Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. Someone wrote in a really interesting vlog topic recently. She says, “One of my buddies spoke to me about how she started Bright Line Eating® not to lose weight, but in order to not be in bondage to anything including eating or food. Has this been addressed in any vlog? I found this a potent conversation with her, and I've passed it on to my other buddies in various groups. It's powerful to me, and I had to agree that yes, we are in bondage to eating. Thanks.” Oh, thank you for the topic. Yeah, I agree too. We talk a lot about freedom around here. We talk a lot about freedom. Who would start Bright Line Eating not to lose weight, but to not be in bondage to food?
Well, first of all, we get people signing up for the Boot Camp who don't have any weight to lose. My guess is that most of them are suffering profoundly from food addiction, even though because of their metabolism and their compensatory strategies, whatever they are, whether it's just restricting their eating or vomiting or using laxatives or using exercise, they're able to maintain a healthy weight, but they're insane in the head with food. They're just in bondage. You can be a 10 plus plus on the Food Addiction Susceptibility Scale™ and not have any weight to lose. Right? There may be people doing Bright Line Eating, starting Bright Line Eating purely because they need freedom from that bondage.
I can also imagine people who are not quite in that place, they may or may not have some weight to lose, but they might be lower on the Food Addiction Susceptibility Scale, but be in such a good place in their life where according to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, right? Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, we're at the bottom. You've got your physical needs that need to be met, food, clothing, shelter, belonging, safety. As you get up into the middle of the pyramid, you've got things like cognitive needs, love needs, intimacy needs. And, as you get up to the tippy, tippy top of that pyramid, you've got self-actualization, the need to be all you can be. Maslow did say that a person must be what they can be if all their other needs are met. They start to yearn for spiritual freedom, for self-actualization. Someone in our current food culture might look around and might look at their eating and say, you know what? I feel like there's some bondage going on here to these foods, and I don't want that. I want to use my eating as a vehicle for liberation and self-actualization, even if they're not tortured. To the extent that someone who's a 10 plus plus on the Susceptibility Scale would be, absolutely Bright Line Eating could be a vehicle for that kind of spiritual growth and ultimate self-actualization for sure.
Bright Line Eating is an approach that would mesh with a lot of personality types, right? Gretchen Rubin talks about abstainers versus moderators and people who are abstainers, people who are more inclined to like a Bright Line Eating approach to feel really clean and free and clear with Bright Lines in their life might very much decide to do Bright Line Eating for that feeling of liberation and clarity that they get from it. Absolutely. I will say about myself and my recovery today, almost everything that I do protecting the incredible sparkliness of my Bright Lines these last two years, is for the freedom. It's literally what I'm thinking as I order in a restaurant what will protect my freedom so that I'm walking out of this restaurant with not a second thought back at this meal. Not one obsessive reconsideration about how I navigated the meal. That is what I'm thinking as I order. I want to be free, free, free. I'll update you on my scraping the bowl. I'm not scraping the bowl still every meal I sit down and I have a thought before I start to eat of I want to feel free at the end of this meal. I do not want to feel enslaved to sop up, mop up, scrape up one last morsel of a taste off this plate or bowl. I don't want it. I don't want that bondage. Absolutely. That is my orientation. When I look at the fruit in my fridge, we keep our apples in the fridge. When I'm selecting an apple, I notice still because God bless me, I'm a food addict and quantities are my thing. I notice which ones are bigger than others, and I do not want to feel enslaved to the size of the apple that I choose. In order to protect my freedom, before I open the refrigerator door, I say to myself, I'm going to pick the closest apple, not the biggest apple. In order to stay free, I select the closest apple. This is not an obsession around perfection. It's not an obsession around virtue. It's an obsession around freedom. I think obsession is the wrong word, right? Because I'm not enslaved to wanting to be free. I'm appreciative of my freedom. I savor my freedom. I love being free, and I refuse to be enslaved by the food anymore. Absolutely. That is my orientation. So, we sometimes say, which I learned in a 12-step program, we come for the vanity, but we stay for the sanity. We need to find some sort of rhyme for, we come for the vanity, but we stay for the freedom. What rhymes with freedom? I don’t know. But yeah, we come to lose weight, a lot of us. But I think a lot of us stay for the freedom. If we can get hooked on that freedom, get enamored with the freedom, come to value the freedom. It literally can be the motivating energy, the force, the power that keeps the flywheel spinning of our Bright Line Eating program. The engine that keeps it all going is to just want to preserve and maintain the freedom.
Thank you for sending this in because I just appreciate a few moments to wax poetic about how I feel about freedom. It's a very big deal for me in my life these days, how grateful I am. Once you are free, once I am free, it's gratitude and service that keep me free. It's maintaining an attitude of awe, amazement, and gratitude that I still have the willingness to do this, that I still want it that badly, that I am grateful, grateful, grateful, grateful that I know what my solution is, and I'm willing to do it every single day. Just staying grateful and in awe about that is the mental attitude that preserves it. Grateful hearts don't eat. Don't eat addictively. Grateful hearts don't eat. And then, the other thing, service, just keep helping people who are struggling. Keep passing it on. Keep guiding, keep leading the Gideon Games. Keep showing up for that Mastermind meeting. Keep responding and posting in the Online Support Community. Keep making welcome calls to new Bright Lifers™. Just keep doing that service, and you get to keep it. It's just how it works. It's so worth it. So worth it. Thank you for writing in that fabulous, fabulous observation. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
