I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again:

Perfection is an illusion.

There’s no such thing as a perfect diet, and if you ever meet someone who claims that there is, you should run the other way – fast.

I’ve been through many different phases on my own diet journey. I remember at one point I was playing around with the high carb, 80-10-10 style diet that I mentioned above. Didn’t turn out too well.

I was obsessing over keeping my fat consumption low, staying away from anything that had a hint of oil in it.

The result?

My health and performance was worse than before.

Maybe I did it all wrong, and wasn’t eating enough calories. But do you wanna know what I really think it was?

Even if that way of eating was supposedly healthier than what I was doing before, I was doing more harm than good by stressing over being perfect.

These days I’m much more relaxed about what I eat.

Want to know the best part?

Research suggests that including a little bit of junk food into your diet now and again may help to build tolerance to these foods so they don’t have as much of a negative effect if you’re forced to eat them another time.

Think of it as a kind of junk food vaccination…

Then there’s also the mental health aspect:

Whether we like it or not, food plays much more of a role in our lives than simply providing us with fuel. We also eat for pleasure and as a social connector.

Sometimes indulging a little can help you relax. I’d go as far as saying it’s a key part of living a healthy lifestyle.

It acts as a reminder that life isn’t half as serious as we make it out to be.