Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to The Weekly Vlog. Julie Harris wrote in a great question, and I can't believe I've never answered this question on a vlog before. She asks, “Hi, Susan, why is it necessary to weigh and measure vegetables and Bright Line Eating®? I like to bulk up my portions with vegetables and would like to know why that is not part of the fabulous plan.” Thank you, Julie. Oh, Julie, what a great question. I hear you. I think for so many people, the notion of weighing and measuring vegetables just sounds ludicrous. People are like, there's not many calories in that celery, and that's true. There aren't very many calories and vegetables. They're incredibly healthy. I think that dieters are famous for saying that it burns more calories to eat celery than they actually put into your body that it's a weight-loss activity eating celery, right? I get all that.
The reason we weigh and measure vegetables and Bright Line Eating has nothing to do with any of that. The reasons are basically three, and here they are. The first and primary reason that we weigh and measure vegetables in Bright Line Eating is to give the mind peace; to signal a clear end to the end of the meal and to let the brain know we don't get any more food. The meal is over. It's a very, very clear boundary, and what that does is it starts to make the dialogue in the mind that for many of us who come into Bright Line Eating is pretty much constantly running that says, should I eat a little something? Can I have a little more? Is it mealtime yet? How about now? Did I get enough? Maybe I want a little more of this. If I eat more of that, will anyone notice? Oh my gosh, there's a little bit of that left on the plate. Can I reach over and grab that? Or, oops, that's my friend's plate. I shouldn't do that. On and on and on and on. We call this food chatter, and when we weigh and measure our food, all of it, including the vegetables, we have a fixed quantity, a finite quantity of food on the plate. When we're done eating that, and we never, ever go back and get more, at that point, the brain stops with that infernal brain chatter, that food chatter, that noise that is distracting us, that's draining our life energy, that's making us focus on what we've eaten or not eaten, how many calories, how much this of this, how much of that, it all just quiets down, and that's where the peace comes from. That is far and away the primary reason that we weigh our food, and it counts for vegetables too, because once you've eaten your protein and your fat and your fruit and your grain and all those other foods that we might perhaps all agree, it'd be good to bound the quantities of. You can still stay pretty obsessed with food by just thinking about how many more vegetables you're going to eat. Okay? That's the first reason.
The second reason may not apply to you, dear Julie, but it does for most of the people that come into Bright Line Eating, and that's that we tell them to weigh their vegetables because otherwise they won't eat enough. They will not eat enough vegetables. They'll think they're eating enough vegetables. They'll think that they had some broccoli, but if we put that broccoli on a scale, it would be two ounces of broccoli, and they should be eating six ounces of broccoli. They will not eat enough vegetables if we don't have them weigh their vegetables. The bulk of vegetables that's needed to produce enough chewing to release the right hormones, really to give enough nutrients and enough fiber to keep the body satiated. It's a lot more vegetables than most people will eat. So, we have them weigh and measure their vegetables so they're getting enough on a consistent basis over the long term.
Then the third reason that we have people weigh and measure their vegetables is because quantities of food, just pure bulk of food is addictive in and of itself. The bulk of food actually releases dopamine, like an addictive flood of dopamine that results in yet more eating. The stretch receptors in the stomach are sensitive to how far they've stretched out, and just overeating on volume can trigger a binge in people who've had binge eating disorder. It can trigger overeating in people who are sensitive to overeating. It's really important that actually you not get that much bulk at any given meal.
All that said, there is some wiggle room here. In Bright Line Eating in the Boot Camp, we've got a food plan library, and one of the options is a Plant-Based Food Plan, but really anyone could use it, and the only way it's different from the standard Weight-Loss Food Plan is it's got extra vegetables in it, specifically four ounces of extra vegetables at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You could also add more vegetables than that, for example, to your dinner, let's say an extra eight ounces of vegetables at your dinner. Now, let's go through the rationale that I just gave you. You'd be eating enough vegetables clearly, so that would be fine. You'd be eating enough vegetables, you'd be weighing in measuring it, so you would be bounding your quantities and you would get the benefits of the freedom that I'm talking about. Would it be so much food in bulk, in quantity that it would trigger a binge or keep your addiction alive because of just the stretch in the stomach and the dopamine release from that quantity? Maybe. Everybody's different, right? I don't know if it would do that for you particularly, so you could try it. Try literally increasing the amount of vegetables in your food plan and see if that works for you.
I've been doing this for about 20 years now, putting my food on the scale faithfully, and what I will tell you is that quantities addiction, more than sugar and flour addiction, quantities addiction is the hardest to snuff out in me. I am still acutely painfully aware of the size of my apples. I love it when there's big apples in the fridge, and then I start to obsess a little bit about are they too big and so forth. I love, I'm with you, I love a big salad. I love the quantities. I have actually recently trimmed back my quantities. I have a six ounce salad now at dinner just because, yeah, I just don't want the bulk. I'm trying to not be addicted to the quantities. I am embarrassed still about the way I scrape my breakfast bowl at the end of my breakfast meal. My kids tease me about it. Zoe's like, “Mom, I know it's time to get up in the morning. I hear you scraping your breakfast bowl, and that tells me that it's time that I need to get up and get ready for school.” I wish I didn't do that right? That's just part of my addict shame, is like, really, I'm that attached to the last micro moments of little smidgens of yogurt and oats that I've got to scrape the bowl like that. I'm blushing here, but for me personally, I notice that the vestiges of that quantities addiction a little more, a little more. I just want my food. It's still alive in me, and I just bring that back to you, Julie, maybe you don't care. Maybe that's not what's going on for you, right? For me, as a 10 plus plus on the Food Addiction Susceptibility Scale™, quantities are still an issue a little bit, and I personally want to be free more than I want that extra food. I'm aiming for freedom. That's my aim. But everybody's different, right? I don't know what your aim is around here.
With all that said, I am a huge proponent of weighing vegetables. I know people in the plant-based community think I'm cuckoo for that, and that's all right. Their aims are different. They're aiming for optimal health and wellness. Usually, I'm aiming to help people recover from food addiction and lose weight. So, my aims are a little bit different than theirs. You can do with this what you choose, Julie, I stand by there are no Bright Line Eating police and do what gives you peace, right? Those are some of the options of what you can do. I do recommend weighing, weighing and measuring your vegetables, and if you want to permanently and once and definitively add extra vegetables to your food plan, that might be the best of both worlds. Thanks for your question, Julie. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
