Story Time: Life Seen Through an Empty Wrapper

It’s late at night and I’m sitting on my patio, looking at the moon, which is bright and very high. And the stars shimmering on the nearby pond. I should go inside and get some sleep. But before I do, I’m sitting here, finishing my tea and thinking. I’m thinking about you.

Yes, you. The one who is sitting on your patio, or in your living room, or at your kitchen table right now. Staring at an empty wrapper of something you just ate. Something you swore you would not eat today.

It’s not like you don’t know better. You know exactly what and how much you need to eat in order to lose your excess weight and free yourself from the demons of overweight and food obsession. Those demons you have been battling for years. You finally found a plan that works, and it worked beautifully. For a while.

Then somehow it didn’t work any more. You had an unusually stressful time at work. Or someone you dearly love passed away. Or it was a really, really, very special occasion. You just really wanted to celebrate or you just really needed to take the edge off.

Whatever it was, you decided to give yourself a little pass. Just for this once. You would go back to the plan right away, but on this one occasion you just really needed something.

So you had a little bit. And you went right back to the plan again.

Except that now the wolfie voice was awake again and whispering in your ear. You didn't know it was awake, but it was.

So in a short while, maybe a few days or maybe even a few weeks, you had a little more to eat off your plan. A bite here, a bit more there.

But really, still, you were going to go back to the plan, no question. But it would be tomorrow.

And then another tomorrow came and it happened again. You started the day with the best intentions but things happened and well, by evening you had veered off course again.

And then it happened again. What was going on? What was wrong with you? Why couldn’t you just resume successfully? You did it so well for a long time. For weeks and weeks, you were eating exactly according to plan and it wasn’t that hard. Why is it so hard now? Can’t you just Stop. Picking. Up. The. Food.

And maybe you even decided you needed to hide it. Can’t let anyone know you're eating uncontrollably again, after they have seen you do so well for so long. Maybe you hid a stash of goodies in the garage, or in an upper cabinet, or in your car, out of easy access. But in your heart, you know there's a good chance you'll go and get some, when the wolf voice is calling too loudly.

Maybe there are empty wrappers hidden in your car right now, so your spouse or your kids won’t know how much you’ve been eating in secret. Maybe you have stuffed wrappers into the bottom of your kitchen garbage can, so no one will find them.

And now, it's practically a daily thing. Every day, it’s the same. You wake up and vow to yourself that this is it. Today is the day you will resume your eating plan. For real this time. There is no way you are going to revert to old eating patterns. Not today.

But then life happens and you come home tired and it just feels like too much. So again you eat and now there’s an empty wrapper on the table.

You are not alone. I have been there. Dozens, hundreds, thousands have shared this experience.

This is what happens when wolfie takes over your brain. And it is absolutely, completely and unquestionably possible for you to resume successfully.

I want you to know that. I am sitting here right now because it was possible for me. And I never thought I'd be able to resume. If I can do it, and thousands of others can do it, why not you?

One way to start is by putting down the food right now.

Throw away that wrapper. Do the next right thing. Then do the next right thing. And then the next right thing. Keep doing the next right thing until you get where you want to go.

My emergency action plan didn’t work. Here’s what does

The other day, I posted about why my emergency action plan (my plan for what to do when I’m about to eat food off my plan) never works.

At the moment where I’m standing in front of the fridge or the open cabinet, it’s too late. The train had left the station.

So here’s what I’m doing now. Instead of an “emergency action plan,” I’ve put together a pre-emergency emergency action plan. A PEEAP. This is my plan for what to do when the stress and overwhelm first begin, often a few days early, when the food thoughts pop into my head, when I first sense that I might be heading for break. This is when I’m at a 3 or 4 or 5 on my “I’m-gonna-eat” scale, rather than at a 9 or 10. Want to know what those first signs are? I wrote about them HERE.

My PEEAP consists of a list of tools I undertake to avert an emergency. It’s pretty particular to me since I know by now what my weak spots are.

First, get a really good, long sleep. Go to bed super early. Get 9 or 10 hours sleep, if possible. Sleep deprivation is a huge stressor for me and many of my food plan breaks happen when I’m lacking sleep.

That didn’t work? OK, on to the next tool.

Take a spa bath (candles, spa music, low lights, scented oil in tub).

That didn’t work?

Take a long walk out in nature, like a forest preserve.

That didn’t work?

Get yourself a treat for keeping to your food plan. Obviously, not a food treat. Treat yourself to fresh flowers, a new lipstick, a trashy magazine, anything special that you explicitly say is your treat for keeping to your food plan.

That didn’t work?

Make a list of everything you have to do and start cutting it down. What can you eliminate? What can you delegate? What can you do quickly to get it done and off your plate? Strive to get stuff off your plate and off your shoulders.

You get the idea. You just go from A to B to C to D and so on until you feel the stress start to ease.

Your list might be very different. Getting a good long sleep might not be an option. Calling a friend or sponsor might work for you.

The point is, get a PEEAP toolkit and at the first sign of trouble, starting ticking through them. Do as many as you need to do to head off an emergency.

Three Things to Stop Doing If You Want to Hit Your Food Goals

 

When I was trying to figure out how to stop eating in an addictive way, I must have made every mistake in the book.

It took forever for me to figure out what to stop doing and how to stick to my bright lines.

If you've been struggling with resuming, or getting yourself to eat according to your food plan regularly, here are some mistakes you too might be making:

(1) Focusing on your weight, not your days with bright lines.

