3 Things I’m Doing to Reduce Stress

Yesterday, I got caught in a major traffic jam. There was construction, and a drive that should have taken about 50 minutes (stressful enough) ended up taking 90 minutes (major stress). I came home with a brain screaming, “Food! For heaven’s sake, get me food.”

Clearly, stress is not good for my program. For me to succeed In my food recovery, I have to reduce my stress wherever possible.

So here’s my plan the next time I get stuck in a raging traffic jam. This comes from research — not mine, but scientists. I’m adapting their suggestions to my traffic stress:

1) Be Grateful.

Heaps of studies show that a lack of gratitude contributes to stress and depression. And, conversely, people with more gratitude experience lower levels of stress.

Whenever I’m stuck in traffic and my stress rises, I will challenge myself to think of three things I’m grateful for at this moment. The blue sky, enough gas in the tank, a safe car, whatever. Maybe I’ll try to think up ten. Or twenty. There are always things to be grateful for.

2) Change Your Thoughts.

Our brains can only focus on one thing at a time. You can refocus your thoughts onto those with less stress.

So, I will challenge myself to think of three ways this stressful situation is actually a good situation to have: It lets me catch up on more of an audiobook, it lets me practice being kind to fellow drivers, it lets me learn how to handle stressful traffic better!

3) Learn to Relax.

It’s a cliche, but doing something relaxing is proven to reduce stress. Fresh air and breathing are big ones for me.

So, I will challenge myself to open a window and let fresh air in. I will breathe it in.

I will practice my 7-11 breathing (breathe in on a count of 7, breathe out on a count of 11).

These three things — gratitude, changed thinking patterns, and relaxation techniques — have been proven by science. If scientists say they work, that’s reason enough for me to try them.

Disclaimer: This site is not officially affiliated with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

My addictive brain is a screaming toddler at night

On Day 10 of my current BLE streak, and I’ve noticed something.

First, evenings are the worst for me. Yeah, I know, like everyone. If I’m home at night, the hours between the end of dinner and bedtime are torture. It’s the “witching hour” for me.

My addictive brain goes ballistic. It just keeps nagging and nagging and nagging. Clearly, I’m not hungry, I just ate dinner and have no physical signs of hunger. But my brain keep saying, “eat, eat, eat.”

And I know why it happens. It happens because my addictive brain is a screaming toddler.

In my 18 months of relapsing and resuming, I have most often relapsed in the witching hour. That’s when I tend to give in.

It is only after going through this for months that I’ve realized — or learned, deep down in side — that my addictive brain is like a screaming toddler. Not just because it. Will. Not. Shut. Up. But because every time I give in, it gets worse.

It is just like if you are at a supermarket and your toddler wants a cookie. Doesn’t just want a cookie, but screams and cries for a cookie.

If you give in once, the crying will stop and you’ll have peace short-term, at that moment. But you better believe that from now on, whenever you are with your toddler near the cookie display, your toddler is going to scream and cry. In the long-term, you’re going to have a lot more screaming and crying. A lot more.

You have three options:

(1) Give in every time. This ensures your child will comes to adore cookies. Bad eating habits, health problems in the future, maybe obesity and obesity-related diseases.

(2) Give in occasionally. This ensures the screaming and crying will get worse and worse and worse. It ensures that the toddler will become obsessed with screaming and crying, in hopes that this will be a visit where you break down.

(3) Never give in. This means you’ll have to endure screaming and crying short-term but it WILL lessen. When your toddler realizes you never give in, the point of screaming and crying goes away. It doesn’t work. It never works. So there’s no real point. This is the hardest option but also the one that has the greatest potential to get you to your goal of a child with healthful eating habits and a healthy future.

Clearly, number 3 is the way to go. But it means enduring a lot of distress and upset and anger in the short term. That’s just how it works.

