Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. Okay. First and foremost, if you're new to the Bright Line Eating® Community, if this is your first vlog or your first couple of vlogs, welcome, welcome, welcome! I know that there are hundreds of people who've come into our community over the last week or so. Thanks in large part to the Food Revolution Network, and my dear friend, Ocean Robbins, thanks to our other affiliate partners as well. We just did a big event about how to get weight-loss drug results without the drugs. Lots of people are starting their Boot Camp, their very first Bright Line Eating Boot Camp right now, like right now, today. I'm thinking about you, and I'm going to be talking in this week's vlog about something that I think is maybe a little analogous to your experience of starting out.
I also just want to say hello to the people who've been following the vlog for a long time. I want to mention that there's some loose threads that are dangling that I'm not going to address in this week's vlog, but I just want you to know because people are writing in. Yes, I'm aware that I need to give you an update on the International Food Addiction Consensus Conference in London that I just went to recently. Also, from way back, I need to give you an update on “ON THIS BRIGHT DAY.” There were some details from the launch of that that haven't wrapped up yet, and also London isn't fully wrapped up yet. I want to shoot vlogs that encapsulate the sort of conclusion, but until I could do that, all the fine details need to be concluded and some of them aren't yet. I'm just waiting on a couple more things to develop or finish or be clear or whatever to be able to shoot those vlogs to wrap up those things. Those will be fun updates when I get to do that.
Then there's another thing that's burning in me, but I don't have all the details yet to share with you, but I am going to give you a save the date. Bright Line Eating is turning 10 years old this summer, and we're going to be hosting a gathering here in Rochester, New York on Sunday, August 4th. So, just save that date. I don't have all the information yet to share with you. All the details. That'll be coming in a vlog soon, probably next week. But I know summer plans are being made fast and furious here in North America. So, save the date Sunday, August 4th in Rochester, New York if you want to come join us for that. Okay, I'll have more information soon.
Back to you, brand new Boot Campers. I've been thinking about you and in the last week or two, I think it's just the last week, I've gone through something in my own Bright Line Eating journey. At first, I was hesitant to share about it, and then I realized it's really similar in so many deep ways to someone's sort of internal experience as they put down addictive eating and start this very weighed and measured way of eating three meals a day. Let me just tell the story and share how it came up for me. Generally speaking, I am so free with food and with weight these days, I mean just it's been a miracle. I'm so grateful and my life is going so well, so well that the ripples on the pond, not only are there not big waves in the ocean, but the ripples on the pond have settled down as well. The pond of my life feels a little bit smooth and glassy. There's just a lot of peace, a lot of spaciousness, a lot of wellness, a lot of happiness. And my task these days honestly feels like expanding my capacity to absorb the gratitude and the awe of just how precious life feels these days. So, that's great. And I know this too shall pass, right? Life gets lifey. I'm not expecting it to stay like this forever, but I sure am appreciating it now that it's here.
In all of this spaciousness and peace and stillness, a deeper level of surrender with the food came up for me to experience this last week. It happened largely because my daughter Zoe made a comment the other morning. She wasn't trying to be mean, but she just said, “Hey, mom, no offense, but I know when it's time you're so loud scraping your breakfast bowl in the morning that I know when it's time to wake up in the morning to actually get out of bed, lest I miss the bus when I hear you scraping your breakfast bowl to death. It's so loud.” When she said that, I laughed. Then some part of me also felt some embarrassment and some shame around that. I noticed, yeah, I do do that. Sometimes when I'm alone, I'll lick my plate. Sometimes, well, pretty much always when I have my big salad bowl, when I finish the bowl, I won't just, it's a salad which you eat with a fork, right? But I'll have a big spoon on hand lest I miss any of the morsels of salad dressing or seasoning that might be on the bowl. I'll scrape and scrape and scrape and get every last taste and flavor out of the bowl. Now, this is my Bright food, and I don't ever get more than that. I don't ever do bites, licks, or tastes in the kitchen, so it just flew under the radar for a long time. But the truth is, I'm embarrassed about it, and it doesn't feel free. It doesn't feel fully free.
I think I've tried to change this in the past. I know I have. I've tried to change this and it feels like something I have a lot of powerlessness over once I get going eating, I have what a lot of people with obesity have, which is a propensity to eat very, very fast and very intensely and wolf it down and not stop until it's all gone. I've been very grateful that Bright Line Eating allows me to keep my healthy weight because I weigh and measure my food before it ever goes on my plate. So, I'm entitled to eat it all. It does strike me as sort of ironic that I'm so fastidious about weighing 6.0 ounces, not 6.1 or 5.9, but that I should fault myself at the end of the meal for scraping up every last morsel. After all, I did go to pretty great lengths to make it a precise amount, so I’m entitled to all of it. I think all of that thinking is kind of what kept me from addressing this behavior. And let me be clear, I'm not saying anyone should address this behavior. I'm saying that for me, it came up this week as a holdout where my addiction to quantities has been gripping me at the end of the meal. I have a few moments of, not desperation, that's too strong a word, but a few moments of intensity where I really don't want the meal to be over.
