most of the time. 

So, during the limited times when you include more carbs, steer clear of foods that make it harder to get back to keto. Stick with higher carb foods that you can have a reasonable amount of and get right back on plan the next day or even the very next meal.

Pro Tip

Lots of low-carb foods that are totally fine for a keto diet are very common triggers! If you can’t control yourself around nuts, nut butters, cheese, or pork rinds, consider eliminating those, too. 

Just because something is very low in carbs doesn’t mean it’s automatically going to help you reach your goals on keto. (Overdoing nuts, cheese, and other high-fat items is a common reason for stalled weight loss, for example.)

Who should avoid 80/20?

As I mentioned earlier, if you know you need to follow strict keto all the time for medical reasons or you simply feel your best doing that, then there’s no wiggle room for you. Staying strict is the way to go. 

Fortunately, there’s no shortage of good resources to help you make “treats” while experiencing the benefits of strict keto.

On the other hand, if you can have more carbs and maintain a weight and a state of health you’re happy with, then you don’t need strict keto and this is a non-issue for you. You don’t need to mess around with 80/20 because you’re on plan 100% of the time if your plan includes more carbs to begin with.

A different interpretation of 80/20

There’s another way to look at the 80/20 rule and it basically reverses these numbers: 20 percent of what you do could be responsible for 80 percent of your results. In business management, this is called the Pareto principle. 

It’s invoked to explain that “the majority of problems (80%) are produced by a few key causes (20%),” or that “80% of sales come from 20% of clients.” In the context of diet, it can be translated to focusing on a small number of key factors that, when implemented well, will take you the majority of the way.

With regard to improving your health or losing weight, the Pareto principle approach to the 80/20 rule could mean that among five factors – your diet, exercise, intermittent fasting, optimizing sleep, and improving stress management – one of those (20%) could be responsible for 80% of what you’re looking to accomplish. 

In the context of keto specifically, that one thing would be a very low carb intake. Doing just this, with no specific effort put toward addressing the other factors, can help you go far toward your goals.

So if you feel overwhelmed by the endless stream of conflicting advice about keto diets and improving your health, doing just one thing – keeping your carb intake very low – will take you a long way. 

Put your focus on the 20% of actions that will yield 80% of the results you want and give yourself permission to stop wasting emotional energy (and possibly lots of money) on piles of other things that won’t move the needle much. It’s okay to not use an infrared sauna or choke down a greens powder every day!

Summing up

If you enjoy following a strict keto diet, you’re happy with your food choices, and content with your health, carry on! You don’t need to change anything. But if staying ultra-low-carb all the time makes you feel too restricted and you long to have some higher carb foods once in a while, have them! 

If you don’t have a pressing medical need to follow a therapeutic ketogenic diet all the time, you might be able to include some higher carb foods and still be satisfied with how you look and feel.

It will take some experimentation to see which foods work well for you and how often you can include them, but don’t be afraid to step outside the keto box. The only person who gets to dictate what you eat is you. 

Despite what you see on social media, there are no actual keto police who will come to your home or hunt you down at a restaurant and slap a piece of bread out of your hand. See if being flexible with your food on occasion works well for you, and if not, then go back to strict keto. It’s as simple as that!

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