There are some foods that you just can’t go low-fat on, aren’t there? I think we can all agree that fat-free ranch dressing and fat-free mayonnaise and those sick, white-fleshed turkey hot dogs are at best disappointing and at worst disgusting and not worth all the calories you’re saving. With some foods, you just can’t hold the good stuff back. They need the fat in order to taste how they’re supposed to taste.

I imagine that pound cake is one of these.

Pound cake is lavish. It’s unapologetically decadent. It’s essentially just butter, sugar, eggs, and heavy cream with some very white flour thrown in for good measure, then topped with more butter, sugar, and heavy cream. If you tried to make pound cake with low-fat and low-sugar substitutes I think you’d end up with a sad, nasty mess. No, in the case of pound cake, you need to go all in.

When you’re creating, whether you’re writing, sewing, painting, gardening, or whatever, the same holds true. You want to go all in, with the best of your ideas, the best tools at your disposal, the best raw materials you can get, and the best effort so that when you’ve finished something you’ve put all of yourself into it. Why? For several reasons:

1. When you put your all into something, you are generally happier with the result. Even if something didn’t turn out quite perfect (and there’s always something) you still know for a fact that you have done your absolute best. And mentally, that’s worth something. Even if others don’t get it or don’t even see it, if I know I’ve done my best and put everything I had into something, I can be proud of it.

2. The product of your efforts, whether it’s an herb garden or a baby blanket or the Great American Novel, will be better than if you only put in partial effort or just some of your good ideas (holding back others for a later project because you were worried you’d exhaust them forever on this one). If you put your “full-fat” self into your work, the end result will always taste/look/read/feel better. This is obvious, but it bears repeating when so many of us have the tendency to get down on our own work before we’ve even given our full effort to it. The world doesn’t owe us success for our minimal efforts. We owe the world our best effort, and success may follow.

3. Once people see your best, you’ll always want to give them your best in the future. If you bring an amazing, delicious, completely homemade pound cake to a dinner, the next time you’re asked to bring food, you’re not going to want to bring Chips Ahoy! cookies. You’re going to want to wow people again–because it feels so good to wow people. Once you write something you’re truly proud of and you get great feedback from people, you’re going to want to do even better the next time. Giving our best in one thing spurs us onto improvement. When we set a personal record running a mile (because really, you need to work off that pound cake) it makes us want to beat our personal best, doesn’t it? Giving everything you’ve got to a task not only makes the current result better, it makes future results better.

Today, this week, this month, and for the rest of the year, ask if you’re giving your current project the full-fat, gloriously delicious best you have to offer. Whether you’re cleaning out the garage or teaching your kid to ride a bike or detailing a car or crafting a poem or refinishing a table or whatever, remember that Splenda and Egg Beaters and skim milk and gluten-free flour do not a pound cake make.

How are you giving your best today?