When it’s a half-hour after dinner and my addictive brain turns into a screaming toddler, I just have to take a deep breath and remind myself I have the same three options:

1) Give in and eat. This ensures I’ll struggle more to get to my weight and food goals.
2) Give in occasionally. This ensures my addictive brain will get louder, more annoying, more upsetting.
3) Never give in. This means I’ll have to put up with the addictive voice for a while, but WILL settle down and eventually go away for the most part, or at least, to a bearable extent.

Every single time I give in, I make the screaming get worse. Every single time I don’t give in, I’m one step closer to making the screaming stop.

Disclaimer: This site is not officially affiliated with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

The Truth About BLE Success and Why You're Not Achieving It

An article popped up in my inbox the other day related to success in general. It was titled "The Ugly Truth About Success and Why You're Not Achieving It."

Reading it, I found myself wondering if the ideas could be applied to my Bright Line Eating. I started trying to convert the ideas to my thinking about BLE -- and whoa, they applied really well.

 So today's blog is my attempt to convert that article's brilliant ideas about success specifically to my challenges with Bright Line Eating. Here goes:

Humans have an amazing ability to overcomplicate things. We have big dreams, but we make achieving those dreams overly complex. Soon we find that we're not succeeding, even though we still have the dreams.

Fortunately, there are three big mistakes that tend to mess up people's success. Once you're aware of these mistakes, you can shift your progress and make success more achievable. Success actually isn't that hard, if you avoid these three mistakes:

(1) You don't stick to the plan long enough.

There's a reason why some Bright Line Eaters get bracelets that say "FTFP," for "follow the fucking plan." We live in a world that adores immediate results. Pat a lotion on your skin -- ta da -- bags and wrinkles gone. Wrap yourself in aluminum pants -- ta da -- skinny legs. Tap an order into your computer -- ta da -- dinner delivered right to your door.

This happens all the time with commercial weight-loss programs. Fad diets succeed because people fall into the "immediate results" trap. We want big weight loss results in quick time. And with little effort.

The reality, though, is that achieving a big dream takes time and effort. Getting a college degree. Starting your own business. Writing a novel. Many people dream of these things but don't succeed, not because they don't have the potential or ability. Because they give up too soon.

BLE is like this. Even if you have great success during the boot camp, for many people (maybe most), getting to goal weight requires sticking with it for a period of time. Those who succeed don't necessarily have more ability or willpower or strength than those who don't. They tend to be those who stay the course.

When you read biographies of successful individuals, you often find this same motif motif: they made a plan and stuck to it. People who achieve great things are consistent and are patient with the time it takes to let the results happen.

(2) You stop believing in yourself.

This is tied up with number one, but it's slightly different. People who live out and embody their dreams never lose faith in their ability to succeed.

If you're struggling with keeping your bright lines, it's likely you've encountered this. When your addictive brain just won't shut up, when you're struggling with avoiding the pantry every day, when you find it hard to pass by the fast-food place on your way home, it can be tempting to just decide you can't do it.

Losing faith in your ability to do Bright Line Eating can tempt you to quit when in reality, a little shot of faith could mean getting where you want to go.

There's no magic bullet for learning to believe in yourself. But anything you can do to increase your faith in yourself can help:

Read inspirational books. Put Post-Its with inspiring quotes around your house. Follow positive message boards on Pinterest. Talk with success BLE-ers to remind youself of how many people do success with this. Set an alarm clock on your phone to deliver motivational quotes. Sign up for an inspirational quote to be delivered to your email inbox daily. Pray. Repeat mantras. Believe, believe, believe.

There's a reason self-help gurus recommend sticking inspirational Post-Its on your bathroom mirror. Mantras work. They can shift your brain into a state of believing in yourself.

(3) You don't seek out the roads that have been pre-paved by others

This one comes from a powerful quote by motivational speaker Tony Robbins: "Success leaves traces."

When you're trying to succeed at anything, look for the pathways others have laid down. Find others who have traveled to where you want to go, and follow their path.

In BLE, we have a smooth, nicely paved roadway laid down by Susan and so many others who have followed this type of food plan and eating program. Many thousands have traveled down this road. Many, many more have recovered from addictions of all kinds. And they leave pathways.

