Practicing the 1% Rule: The Compound Effect for Sustainable Wellness

Creating systems to develop sustainable habits isn’t only important for maintaining motivation, it also helps grow your wellness and weight loss progress. To build onto the sustainable systems you’ve developed, practicing the 1% rule can have a lasting impact on creating sustainable, long-term success. While the 1% rule impacts weight loss, it can be applied to so many other parts of your wellness journey.

As discussed in previous posts, a weight loss journey is a balance of mental and physical health. Without one, the other becomes harder and nearly impossible to sustain over the long run. Starting slowly and building on the systems you’ve established for yourself will lead to long-term results, even if they’re not noticeable at first.

The Mathematics of Small Improvements

You don’t have to be a math expert to understand how building on small improvements each day can lead to long-term success. Think about watching a child learn to read or learn anything as they go through every level of school. Education is built on learning and understanding basic concepts before moving on to more advanced concepts. The same concept applies to a wellness journey.

The 1% Rule essentially says that if you improve your habits, for instance you’re running or weightlifting, by just 1% each day it will lead to improving your overall goal or habit by 37 times over the course of a year. This may not sound like much, but when you consider where you started, it’s a lot.

The gap between improving or declining isn’t very significant in the short-term, you’re not going to notice after one day or maybe one week, but if you continue to either stop or slack off on your habits or build on your habits, you’ll see the difference. This doesn’t mean that if you get off track for a longer period, for instance having an injury, you can’t recover. It just means it will take longer to reach your goals and build on the progress you made.

When I started running, I worried that if I didn’t stick to my training plan daily my results would decline quickly. Overtime they would have but missing a training run for one or two days didn’t kill the progress I made. When I noticed I would struggle was when I took a week or multiple weeks off. Recovering wasn’t impossible, it was frustrating because I could feel the difference.

Why the 1% Rule Works for Weight Loss and Wellness

Often, we want to see major changes in a wellness or weight loss journey. Our culture has gotten caught up in the desire to see fast results, which often leads to remorse and frustration when expectations don’t work out. This can lead to negative psychological backlashes, which can be followed by decreased physical gains due to the experience. The 1% rule bypasses our need for immediate changes.

Following the 1% rule helps us build and grow the systems we developed by focusing on consistency and gradually adapting to our new habits. This leads us to developing the skills and capacity to maintain our progress along with seeing and feeling the physical results. It takes time to build habits. Setting realistic expectations and slowly building habits makes it more likely to succeed.

Shifting Mindset from Large Expectations to Small Changes

The traditional approach to a weight loss and wellness journey is to make major cuts or changes all at once. Early in my journey I thought cutting a ton of calories all at once would lead me to reach my goals faster. I also thought only implementing intense exercises into my plans would help. Instead, I burned out and found it wasn’t sustainable. I was either going to develop an eating disorder or make myself extremely sick because I wasn’t fueling my body well. I felt unenergized and was not happy.

Using the 1% rule I found that small, consistent modifications to my daily routine and diet left me more energized and I was less frustrated. Using the 1% rule makes you focus on daily improvements. Instead of focusing on the scale, you measure daily outcomes based on your ability to stay consistent. Therefore, you are making a psychological shift in the way you think about diet, wellness and lifestyle.

Implementing the 1% Rule in Daily Life

The 1% rule can be use in any area in our lives. It’s up to us to decide where we want to see improvements. You can use some of these examples to decide how to make improvements. I would not suggest adding all these at once. This is all about building up your habits, not jumping in too fast.

Nutrition 1% Improvements

As previously mentioned, don’t start a wellness or weight loss journey expecting to see major changes all at once. Start small and build up. Here are some ways you can make 1% improvements to your nutrition:

Add an extra vegetable serving to at least one meal a day
Increase your water intake by starting with 2 to 4 ounces and then building up, depending on your current intake. You can drink too much.
Reduce portion sizes by a tablespoon or gram for each meal
Swap one processed food for a whole food or fresh alternative.
Add 5 to 6 grams of protein to each meal
Extend your mealtime by 2 to 3 minutes to eat more slowly. Start with one meal then build up.
Read the food label on an additional product each shopping trip.

Movement 1% Improvements

Movement changes can be made in multiple ways. We usually think of going to the gym as exercise, but there are other things we can do. Below are some ways you can add movement to your day:

Each day add 100 to 200 steps to your base count. We often hear that 10,000 steps per day is recommended, but there is no exact rule. Start where you’re comfortable and build up.
Extend your base workout duration by 1 minute per session. Again, start with where you’re comfortable and build up.
Add a flight of stairs to your daily routine or add a hill to your walking route. I would suggest doing this progressively. Depending on the height, this could get overwhelming quickly.
Decrease how long you sit by 5 minutes a day. This may be hard to calculate, but one suggestion is to get up and walk every hour or every other hour at work for 1 to five minutes.
Increase your movement intensity by 30 seconds per workout. For instance, if you walk, speed up for thirty seconds then each day build up by 1 to 5 seconds.
Add a new bodyweight exercise per week.

