Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. I have a great topic to discuss this week. I cannot believe I've never covered this in a vlog and stay until the end because I've got a special announcement to make. The topic comes from someone who wrote in, she wants to stay anonymous, but she said, ?I am embarrassed to join the community because I don't have a weight problem. I've always had a slim frame even while on a sugar free for all, but I'm aware that I have a wicked food addiction. I'm a nine on the Susceptibility Scale, and I've received amazing benefits from making use of your books and the free Bright Line Eating? offerings. I'm afraid of feeling out of place and I'm also afraid of people thinking I have an eating disorder when they see a thin person weighing and controlling food. But sometimes I feel like I could really benefit from upping my support, especially when my Saboteur tries to convince me that it really doesn't matter if I eat sugar or binge since it doesn't show yet.?
Oh, my dear, what an amazing topic. You are so not alone. You are so not alone. There're many important points that you bring up about this topic. The first and foremost thing that I want to say is that it is shocking how common it is for someone who has no weight to lose to have full-blown food addiction. A study that I did back in 2015 looking at a random representative sample, it wasn't random, sorry, it was a representative sample of 3000 people in the United States showed that 22% of them tested out as full-blown food addicts high on the Food Addiction Susceptibility Scale? if they were at a normal weight. They had a normal BMI and 22% of those people tested high on the Susceptibility Scale. It's actually really common, and the reality is that food addiction and propensity to store and accumulate weight are completely separate in the brain, completely separate.
The sort of metabolic factors and epigenetic factors that go into cells, getting into fat storage mode, and taking our ultra-processed food and environment and converting it into lots and lots of adipose tissue. That's one step system in the body and in the brain. And the nucleus accumbens downregulating with floods of sugar and flour and creating addiction, that's a whole other system in the brain. They're separate. It's actually really common to have the problem food addiction that Bright Line Eating addresses and not have weight to lose. And because Bright Line Eating sort of builds itself as a weight-loss program, and a lot of people do come here primarily initially to lose weight, it can be really easy for you to think that you don't belong here if you don't have weight to lose. But nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, people who have the opposite, the inverse situation where they have weight to lose, but they're not high on the Susceptibility Scale, they feel just as much like they don't belong here. It's not just having weight to lose, right? It's actually having the cray cray in the brain when it comes to sugar and flour. So, those folks feel out of place too.
I just want to address this overarching topic of feeling out of place or feeling like you don't belong or feeling embarrassed. ?Maybe I don't fit in here.? I just want to say that actually almost everybody feels that for one reason or another, ?I don't have weight to lose.? ?I've got too much weight to lose.? ?English isn't my native language.? ?I don't see people from my racial or ethnic background represented here.? ?I think I'm too young for Bright Line Eating.? ?I think I'm too old for Bright Line Eating.? ?I'm too much of an introvert and people around here are always talking about support, support, support, and I don't want any part of that.? I could go on and on and on. There was a really interesting moment at one of the early family reunion gatherings that we did in San Diego where I believe it was Everett Considine was on stage and he looked out at the crowd of 400 and some odd people and he said, raise your hand if a Part of you has been telling you since you arrived that you don't really belong here. Three quarters of the hands in the room went up. I was off stage at that moment, and I stepped onto the stage, and I put my hand up because a voice in my head tells me I don't really belong here because of all sorts of reasons, because different Susan Peirce Thompson, because I can't really belong in the community as a fellow among the community because I have this different? everybody's got their reasons. Just know that having a Part of you that tells you that you don't belong here, that there's something different about you, that you wouldn't really be accepted here, that there's something off about you claiming full membership here is something that almost everybody needs to overcome. The reality is, and I've shot vlogs about this, I think you can Google the topic or go to our vlog page on our website, BrightLineEating.com, click on vlog and Google ?choose to belong.? I think I shot a vlog with exactly that topic that really ultimately, we choose to belong here. We claim our seat by sitting in it. That's how you belong here is by deciding that you do. That's the first thing. You can choose to belong here and you're not alone. So many people come here with no weight to lose, very little weight to lose, or even some weight to gain. Some weight to gain. I believe in the early days of our research program, I looked at the numbers and it was somewhere between 15 and 18% of people who enrolled in Boot Camp didn't have weight to lose. So, not 1% of people. It was a minority, but it was a significant minority. As a matter of fact, it was a bigger minority than the minority of people who've got huge amounts of weight to lose, say over 150 pounds to lose. Those numbers are smaller than the numbers of people who come in with no weight to lose. I just want you to know you are so not alone.