This is why Susan recommends finding someone with really strong bright lines to be your buddy if you are faltering and relapsing frequently. A successful BLE-er can be your guide, sitting in the passenger seat of your BLE car and pointing out the potholes you're likely to run into on your Bright Line journey or the exits you'll be tempted to take.

There are other pre-paved paths you can look for. The online support community is one. Podcasts, blogs, and books by Bright Line Eaters or anyone in an addiction recovery program are others.

I've found huge inspiration reading sober blogs by those in alcohol recovery, and I don't have trouble changing "alcohol" to "food" as I'm reading. The roadblocks people in sobriety encountered tend to be the same roadblocks I encounter as I'm trying to stick to Bright Line Eating.

If I follow the path that a previous successful BLE-er took, I'm more likely to get where they are -- where I want to go.

So. If you're having trouble sticking to your bright lines, be aware that it takes persistence and belief in yourself. And following a pathway already laid out by others can make your journey much easier.

If you want to read the original article, it is by Luis Congdon, published on the website addicted2success on Aug 18 2017, titled "The Ugly Truth About Success and Why You're Not Achieving it. You can find it HERE.

Disclaimer: This site is not officially affiliated with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

Self-Care Idea: The Pregnancy Principle

Why is it so hard for many of us to practice self-care?

Maybe there’s something about people who turn to food that makes us want to take care of others before ourselves. All. The. Frigging. Time.

One of the most life-changing things about doing BLE is that you almost have to learn to practice self-care. You have to eliminate anything that feeds the driving need to pick up food.

As I’ve been struggling over and over to resume, I came across a super helpful article by a sober blogger about how to take care of yourself in the early days of recovery process. It’s by Laura McKowen and called the “Pregnancy Principle.” (I’ll link to the article below).

She’s talking about the early days of alcohol sobriety, but the idea works just as well for thinking about the early days of a serious BLE resume. (In reading her article, I just substituted "food" whenever she says "alcohol.")

The idea is this: Imagine how you would take care of yourself if you were pregnant. When your well-being comes first. No one asks a pregnant woman why she's being careful with her energy and her time. At this hard time in your life, you too can -- must -- be unapologetically selfish with your energy and your time.

No one would ask a pregnant woman to attend an event when she’s feeling tired. No one would think twice if a pregnant woman needed to eat a special way. Or go to bed at 7:30. Or avoid any situation other than what she absolutely must attend.

This doesn’t mean you actually tell people you’re pregnant. That’s not what it’s about.

It’s about how you treat yourself. Strip out everything that’s inessential and treat yourself with loving care.

Start saying no a lot. Cut back. Go to bed early. Stop answering every text right right away. If you don't want to host a birthday party in your house because you don't want cake there, don't do it. If you have family over for dinner, don't feel like you have to serve them pizza. And don't apologize for anything. Be unapologetically selfish with your time.

I’m not explaining it nearly as well as Laura does, so read the article yourself.

My point is just that getting your bright lines back is really hard work. It takes energy and focus, and to do it well you have to take exceptionally, selfishly good care of yourself.

You can read Laura’s article on her blog HERE.

Self-Care Idea: BLE Treats

One trick I’ve been tried lately is borrowed from a terrific sober blogger named Belle Robertson who blogs at tiredofthinkingaboutdrinking.com

Belle recommends to her readers with drinking problems that for every day, or two days, or whatever, that you are sober, you give yourself a sober treat. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but it has to a little special and it has to not be, duh, booze.

I love this idea for BLE.  It gives you a positive incentive to keep your bright lines. And, bonus, it teaches you how to treat yourself in ways that don’t involve your addictive-substance-of-choice.

