Rules and principles

A rule is one of a set of explicit or understood regulations governing conduct or procedure within a particular area of activity. A principle is a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour — a chain of reasoning.

Rules work for the same reason societies enforce laws with the threat of punishment. Rule-based approaches assume that humans, faced with choices, options and temptations, will succumb and fold like a pack of cards. Moderation isn’t practical or possible — as Lays so astutely markets it, “No one can eat just one.” Since you can’t stop at one or two, you just don’t buy the damn thing, or keep it anywhere near you.

Certain foods get outlawed. If you can’t moderate your calorie intake across four meals by eating a little less at each, fasting protocols set hard-and-fast windows for when you can eat. Fewer meals and fewer hours spent eating potentially cut the total calories you take in.

Rule-based diets sell themselves by claiming to cleanse you, or to optimise the working of some obscure hormone. But 99% of the time, rules work in one of two plain ways: by restricting energy intake, and by being simple to stick with, since a rule takes little thinking.

Rules also work by dramatically changing your behaviour and making you feel terrible about breaking the ones you’ve chosen — numbers, weight, calorie intake, foods, time, even blood type. There’s a diet built on every parameter you can imagine.

But since you don’t go to prison, get caned or electrocuted for breaking these rules, they’re easy to break when it comes to food. You feel bad for a couple of days and move on.

Principles are different. They work on the idea that if you want an outcome, you’ll do what’s necessary to get there. Vague much?

What conviction looks like

If you have enough conviction to gain muscle, lose fat and feel more physically capable, some behaviours make more sense and you’ll stick to them:

1. Have a vague sense of what too much food means in the context of your body and goals.
2. Include more protein and vegetables.
3. Sleep more.
4. Find a way to squeeze in 8–10 hours of activity, including strength training.
5. Be hungry for activity in everyday life.
6. If you tend to overeat or binge at certain times, plan your snacking, eating and water consumption around it.
7. In the land of plenty, where work is stressful and competitive, it is counterproductive to treat food as a reward, an incentive or a means to cope with existence.
8. Dessert time and eating out should feel like foreplay, not an orgy.

Rules will feel like sustainable, good practices when you have conviction in the underlying principles. Moderation shouldn’t feel like you’re in a cult or stuck in the Matrix. When you feel relief — or drown in guilt — after breaking a rule, you need to ask yourself why the hell you were following those rules in the first place.

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