"Perfect is the enemy of good." 

This famous quote, attributed to Voltaire, is a useful reminder when we embark on doing something new. Because no mindset works against us more when we start something new than the perfectionist's mindset. 

Know a perfectionist? You probably do. We all know somebody who decided to do something new, hard, and noble -- quit smoking, learn how to play an instrument, or eat from a new diet. It is all that person would talk about. She or he talked about it all the time because she was obsessed, and also because she was trying to keep herself true and perfect to adopting this new thing in her life. 

What happened then when she made one little mistake? When she lit up a cigarette after being good for 3 and not having one, or when she did not pick up the guitar for 2 days after being good about strumming it daily for two weeks, or when she ate a sandwich after swearing off bread and being good about avoiding it for a week? 

This perfectionist, after one such small mistake, she quit her noble cause. Why? Because she put way too much pressure on herself. She created way too high expectations for herself on being able to follow through this new thing perfectly. And thus, she set herself up to fail. 

So what then is the best mindset when doing something new, hard, and noble, like adopting new foods into what you eat everyday and letting go of old favorites to lose weight and become healthier? 

The answer is the mindset that let's you feel okay failing on occasion. In fact, build failure into your diet. Use Pareto's principle of 80/20, where you do things right 80% of the time, and 20% of the time you give yourself leeway to do the wrong thing. 

If you plan to eat the right foods and not any bad ones for 4 weeks, I encourage you on 1 day to eat all the crap food you like. For 6 days, eat the right food. And if on one of those weeks, you eat the wrong food on 2 days, be okay with it. Just go back to eating right 6 days a week.

The wrong mindset tells you to try eating right for all 7 days a week, all 4 weeks a month,. The pressure and expectations to follow through everyday is much too high for our human nature, so you will quit doing the right thing altogether. Try to be perfect, and oddly enough, you will be far from achieving your goal of losing weight and become healthier versus if you tried to perfect most of the time and imperfect on a day or two each week. 

So the Healthy Indian knows this well: Aim to be almost perfect, but never perfect, when doing something new, hard and noble like eating better food and not the old crap food you liked so much, in order to achieve success.

National Geographic Magazine ran an article on sugar in their August 2013 issue. What makes it interesting and worth a read (available for free here) is you learn much of the history and social aspects of sugar production and consumption. For example, did you know sugar was being refined and turned into the white powder we are familiar with today -- back in 500 A.D.?

But what makes this article really interesting to me is it's perspective on sugar's effect on health. This passage is the tastiest morsel, but I encourage you to take the whole course. 

"[Fat] makes up a smaller portion of the American diet than it did 20 years ago. Yet the portion of America that is obese has only grown larger. The primary reason, says [kidney doctor Richard] Johnson, along with other experts, is sugar, and in particular fructose... 

Table sugar (called sucrose) is half glucose and half fructose. Glucose, which is used by nearly every call in the body for energy, also stimulates the production and release of insulin, the hormone that signal our fat cells to become fatter. 

Fructose, on the other hand is the sweeter sugar found in fruits and also processed foods, is metabolized primarily by our liver, which makes blood fats called triglycerides. To quote the NGM article:

"Some of these fats stay in the liver, which over long exposure can turn fatty and dysfunctional. But a lot of the triglycerides are pushed out into the blood too. Over time, blood pressure goes up, and tissues become progressively more resistant to insulin. The pancreas responds by pouring out more insulin, trying to keep things in check. Eventually a condition known as metabolic syndrome kicks in, characterized by obesity, especially around the waist; high blood pressure; and other metabolic changes that, if not checked, can lead to type 2 diabetes, with a heightened danger of heart attack thrown in for good measure. As much as a third of the American adult population could meet the criteria for metabolic syndrome set by the National Institutes of Health."

On this blog, I have focused on the harmful effects of glucose because that is what our experts have studied and understood well. Fructose though has largely been ignored, but at our peril. Luckily experts like Dr. Robert Lustig are shining the light on fructose. 

Bottom line is still the same: sugars are bad for us, and eating too much causes us to become fatter and eventually obese. And thus we should avoid processed foods with easily digestible sugars (as they have little to no natural fibers to slow down sugar digestion, unlike most fruit).

The best infographic that tells us in simple language why foods with lots of easily digestible carbs (white rice, breads from white flour like chappati, potatoes, and fried snacks) are worse than foods with lots of dietary fats. (Courtesy of Massive Health.) Enjoy!