As I resume BLE, I’ve been trying this myself. For every day I have clean bright lines, I get a little treat. I’ve got a list of them going:

— A new lipstick or tinted lip balm
— A few fresh flowers
— New flavor seltzer water
— Scented votive candle
— Scented body lotion
— New essential oil
— Car wash
— Pretty or fun mug with inspirational message
— Fun magazine
— Sunday newspaper (I don’t normally get this)
— Really good take-out coffee (I still drink coffee)

When I hit a big milestone (7 days, 14 days, 30 days), I give myself a bigger treat
— New outfit
— Pedicure
— Massage
—Eyebrows/lip wax (yowch but oh-so-pretty)
— New earrings
— Super-comfy pajamas

I’m no scientist, but to me the idea of sober treats seems valuable.

For one thing, as you are getting yourself your treat, you say explicitly to yourself, ‘this is my treat for having squeaky-clean bright lines.’ That trains your brain that something positive, something warm-and-fuzzy, something that feels really good, comes after doing the thing.

Like a dog, my brain wants more good feelings, and I hope will continue to associate bright line eating with good feelings.

The other thing I hope it is doing is training your brain to think of things besides food when it wants a treat.

So going forward, when you have a stressful day or when you want to celebrate something, your brain won’t automatically think of food. It will think of something equally special but not harmful to you.

Disclaimer: This site is not officially affiliated with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

Do I Have to Be a Food Addict to Do BLE?

In talking with other folks doing Bright Line Eating, I've had a few question whether they are food addicts are not.

Personally, I find it helpful to think of myself as a food addict. It makes my issues feel serious enough that I'm willing to take BLE seriously. 

It makes me handle questions about food, sugar, flour, alcohol, and snacks, very very carefully, like I might handle a gun. It's that serious and that important to me.

But I get it. I get why people resist the word "addict." It carries an unfortunate stigma.

And I agree with Susan when she says that you don't have to be a food addict for BLE to work for you.

My mother essentially eats this way all her own, without following BLE or any other plan, simply because it's the food she prefers and the way she likes to eat.

So, no, I don't think anyone has to be (or even think of themselves) as a food addict to do BLE.

The only thing I might quietly suggest is this. If you find it hard to give up sugar and flour, that might be a sign.

 If the way you eat is getting in the way of how you want to live your life, that might be a sign too.

Disclaimer: This site is not officially affiliated with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

You Have to Do the Work — and It’s Hard

Sometimes, this work gets hard.

Doing everything on my nightly checklist is a drag.

 Ugh, all that reading inspiring things and taking time to meditate.
Having to come up with gratitudes!

Remembering to listen to a podcast (something new I’ve added to my nightly checklist).

Even worse, even harder, is having to stick to my bright lines. Having to not open the pantry door when it’s 8:30 and the urge is strong. Eating hamburgers without buns. Saying no to rolls at dinner. Turning things down over and over when at a party or a dinner out.

Last week, I unexpectedly had to drive home later than I’d expected. The drive began at 10:30 p.m. and took 2 hours. I’d eaten dinner at 5 and the hunger was extreme. Not to mention the stress of knowing I’d be tired tomorrow — and I was annoyed that I’d been delayed so long.

But those are the moments. That’s when the rubber hits the road. For BLE to work, you have to do the work. You just have to.

It’s not always easy. Heck, often it’s downright hard. You still have to do it. Just follow the f-ing plan. Don’t make a U-turn and go back to the beginning.

You have to do the work, and it’s hard.

Disclaimer: This site is not officially affiliated with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

What does "support" actual mean?

Susan Peirce Thompson often tells people who relapse that they more "support." But ... what does that actually mean?

I was thinking about this listening to a recent coaching call. Susan usually uses "support" to mean other people: buddies. Mastermind groups. Making three phones a day. Finding someone who has really strong bright lines and asking them to be a buddy.

For an extrovert, I can see why these would be terrific.

As an introvert, they didn't work at all for me.

I had little success with buddies. One of my buddies dropped out because her family went through a terrible loss. Another was so condescending that I found myself feeling worse after talking with her. Another was wonderful but I found myself pretending to be doing better at BLE than I really was because I just wanted to get the daily check-in over. I dread phone calls, so a required three daily phone calls would push me right out of BLE.