Sleep and Recovery 1% Improvements

Sleep is extremely important to our overall health. It helps the body recover from exercise and supports digestion. A lack of sleep can also cause stress that can lead to overeating and other struggles with physical and mental health. Here are some examples:

Go to bed 5 minutes earlier each week and/or wake up 5 minutes early. You should be aiming for around 8 hours of sleep a week.
Reduce screen time by 5 minutes before bed each week and add 1 to 5 minutes each week. Watching television or using smartphones before bed can negatively affect our sleep cycles.
Journal one or two sentences and build on it each day/week about your progress, mental health or focus on something positive about yourself or day.
Add one minute a day/week of deep breathing meditation. This will help relax your body and mind for sleep and helps control screen time.
Add one recovery technique for after workouts. I do light stretching, drink water and some deep breathing to relax.
Implement an additional stress-management technique each week. This can mean meditation, taking a walk at work when you need a break or journal your thoughts.

Overcoming challenges

Sometimes, no matter how hard we work or strong our intentions, things don’t work out the way we want them to. Setting achievable goals for your week, month and longer can help deal with these disappointments. However, goals aren’t always enough, especially when we don’t reach them as quickly as we expect.

Addressing Impatience

It’s easier said than done, but you can overcome disappointment and there will be let downs. It takes time to see visible results, so create meaningful ways to measure your success. Do research to see how gradual adaptation can help you improve areas you want to. Then use the lists you created to build on, from the last section, to measure your successes.

Celebrate your consistency, especially in the early stages or during plateaus because you won’t see the results you’re expecting right away or all the time. Learn to recognize subtle sights of improvement like your energy levels are up. Did you climb an extra set of stairs? Have you reduced your screentime throughout the day or before bed? Did you eat a vegetable serving at lunch when you normally don’t? These are all ways to recognize improvement.

Handling Plateaus

If you’re looking to lose a decent amount of weight, you may reach plateaus in your program, but you need to determine whether you are experiencing a plateau or just a short pause. When you reach a plateau, it’s an opportunity to adjust or solidify your current practices. Identify the next 1% improvement you want to make. Progression happens in steps and must be adjusted from time to time to keep moving forward.

Maintaining Motivation for Small Changes

Connect your small improvements to your core values and identity. How are these changes going to help you reach the identity you are striving for? Build community around your philosophy of creating small changes, this is where a support group becomes important. When they know the habits you’re building they can help support you in striving for success. Along with this, develop rituals around improvements. Since these are daily, what are some ways you’ll recognize the small success? Journaling them helped me keep track of progress.

Another option is to study success stories behind making small improvements and building on them. Social media is a good outlet for finding this, just remember, there are a lot of stories and people on social media pushing weight loss. You have to do your research. This will also help develop a deeper understanding of mechanisms to support your desired changes.

Real-Life Application of the 1% Rule

Now that we’ve discussed ways to apply the 1% rule into your health and weight loss through exercise, nutrition and mental health, we can discuss getting started.

12 Week 1% Improvement Plan

At the beginning of your program, for each habit you are going to focus on, establish a baseline. I recommend on for sleep, exercise and nutrition. If this feels like too much, focus on one or two areas. This is where journaling or using some kind of logging system can help support you. Apply your improvement plan during the first week based on whether it is supposed to be daily or weekly.

Next, during weeks 2 through 4 reinforce the initial changes you made and add a new 1% element to your routine. During weeks 5 through 8 layer additional 1% improvements as the previous ones become automatic. During weeks 9 through 12, don’t add any new improvements, but focus on turning the current ones into a sustainable lifestyle system. Remember, you are building slowly to establish consistent habits.

Creating 1% Habit Chains

While you are focusing on creating a plan for habits you want to improve, you still need build on the one’s you establish. To slowly do this, design a sequence related to the improvements you want to make. Decide how you want to build one improvement on another. For instance, walking 15 minutes a day for week one and building to 20 minutes the next week. Or, drinking an ounce more of water a day for week one and building. Connecting small wins helps build momentum and helps develop holistic systems of improvement by gradually building.

The 1% Environment Rule

It’s difficult to make health changes without making changes to the physical environment you live and work in. I found that my physical environment impacted the way I felt about myself and my eating habits. Now to start considering how to make consistent minute changes to your physical environment.

Start making changes by gradually increasing changes toward better choices. Consider areas that cause you frustration and make progressive changes that will support positive habits or how you feel. While doing this, focus on building slight barriers that will support blocking you from less desirable behaviors.

When I started this process, I wanted to organize my kitchen but doing it all at once was going to be frustrating and stressful. I first focused on areas that could help support me in making healthier choices. I started by organizing my fridge to determine what I had and making healthy foods easier to access and putting less healthy foods where they were in clear sight. I then moved on to my pantry, then counters and then to other areas of the house. I found that reducing clutter and establishing organization made me feel more confident and less stressed.

Progressing Slowly with the 1% Rule Leads to Sustainability

Adding habits progressively and building on them will lead to successful long-term results, but you have to be patient. Focus on the small positive results and keep building on them. Don’t focus on the scale, but on the daily and weekly improvements you’re making. Document your progress by keeping a log or journalling. Document your progress visually to maintain records of your progress. You’ll get there. It takes time, but with the right tools you’ll build the habits you need to get there.