Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to The Weekly Vlog.
So, in this last week, I went outside and noticed a little package on my front doorstep. It was little, but it was thick and heavy and kind of solid, and it was addressed to me. So I went in the house and I got some scissors and I opened it up and I saw two stacked copies of this, hot off the presses, ON THIS BRIGHT DAY: A Year of Reflections for Lasting Food Freedom. It is printed and right now being warehoused and shipped out to stores all over the United States, all over Canada, it's arriving at stores and Amazon warehouses. And I inscribed one to David. And, this is funny, I inscribed one to myself. I just wrote a little love note inside of it. And yeah, I really enjoyed inscribing the one to David as well.
And so I started reading it every day. And I'm also in our online communities every day noticing and people are starting to comment on how much they're getting out of the daily readings because they of course have access too, which I'll talk about in a second. If you're not aware of how you can have access to the book today, I'll be sharing that information.
So one of the very first readings that I read in the actual hardcover book that I got in the mail was on Indulger Energy. And I saw a lot of people comment about it, how much that reading helped them. And I reflected on how I came about the learning, the awareness that I put into that entry from such hard won experience, like just such pain and such a groundhog day of misery over and over again.
This was during a stretch of time when I was breaking my Bright Lines wickedly, like binging on sugar and flour. And it was mostly 2016 and 2017. And I would get a week or two weeks or three weeks or four weeks or five weeks of immaculate Bright Lines and then I would binge, a big sugar flour binge. And my life was really stressful then. It was my three precious young kids, my marriage, 30 employees, and trying to figure out how to run a business, like manage people and an org chart and standard operating procedures and leadership team meetings and things that as a psychology professor I knew nothing about. And then also the thousands of Bright lifers and trying to love them and guide them and minister to them and answer their questions and be there for them.
And my life was feeling so full, just packed to the gills. I don't know if you can relate to that feeling of just so much life smooshed in there that I just had no space. And I felt like I was being checkmated by my big priorities, my kids, my precious kids, and my mom and my husband and my employees and the email that had to go out and all the things. And well, what happened is sometimes I would just explode in a binge.
Luckily I'd gotten enough self-compassion tools for really being loving and gentle with myself that I didn't beat myself up when I picked up the food. In fact, what I did was I was very loving and compassionate with myself and I would just say, "Okay sweetie, well now you need to ride this binge out. You can't sort of..." My binges were like a freight train. I couldn't get in front of them or I would just get smushed. So I knew that I had to just give myself time and space to just binge, which meant sitting on the couch and eating copious amounts of food. And sometimes I could get back on track the next day. Sometimes it would take me two days. Rarely would it take longer than that. But I would get the tools to get back on track, I'd call Linden my beloved Mastermind Maven. I would reach out to other support folks and get back on track.
And when I started doing some parts work on this and I found the food indulger part that Indulger Energy that was leading me to engage in these big blowout binges. I basically what that Indulger Energy was wanting was, shockingly, some time to sit on the couch, a reprieve, like some space, some downtime. And I was not getting any downtime except for those times when I would binge. And then I would get hours to just veg out on the couch with a book or some TV or shows or whatever. And so I reached a point where I wanted to stop binging so badly that I realized I was going to have to, as hard as it seemed, because there are so many things I felt like I had to do, I was going to have to let myself just sit on the couch sometimes for three or four hours and do nothing for the evening or take a bubble bath.
And so this reading in ON THIS BRIGHT DAY on Indulger Energy talks about getting in tune with that inner indulger and understanding what it needs. Because it doesn't need food and it doesn't even need you to spend money on it to get something in particular. There's ways to indulge without food, without money. And finding those indulgences what feels truly like an indulgence, like a gift, like a reprieve. It's different for each of us depending on our season of life and what we need. But tuning into that energy and learning what it really wants is such an important skill. And those wicked binges did stop as soon as I let myself sit on the couch for hours at a time or take a bubble bath and get that reprieve.
So I was noticing people in our community were commenting on this reading and they'd gotten access to it through our bonus package. So right now, when you pre-order the book ON THIS BRIGHT DAY, you'll be able to download all of the entries for ON THIS BRIGHT DAY for this month and next month, all of the entries so that you can start reading them immediately. And you'll also get access to a behind the scenes little film that I shot, tiny little nugget of a film, that explains the recording of the audiobook and it shows you the natural disaster we faced. The thing that happened that was so moving that I wept over it, wept and wept, it was so touching. And yeah, a gross flagrant misjudgment of time that happened. Anyway, and a tour of the studio and an introduction to the people who are behind the scenes. It's a fun little video.
You also get my best menu offering to you of how I think you can best select foods for maximal weight loss, maximal health, a one-week menu. One for omnivores and one for plant-based eaters. In case you're, wondering if I want to start Bright Line Eating, if I want to get this weight off, if I want to resume, if I want to really do this, what should I be eating? So I give you a meal plan. We also give you some bookmarks that you can download and cut out, print off and cut out yourself. And I see people, pictures of people in our community now using their bookmarks. It's so sweet. And 10 lucky people will also win a free audiobook and a free nameplate. So I will inscribe your book for you. So that's the bonus package and you can get it down below if you click the link or at the website onthisbrightdaybook.com. Onthisbrightdaybook.com. Onthisbrightdaybook.com. And that's the bonus package.
Now there's also a grand prize for people who buy the most books to come visit me in Rochester, New York. So three people will win that grand prize. One, all expenses paid. So super fun packages. There's also some things for people who buy five or more books to join me during New York Times week all week for lunchtime lives with Susan and to join me live as we hear the announcement about the New York Times.
Why are we hoping to get this book on the New York Times? There is some achievement orientation in it for me for sure, some ego, but that is not actually what it's about. What it's really about is our movement and the reality that part of the explicit stated mission of Bright Line Eating is to impact the world. And the world has material standards. The world definitely plays by a certain playbook. And the New York Times is part of that when it comes to books. It is still the sort of bar that's set. And so when people see New York Times Bestseller, it means something different than if it doesn't say that. And so as we try to impact the world together, as we try to help the world understand, food addiction really is real, it means something if a book that says food addiction on the back cover of it. Right here, it says, "Daily inspiration and support to find freedom from food addiction." And if that book says New York Times Bestseller on the front, it gives it a legitimacy in the eyes of the world.
And we're striving to reach people we haven't reached yet. We're striving to give this movement more and more and more of a reach, of a megaphone, of legitimacy so that we can have an impact. It's one thing to impact tens of thousands of people in a nook of the world, it's another thing to really impact the world. So it's really a stepping stone on that path, but not a trivial one. And so that's the reason behind that goal.
So that's, The Weekly Vlog. Click down below pre-order your copy, get your bonus package so that next week when I talk about the entry from the book that is hitting people this week, you will have already read it and had your own lived experience with the inspiration and aspiration that it provided for you. That's The Weekly Vlog. I'll see you next week.