I also never even found the FB BrightLifers group as helpful as I'd hoped:

-- People posting about their BLE victories just depressed me because I wasn't having any victories.
-- People posting about their BLE challenges just made me feel sad with them.
-- When I posted, I tended to get a lot of "rah rah" posts that felt good but didn't actually give me much help.

But I did eventually find the support I needed. It wasn't from contact with other people. Here's what support looks like for me:

-- Writing a regular blog post.
-- Listening to BLE and sober podcasts.
-- Reading sober blogs (god, I wish there were more BLE blogs).
-- Practicing extreme self-care (saying no, frequent baths, getting to sleep early, giving myself small non-food treats for staying sober)
-- Taking workshops and reading books all the time -- on meditation, yoga, self-care.

In other words, support can take a lot of different forms. That's why I made a list of my 40 favorite sober eating tools. You can find it HERE. In my view, any one of these tools is a powerful form of support.

The key to success is finding out what support means for you.

Try lots of things. If you've relapsed, try doing 5 things. If that doesn't work, try 10. Try different things. Find the support that works for YOU.

Disclaimer: This site is not officially affiliated with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

Nobody Wants to Quit

When caught in the cycle of relapse-resume-relapse-resume, one thought keeps popping up in my mind:

I’ll get back on board with Bright Line Eating when I really want to quit sugar and flour.

But here’s the thing. Nobody with food issues wants to quit sugar and flour. At least, nobody I’ve ever met. I have yet to meet a single person who adores those things who wakes up one morning and says, “you know, I just don't want to eat those things any more.”

What we want to get rid of are the consequences of eating sugar and flour and snacks. We want to get rid of the things sugar and flour do to us. The clothes that don’t fit. The bloated feeling. The avoidance of photos and swimsuits. Feeling sluggish and lethargic and not fitting into airplane seats and hating our bodies.

But the actual act of giving up sugar and flour? No one WANTS to do that.

So you can’t wait for motivation to strike you. It won’t.

There are plenty of ways a person with food issues can get support and motivation and enthusiasm to do BLE, and plenty of reasons why you should eat this way. But waiting for the desire to give up sugar and flour to magically hit you isn’t one of them.

When your brain tells you that you’ll do BLE when you really want to give up sugar and flour, just remind it that nobody wants to do that. It ain’t gonna happen. Do it anyway.

[Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in an official way with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions in this blog are entirely my own.]

BLE is like a car trip. You can't keep going back home.

Anyone who has ever gone on a long car trip knows, it's a progressive thing. You can't load up the car, head out on the highway, drive for a few hours, turn around and go home -- and then pick up your journey again the next day right where you were the day before.

It doesn't work that way. You can't turn around and go home. Not if you want to get where you are going.

BLE is like that. It can be tempting to "go back home" sometimes. Maybe it's a special occasion. You're on vacation. Someone made a delicious treat that you really want. You've had a hard day. You'll just go home for a little while and then resume your journey.

On a car trip, when you don't keep going home over and over, you're forced to travel on a new road to get where you want to go.

In the same way, in BLE, when you don't keep making U-turns, you have to (get to!) travel on a new road.

Every time you don't stop your journey -- when you say it doesn't make any difference that I'm on vacation or that it's a special occasion, I'm still not eating sugar and flour -- you are forced to learn new habits. You learn how to celebrate without food. You learn how to calm and relax yourself without food. You learn how to say no without feeling guilty.

Don't make U-turns. Don't keep going back home, no matter how comfortable it sounds. Constantly going back home won't get you where you want to go.

Disclaimer: This site is not officially affiliated with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

My Three Biggest Fears About Giving Up Sugar and Flour: Fear #3

FEAR #3. I’M AFRAID OF FAILING.

In my first Bright Line Eating bootcamp, I went 8 weeks without breaking a bright line. And I was terrified the whole time. 

Not terrified that this might not work for me in helping me lose weight. I was terrified that if I broke a single bright line, I would be screwed. It would be impossible to resume. As soon as a single line broke, I’d be worse off.

