We’re coming up on the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States of America. For information on negotiating the day itself, check our vlog archive. Go to www.BrightLineEating.Com and click on the “vlog” link in the menu. Type “Thanksgiving” into the search bar for a treasure trove of entries. Look for a vlog called “Thanks and Giving,” about the twin pillars of navigating the holiday: gratitude and service. There’s also one called “Your Thanksgiving Plan” with concrete information and two on “How to Have a Bright Thanksgiving.”
Today I want to talk about another aspect of the holiday. There’s an old saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result. Any chronic dieter can feel that.
Bright Line Eating can give you a new orientation; it helps explain why your brain has been hijacked in the past. It offers multiple suggestions to avoid the insanity, such as uncoupling exercise and weight loss and breaking up with the foods that plague you.
I also say that insanity is finding what really works and then deciding to stop doing it. Anyone who has been Bright for a stretch and then decided to leave BLE has experienced that first-hand.
But there’s a third type of insanity with food, and I see it crop up a lot before holidays. It’s thinking that what you really need to make that day work is an alteration to your food plan. For example, you may think, I don’t get fruit at dinner, so I need to rearrange my plan for Thanksgiving so I can have fruit because I need something while everyone is eating dessert.
Or, I would never eat mashed potatoes, I would just have a plain baked potato, but it’s Thanksgiving, so I need to have mashed potatoes.
I’m sure there are a lot of people who think they can take the day off on a holiday. But the only way I’ve ever found to live peacefully Bright is to adopt it as a deep identity and live it 365 days a year.
When I call this insanity, I’m thinking of something like the scales of Lady Justice, with balanced weights on each side. In this case, you may have six ounces of strawberries on one side, counterbalanced with the time spent obsessing over the fruit for days and days before the holiday, as well as the very real possibility that mucking with your food plan may throw you off altogether and result in months or even years of excess eating, weight gain, misery, and myriad health complications. Really, is six ounces of strawberries worth it?
A better plan might be to go do the dishes when everyone else is eating dessert; or maybe that’s a good time to lead the table in gratitude sharing. Instead of thinking obsessively beforehand about whether you will or won’t move your food plan around, you could spend that time researching interesting ways to have your family connect at dinner.
For me, this is one of the biggest hallmarks of my disease. When my thinking is diseased, I put my health, my happiness, my self-confidence, my ability to show up for my family, my higher power, my ability to wear all my clothes, my comfort in my own skin—all these things—on one side of the scale, and somehow I have it outweighed by an extra six ounces of strawberries—or a cookie, or whatever—on the other side.
When I am in the grips of my disease, I am unable to call to mind the consequences of going back to my food addiction. The presence of some small bit of food seems to me like it balances out the risk of giving up all those other things. That’s insanity. INSANITY: a lack of proportion, an inability to think straight. Insanity.
I’m not saying that it’s a crime to move your food plan around. But I am inviting you to be curious if the negotiator part of you—that’s a form of the food indulger—has started with an insidious “maybe I could, should I make this change…?” loop in your head.
If there’s a story you’re telling yourself that a portion of food is the only way to make the day go well, be curious about the lie that may be buried there. In my experience, the only way I have a joyful holiday is by focusing on gratitude, the people, and the day’s meaning. As soon as I start believing that more or better or different food is the answer, I’ve already bought into the insanity.
Remember: there are no Bright Line Eating police. You do you. But I invite you to think clearly about what will make your heart soar on that day.