Susan Peirce Thompson says this over and over because it's true: If you focus on your weight, you'll lose your bright lines. If you focus on your bright lines, you'll lose the weight.

But oooohhh, it's so tempting to keep weighing yourself regularly when the plan is working. It feels so awesome to see the scale move down and the pounds drop off. Hooray! It boosts your motivation and keeps you revved up to continue.

So what's the problem? Well, inevitably the scale stops moving. You hit a plateau. You've been doing BLE for a long time and the rapid losses slow down. You start struggling and breaking your lines. Whatever it is, the weight loss slows or stops.

For me, that meant a sudden and immediate plummet in my motivation and willpower. My addictive voice would jump in: "Why are you starving yourself if you're not losing weight? What is the point? Why bother with all this work if you're not even losing?"

Only after this happened multiple times did I realize, I just can't use the scale as a motivator. For every time it helped me, there are as many times it really hurt me.

So I hid the scale for a long time and even now only weigh myself once a week, if not once every few weeks.

I measure my success by the number of squeaky-clean days on my calendar -- I put a gold star sticker on my calendar for each clean day. I do NOT measure my success by my weight.

(2) Thinking you don't have to do the work.

Ever had a situation like this? You wake up feeling fresh and motivated. Today you will eat clean! You will eat only what you planned for the day! You will not break a single bright line!

Then your day begins. Stressful things happen. You get in an argument, your workload increases, you get stuck in traffic. Whatever. Your thoughts turn to food. By the time you get home, you've convinced yourself that "a little treat won't hurt."

I must have done this a hundred times. It was so easy to make those vows -- and so easy to break them.

And I was usually baffled. I was still doing all my tools -- writing my gratitudes list, committing my food, meditating, writing in my 5-year journal. Why weren't these keeping my lines bright???

It took me forever to figure out that keeping my lines bright takes work. The tools are useful, but they aren't the work itself. They're just the support for the work.

That means: You keep your bright lines bright and you do whatever you need to do to keep them bright.

For me, I have to make bright line eating a priority. Maybe not forever, but for sure for now. I have to use all my support tools. I have to blog, and read clean eating blogs, and follow Instagram folks, and listen to sober podcasts, and commit my food, and prep my food, and bring my meals with me.

I have to keep my bright lines bright. That's the work, and it's hard, but I have to do it.

(3) Thinking food is the key to happiness.

When I first considered giving myself a treat for every day that my lines are bright, I couldn't thinking of any treat other than food. [Read my post on treats HERE.]

Anything else -- a trashy magazine, a new kind of tea, a new lipstick -- I'd just buy anyway. I could not imagine anything giving me joy the same way food did.

And I get it. It's hard to imagine celebrating a birthday without a special dessert. What else can make Christmas or Valentine's Day a special celebration other than all the food treats that come with it? When you've had a hard day, what will calm you down and make you happy better than food?

And the sad thing is, food works. It does bring happiness and calm and joy in the moment.

I spent way too many years treating food like some kind of joy juice. It was the secret to making life special.

Except it's not.

Sugar and flour are (as far as I'm concerned) drugs. If all we needed to bring joy into our lives was some sugar and flour, then we'd be able to predictably get joy from it. But we don't. People who eat massive amounts of sugar and flour aren't leaping through their days on a joyful journey of perpetual happiness.

And, I know plenty of people whose lives are filled with joy who never eat sugar and flour.

Finding other ways to bring joy, happiness, contentment and peace to your life is critical to long-term BLE success for me. I'm doing everything I can to find other things besides food that make me joyful.

[Disclaimer: This blog is not affiliated with or endorsed by Bright Line Eating Solutions 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.

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.

Saying No: How to Implement One of the Most Powerful BLE Tools

The longer that I do Bright Line Eating, the more I realize how critical it is for me to reduce the "overwelm" in my life.

Getting enough sleep, meditating, those are all part of it. So is taking walks in nature and spending time with my family.

Reducing overwhelm helps me maintain peace and balance in my life. The more peace and balance, the less likely I am to feel the stress and exhaustion triggers that lead me to break my bright lines.

But even more than sleep and meditating and walking outdoors, learning to say no has been the biggest help. By far the biggest help.

I'm a huge people pleaser, so it is painful for me to say no. For a long time, I regularly said no without thinking, rather than risk someone not liking me or feeling hurt.

I ended up hurting myself because I was overcommitted, stressed, and resentful.

So I've begun actively teaching myself how to say no.

One of the best resources I've ever found for doing this is an e-Book by Christy Wright called "25 Ways to Protect Your Time."

Christy includes great, practical suggestions for how to turn down social invitations ("What a fun event. I normally would love something like that, but I'm already overcommitted. Thanks for thinking of me.") or volunteer work ("That sounds great. We actually have several organizations we volunteer for already, so we can't add anything new right now. Best of luck though."

(I have no official connection to Christy and don't get anything in return for this. I just love her stuff).

What I love is that her suggestions are clear and unambiguous, but also kind. You don't have to use white lies, but you also don't have to be rude or rejecting.

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

Tired of Thinking About Eating

I'm starting this blog because I'm tired. Tired of thinking about food and when and what I'm going to eat next. Tired of trying to stay on a food plan and failing daily because I'm thinking about food all the time. Tired of trying to resume my bright line eating plan.

I want to be free of the food chatter. I want my mind to focus on something other than food. I want to find a simple, permanent solution to my food struggles.

I'm tired of thinking about eating

[This blog is not affiliated with or endorsed by Bright Line Eating Solutions or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.]