And of course I did break a line. It was a special occasion. I was over-confident in my sparkling new “strength” and imagined I would just eat a treat “this one night” and then I’d get right back on course. 

And of course I didn’t get right back on course. I was a OK for a day or two and then broke again. And then again. Within a month, I found myself wandering the aisles of the grocery deciding how much NMF I could stuff myself with.

I went 18 months (yes, you read that right, 18 months) resuming and re-breaking, resuming and rebreaking, over and over and over. 

Resuming BLE after a relapse is scary. I couldn’t help but worry “what if” and I was startled at the quantity of food I could put away now. I’ve never been a binger, but my ‘you’ve eaten too much, stop eating and go do something’ button was now gone.

A month into my most recent sobriety, I hit a major holiday and told my husband I was terrified about it. He said to me, “So what? You’ve failed before and there’s always a chance you’ll fail again. You want this.”

He was totally correct. I wanted this. More than anything I’ve ever wanted, I want to be free of my food obsession. And the only thing I had to fear about this upcoming holiday – was fearing this holiday. If I failed, well by golly I’ll just try again. And again. And again. There are people who take 8-9 years of going to AA before sobriety clicks in. If that’s what it takes for me, well, that’s what it will take. There is no way I’m going back to the person I was before. No way am I going to forget how amazing it feels to be sober – to be happy, thin and free.

Failing just means I had the guts to try BLE in the first place. And therefore, I’ve got the guts to try it again.

Failure is always possible. But success is built on failure. If you do a “permission to be human” worksheet, learn from it, talk about it, make a WOOT for what to do next time. If you really want what is on the other side of a crappy relationship with food, then you have learned. You tried … and you learned. The only real failure is not trying in the first place.

Remember Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

My 3 Biggest Fears About Giving Up Sugar and Flour: Fear #2

#2 I HAVE A LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH SUGAR (/FLOUR) AND AM TERRIFIED OF LOSING THE PART I LOVE.

It wasn’t until I was a few months into my BLE journey that I realized this. Long before I started to seriously consider cutting sugar out of my life, I knew something was wrong with how I ate. But the thought of never eating sugar again scared the bee-jeesus out of me.

And that’s because the thought of living the rest of my life without sugar and flour seemed to me totally unimaginable. My life was BUILT around sugar and flour. I knew all the best stops around town to get my favorite cookies and doughnuts and cake. Car trips were all about where I could stop to buy great food (OMG there’s a Culver’s here!). Visits with family members and friends were planned around restaurants and what we were going to eat. Vacations were excuses to eat everything I wanted. Holidays were all about eating certain favorites. I would drive miles out of the way to get a favorite food fix. The list went on and on and on.

Sure, I despised what it was doing to my body, my self-esteem, my time, my mental health, my emotional balance. I literally hated it. But living without it seemed like the end of the world. The thought of giving up the “good parts” of sugar/flour seemed unacceptable.

So I did what most people do. I tried to prove to myself that I could indulge moderately. I tried to limit my “fixes” to weekends or one cheat day a week, so I could keep sugar/flour in my life. Or I’d give up sugar/flour for a week or ten days. I’d try to limit the number of NMFs I’d eat in a day (“only 3 Oreos” or “only 5 of those tiny tea cookies I adore”). I even tried switching it up – eating “healthy” versions of my favorites so the sugar/flour would be diluted. None of this ever worked. Ever. Inevitably, I’d end up making exceptions or just throwing up my hands and going off the deep end.

No wonder some of the big weight-loss commercial plans appealed to me sooooo much. They’d say things like, “You can eat anything you want – just in moderation.” Yes! I didn’t have to give anything up. I just needed to learn how to moderate it.

The problem was, I’d already been trying to moderate my eating of crap for a long time. I’d spent years trying to “moderate” it and failing.

This is what has been so transforming about BLE for me – showing me that the only way to be free of my mess is to give it up entirely. The only way to eliminate the things I HATE about what sugar/flour does to me, is to give up the things I LOVE about sugar/flour. It’s that simple.

Do I have to do this forever???

