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.