What’s Your Minimal Effective Dose For Success?

You say, “I love it when I have a lot of structure to follow and a lot of rules."

I get that, because you feel certain you’re not making the wrong call. 

Well, how often have you followed rules for a while and then quit all of them? 

I’m not going to act like I haven’t benefited and learned from those behaviour interventions. 

I used to call it a “monthly challenge.” Which I do think works great to put us into a place of discomfort, but we recognize we can’t handle this new lifestyle over the long term. 

I’ve done: 

  • No alcohol 

  • Following meal plans 

  • Training every day

  • Cardio challenges 

  • Limiting TV to certain days of the week 

  • Body composition challenges

All had some value, and I think they can offer deeper appreciation and encourage balance in your life when they’re over. 

There have been times I’ve been pleased with my progress at the end of these challenges, but just as many times I’ve let it slip away again. 

Until recently. 

You see, the thing that I changed was that I stopped asking myself what is the most I could do for a while (knowing you don’t have to keep doing it), but then I started asking myself, “What is the minimum that I never want to let go of?”

This is a different mindset all together. 

If you try to convince to yourself to do a lifestyle behaviour for, say 1 month, and you’re not sure if that’s realistic for you after that month, you’re going to hit a wall eventually. 

Now I’m speaking to you under the context of over doing things. 

This is what it looks like:

For exercise 

  • Working out more than 60-90 minutes in a day

  • Engaging in cardio that you hate doing every day

  • Working out 6-7 days a week

  • Doing high intensity impact training and always feeling sore but pushing through it

  • Getting injuries but pushing through it

For nutrition

  • Following someone else’s EXACT diet plan 

  • Keto (when you love to have carbs)

  • Intermittent fasting (when you get hungry in the morning)

  • No treat/cheat meals 

  • Not enjoying your food but you eat it because it’s healthy

  • Being in a calorie deficit for multiple weeks in a row

Notice that I gave context to the keto and intermittent fasting because those tools can work if you ENJOY it and it’s sustainable. BUT it commonly doesn’t solve the whole problem.  

So after doing one of these big challenges for a month, or even 2-3 months, you lose weight and feel great and then…. you do what? 

There’s a high probability that you go back to your earlier habits. The familiar you. Not the new you. The real you that actually doesn’t enjoy these drastic new lifestyle changes. 

Why? 

It could be any number of reasons. Summer, social life, resentment toward the training or diet… In the end, the major problem is the all or nothing mindset. 

You kind of borrowed a lifestyle to reach these goals, right? 

But you weren’t prepared to live it. 

Let’s think of it this way and look at the following chart. 

Think of the Y (vertical) as progress towards a goal, and X as time. 

Red is the All or Nothing – Big rise and quick success and routinely big crash to the old former results. You’ll notice on the third time, there’s even a further drop. 

The blue line isn’t a big rise and still comes up and down. BUT there is a new perceived minimum standard for life. They don’t go back to the old lifestyle, thus their minimum isn’t none, it’s just enough. 

There’s a concept called Pareto’s Principle – which is that 80% of your results can come from 20% of your perceived efforts. 

This is so incredibly true with habit formation for diet and exercise. 

If you realize you can workout for just 20 minutes once a week and that’s a new minimum for you, you’ve now allowed your “all or nothing” mindset to change. 

It’s also very true! In research, it’s been proven that just 4 sets per week for a given muscle group is enough to sustain muscle tissue! 

Now there is of course experience relevance (meaning I’m used to 5 days a week, so my minimum would be different), BUT if you have an “all or nothing” mindset then you need to get rid of the nothing part. 

For nutrition, you need to see your MED – Minimum Effective Dose. 

My recommendation? 

Protein intake and calorie awareness. 

If you eat your body weight in grams of protein and have an idea of where your maintenance calories are coming from, you can really prevent that yo-yo effect in your diet and weight. 

Here’s a client story. 

Tess Let’s call her Tamara. She was a well-disciplined worker, she loved to train and wanted to improve her physique. 

During the lock downs, as she was out of full-time work, I gave her the idea of using her extra time to do more cardio activity to get leaner, but she had an even better suggestion.

“Well, I don’t want to do that if I’m not going to sustain it.” 

Beautiful. She was more aware of the long term implications than I was at that time. 

Look below at how her fat loss went here.


Over the course of the year, she slowly decreased her body fat percentage. Yes, she regained at times, but never past where she came from.

She established new eating patterns that stuck. The best part is that she was actually working out less by the end. 

Now let’s think of habit formation (If you haven’t read it, check out How to Make a Habit in Four Minutes)

The big thing is just making something routinely noticeable, but manageable to sustain every time, even on your worst week or day. 

This is how you create sustainable change. 

The fascinating thing is that there is a HUGE range to how long it takes to ensure the habits actually stick. It could take 21 days, all the way to 3-4 months. 

This is why, I have 4-6 month terms with my clients to ensure we have really focused on developing a habit and are sustaining it. 

The best part comes when you can be losing body fat and it seems not so hard.

You could be gaining size and strength, and it’s your regular routine daily habit. 

This is because you’ve developed the MED so progressively and you have no problem sustaining the habits. 

This is the foundation of my Simple Sustainable Gains program. 

This has helped not just Tess, but many others (Check out Client Stories Here)

Whatever program you decide, ask yourself what is your MED, and give yourself time to develop into realizing it’s not about all or nothing. 

But rather “Best I can or the MED, so it’s always progressing who I am.”





Rhyland Qually