When I was a teenager in the 1980s, my father “went on a diet” for a week. He ate lots of hard-boiled eggs, cottage cheese, tomatoes and apples. At the end of the week, he announced unhappily, “I only lost 3 pounds! Three pounds! What’s the point?” And immediately gave it up.

You can guess what happened. He immediately gained back the three pounds and continued his old eating patterns, which included putting chocolate chips on his breakfast cereal and eating chocolate chocolate chip ice cream every night after dinner.

For almost any weight loss program I’ve ever followed, three pounds is a huge amount of weight to lose in a week. So his mindset was clearly not in a logical place. But that’s not really the point. The point is that if you are unhappy with your weight, something is going on with your pattern of eating. The only thing that’s going to change your weight permanently, the way you want it to, to overhaul your eating permanently.

And yet, so many people, even in BLE, cling to the idea that this is a temporary way of life. Once they reach their goal weight, they’ll go back to eating “normally.”

Their vision of “normal eating” rests on a fundamental — and flawed — assumption: That eating to get down to goal weight is a temporary thing and you don’t have to do it forever. The thought of eating just vegetables, protein, fruit, and grain forever is somehow unthinkable. There’s an underlying dread, “My God, do I have to do this forever?” It’s like a life sentence somehow.

When I hear someone say, “Do I have to do this forever?” I always want to say, “I certainly hope so!!!” I love the idea of a life of nourishing my body with healthful, nutritious food that will help it stave off disease and keep me active as long as possible. I love the idea of becoming someone who eats tons of veggies all the time, who chooses the salad on the menu because that’s what she wants (not what she HAS to order), who never snacks during the day. This isn’t a life sentence — it’s a life opening-up!  It’s not that I have to live this way, I GET to live this way.

In fact, not only do I love looking forward to eating this way forever, I look forward to continuing to do ALL the tools that are getting me where I want to go with food and my body. Meditating, journaling, continuing to grow my gratitude, learning to say no, reading about healing and self-care, getting massages, taking time for me — I hope to heaven that I’ll be doing these things — and more — forever.

That’s what life as a full human being is to me — always healing and growing. I hope I never am tempted to give up the process. I hope I’m doing the tools that made BLE work when I’m 90.

So if someone asks me “Do I have to do this forever,” I say — yes, yes, yes, PLEASE!! Please let me be a person who gets to do this forever.”


Disclaimer: This site is not officially affiliated with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

My 3 Biggest Fears About Giving Up Sugar and Flour: Fear #1

I’ve been thinking about fear a lot lately. I’m surprised how much fear BLE raised in me. If you ever had trouble surrendering to BLE, you might relate when I say that the thought of having to quit sugar and flour is really scary. You might even say terrifying.

This week, I realized there are three big fears that I have struggled with (and still do). Here’s the first (I’ll post later about the 2 others).

Fear #1. I was afraid of calling myself an "addict." I wasn't even sure I was really an addict. Sure, I ate a lot of sugar and flour, and I regularly ate when I wasn't hungry, but I wasn't an "addict."

When I started BLE, I couldn’t surrender fully because I kept obsessing about whether or not I was really a “sugar/flour addict”. Maybe I was just someone who indulges too often. 

Susan says you don’t really have to know the answer to that in order for the plan to work. But that didn’t stop me from thinking about it. I spent way too much time and energy second-guessing the program because of this.

Surrendering to BLE – following the plan precisely as laid out -- was hard for me, because I kept thinking that I was different. I was overweight, yes, and thought about food WAY too much and hated looking at photos of myself and dreaded having to buy bigger clothes. But others had bigger food problems than me.

I kept comparing myself to Susan and BLE-ers, saying “well, she’s clearly an addict, but I’m not like that.” “A spoonful of XXX wouldn’t make ME go off on a binge.” 

I was convinced I could cherry-pick what I wanted to follow on the program. A few croutons on my salad. A few treats on a special holiday. Pizza on a Friday night once in a while. Others might need to cut sugar/flour out altogether, but I’m different. Right?