I remember in the early days when I first started eating this way 20 years ago, like not eating sugar, not eating flour, eating three meals a day, putting my food on the scale. I was desperate when the meal would end, those last couple bites would feel like a death. I was horrified at the thought of hours before I could eat again. It was a really painful experience to finish my meal and think, “Oh no, I don't get to eat anymore.” I so badly wanted another meal to eat to be able to keep going. I don't feel that way anymore. If you're new and you feel that way, I just want you to know, for me, that did pass. It really passed completely. I feel satisfied at the end of my meals, but these last few seconds of the meal feel like this little holdout of my addiction where I just want more. So, in the spaciousness of my life, I felt finely like addressing this. I talked with someone I know who eats the way we do, and sort of confessed to her what I was going through. We talked about it a little bit, and I started to think about powerlessness over food and power over food. I've been restored to a lot of efficacy and power choice around my food. I seem to be able to have the power to every day, thank you, God, to weigh and measure my food, to eat what I commit to eat, to not eat anymore, to not eat sugar and flour. And yet, I still feel powerless in those last few moments of the meal.
I thought to a couple of years ago when I surrendered around restaurants deeply and went from gaming the system to get a bigger, sexier meal in restaurants, to letting that go and really orienting toward just wanting the simplest, Brightest, cleanest meal in a restaurant and not eating any more than is my allotted amount in a restaurant, which these days have not been bringing a scale into restaurants, I'm eyeballing it with my eyes. That's the linchpin there, is how honestly am I eyeballing it with my eyes? I thought about the switch in me that allowed me to get really Bright in restaurants. I realized that at the deepest level, what changed was suddenly I wanted to be Bright in restaurants. Whereas before, I hadn't really wanted to be Bright in restaurants. What I had wanted was to get the stamp of Brightness, like the gold star, the checkbox, while actually gaming the system to get a little more, to get a bigger oilier, sexier meal in a restaurant. That's what I wanted was more.
When I surrendered two years ago, that changed, suddenly I wanted to be cleanly, simply Bright in restaurants without a single bite more. So, I sat in my chair where I usually eat my meals, which for me is facing a window out to our backyard. I really like to look out to the backyard when I eat my meals, and I go to this easy chair and eat my meals there. I sat in that chair, and I reflected, can I find the part of me that really wants to be free of this incessant scraping of the bowl? At first it was hard. I found that the honest truth was that what I wanted was the extra bites, the extra morsels, the extra tastes, the extra ability to bend my elbow more. Then I found the part of me that wants freedom even more than that. I settled into the wanting to be free. Then I invited my higher power into it. The higher power to me is the great mystery. I do like the word, “God.” I use the word God, but when I say it, I'm really thinking of a mysterious unknowable essence that I do not understand and feels way beyond my pay grade of some sort of awe inspiring energy that really does help me in my addiction. I have really experienced it helping me in my addiction. My experience of this power is very much like I'm a plug, like a plug that you plug into the wall, into an outlet. I'm this plug that doesn't have access to power, that needs more power. When I'm in my addiction, I do not have the power to overcome it, to transcend it on my own. When I go looking for a power source, looking for a plug to plug my plug into the outlet, that is the magical orientation where I'm seeking power. I oriented that way and I just open myself up to extra power with a, please, please help me to not scrape this bowl at the end of the meal.
What I found was that the meal came and instead of scraping the bowl to death, I just put the bowl down with juices still there. I didn't leave whole bites there, but I just left it before it was scraped clean. Then I said, “Thank you.” I just was awestruck like, wow, look at that. I just felt free and light. Then the next meal, it happened again. Somehow, I remembered to say please and to open myself up to grace, to that extra power. Somehow, I didn't scrape the bowl ferociously at the end of the meal, I walked away again, awestruck and grateful, and I kept tapping into the part of me that wants that now, that wants that freedom and is willing to coast and glide on the grace of having that extra power flow into me and utilizing it to be free to live in a state of grace and freedom.
So, I offer this to you if you're starting your Bright Line Eating journey, because one meal at a time, it really is possible to activate and access a power source that will enable you to have a Bright meal, to eat what you committed to eat, and be grateful for it at the end of the meal. And amazed that it happened, knowing that on your own, it's not very likely you could have pulled that off, but there it is. It just happened. A mini meal, a mini miracle, a mini awakening, a mini awareness, a mini spiritual happening, like a transcendental experience in the form of just a Bright meal. And you can do it again, the next meal and the next, and this seesaw of please and thank you, wanting the grace, receiving the grace can build up and suddenly the days add up, the meals turn into days, the days turn into weeks, and suddenly you realize you're in the midst of receiving your Bright Transformation. It's happening. It's happening.
I'm 20 years into the journey, having it still at a deeper level, again, more. It's amazing. It never ends. It's incredible. If you're listening, well, no one without any food issues would still be listening at this point. They would've switched this off. But if you happen to be watching or listening, and you're not someone that has these types of issues, you might be thinking, this is madness. Who thinks this way about food and about all this? Right? But some of us do. Some of us who have suffered beyond, beyond with the fork, with the spoon, with hurting ourselves with food beyond what's reasonable, beyond what's right, beyond what makes any sense at all, those of us who've suffered like that will understand. It really is a miracle to be able to just stop when the meal is over. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