I felt like an alcoholic who keeps saying “others have a problem with drinking but me, I just enjoy drinking. If I really wanted to quit, I would.” 

My version of that was “others have a problem with eating sugar and flour, but I just enjoy eating these things a lot.”

HERE's what changed everything for me. An alcoholic whose blog I really admire posted something that blew my mind. When deciding whether or not to give up alcohol, she wrote, she kept asking herself, “am I really an alcoholic?” (Sound familiar?) She kept obsessing about it, comparing herself to others. How did their drinking compared to hers? Did they drink a lot more? Black out? Throw up?

Then, she realized she was asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, “am I really an addict?” or "am I like that person?", she started asking herself this: Am I really living to my full potential, and is my current behavior standing in the way of that?

So I tried her approach. 

Literally, every time I started to go down the path of wondering whether I was different from everyone else and could bend the plan to suit myself, I just blew it out of the water with two little thoughts: Is eating crap getting in the way of my dreams? Is eating between meals and eating too much keeping me from the life I’d like for myself?

It was. And that is all I need to know. 

So now, I realize that it’s a choice between what I want out of life and what is standing in my way. That I am LETTING stand in my way.

In that light, it’s simple. Sugar/flour – everything made out of them and with them – are standing in the way of my dreams, my possibilities, my goals and my living my life as I want to.

That’s all I need to know.

(Fears 2 and 3 coming later this week ….)

Why I Am Giving Up My 5-Year Journal

One of the tools Susan recommends is a 5-year journal where you can jot down your day's activities and issues. When I started bootcamp in Oct 2016, I bought a journal and diligently wrote in it every day. And I kept writing in it, whenever my lines were strong, which increasingly over the course of 2017, they weren't.

I've felt guilty for a while for not keeping up the practice. Until I really thought about why.

During bootcamp, it was a great place to note what had happened that day and my BLE progress. It felt good and inspiring to note that my lines were strong and getting stronger. It felt even better to note that my weight was going down and I was feeling happier and healthier.

But as I struggled more and more with BLE, something changed. I was noting more and more often how hard this was. I was writing about my failures. I was writing -- over and over and over again -- how my lines weren't bright and I was binging like I'd NEVER binged before.

I still wrote about my day, but that too got repetitive: "Did two programs today." "Drove for about 4 hours today." When I circled back in fall 2017, it was just an endless cycle of that.

And every time I lost my bright lines, I stopped writing.

Once I hit fall 2017, I started cycling back. And here's what I've noticed:

-- Reading previous entries about BLE is a reminder of last year's failures, which I'm still struggling with.
-- Reading previous entries about my life activities is rather dull. Not enough space to note much, just what I'd done.
-- Seeing huge gaps in my entries kept reminding me of how often I'd slipped.

I was feeling huge guilt about not writing daily. Until I realized ... it was just making me feel bad. Rather than an inspiring reminder of my hard work and accomplishments, it had become a record of my failures and lost opportunities and unfulfilled commitments. It was making me feel really bad.

So I've given up my 5-year journal. I can't devote my entire life to BLE, but I can devote a significant part of the day to it. And the time I give to BLE work has to be given to tools that empower and uplift me. There are other tools I can use.

Instead of a 5-year journal, I am:
-- Writing this blog
-- Following and commenting on other BLE-ers on Instagram
-- Reading sober blogs to remind myself of others struggling with addiction who are out there winning.

For me, I have to adjust my toolbox once in a while to make sure it's still working for me. If a tool isn't working, it's OK for me to toss it out and replace it with one (or two or five) that work better.

Disclaimer: This site is not officially affiliated with Bright Line Eating or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

Don't add stress to your stress

Here's the thing about feelings: Life is full of them. If you are a living human being, you will have feelings.

But when you eat to avoid your feelings, you are adding stress to your existing stress. It's like pounding your hand with a hammer to avoid boredom. Sure, you're not bored anymore. But now you've got a bigger problem.

Eating for any reason other than your body's nourishment is just adding a problem to a problem.