I also want to address this story that you've got going in your head. You've made up a story in your head that if you were to be seen in public or maybe with your family or your friends or your coworkers weighing and measuring your food because you don't have any weight to lose, you'd be stirring up thoughts in their heads that you must have an eating disorder, that there's something controlling and disordered about somebody weighing and measuring their food unless they have a lot of weight to lose, then it's justified. This is your story. This is what it sounded like as you described what you were picturing. But if you don't have weight to lose, then people might think there's something disordered about that. Okay? So, that's a story that you've got going on in your head, and I'm imagining that perhaps it hasn't dawned on you that all of us in Bright Line Eating who lose our weight, then are people walking around like me, walking around in a body that has no perceivable excess weight to shed, and we're weighing our food in public, right? People don't know that we used to have weight to lose. There we are at the buffet in Baja, California at the resort, putting our digital food scale on the buffet and weighing our food in our little Bright Body. And who knows what people are thinking, right?
Here's my favorite story about somebody who had a story up in their head about weighing their food. This was someone who was a Bright Lifer? and she worked at Apple. This is like Silicon Valley big office park kind of place, amazing buffets with salad bars and great food. She brought her digital food scale. She'd already lost like 90 pounds on Bright Line Eating, and she got in line at the salad bar, and she was about to pull her scale out of her bag. She was single, I should say. This really, really good-looking guy gets into line behind her and someone that she'd had a crush on for quite a while, and she considered not pulling out her scale because she didn't want to seem weird, or she didn't want to call attention to herself. She debated, and there he was behind her, and she got her plate, and she took a deep breath, and she just summoned her courage, and she pulled her scale out of her bag, and she put it on the counter, and he looked at it and he spoke up and he said, ?Oh, you're weighing your food.? And she starts to blush, and he says? so I just got to say this guy was buff. He was super muscular built. He said, that's amazing. I love weighing my food. Everyone smart weighs their food. There's no way to dial in your nutrition unless you weigh your food. He says, good for you. How long have you been weighing your food? And he strikes up conversation with her. Not only does it end up not being something that is awkward, but it also ends up being a bonding factor between them. I just want to say, we've got our stories in our head about what people will think if they see us weighing our food, and maybe some of them will think like, oh, that's controlling or whatever.
The reality is that ultra-processed food addiction is painfully common in our society. Lots and lots and lots of people have it. Weighing food is one of the best antidotes to it. If we can be a beacon and a billboard screaming, ?Hey, I'm healthy. I'm in a right-sized body. I'm love myself enough to take care of myself by weighing my food and getting my quantities spot on, so I have peace in my brain every single day.? If someone wants to ask us about that, or has any questions about it, we can be someone to spread that kind of sanity, that kind of peace. They'll see by the quantities on our plate that we're not restricting our quantities. We're making sure that we get enough food. They'll see that we're not eating like birds. It's not like we're going to put our scale out and put a plate on it and then put an ounce of cottage cheese and a morsel of chicken breast and a spear of broccoli on that plate, right? That's not what we're going to do. The reality of the plate of food we're going to weigh out on that scale is going to speak to the fact that this is not anorexia nervosa in play here anyway. Then there's the other thing of who cares what they think, right? Those that matter, mind, those that mind won't matter, and those that matter won't mind. The good saying goes.
All this to say, I think you should be in Boot Camp. That's the way to start, sweetheart, claim your seat. Come all the way in. Sit all the way down. Bring your body that is not burdened with weight on the flesh, but is burdened with a hundred, a thousand pounds of squirrels running around in your head about what you've eaten or not eaten. Whether you've had sugar or not had sugar, whether you've binged or not binged, take that over heavy load into the Boot Camp and start to shed that load of insanity up in the head. Start to get free and clear. You belong here. Come into the Boot Camp. Let us love you. Find the other people who were here already at a normal BMI and not with a bunch of weight to lose, but claiming their seat. Here you will find other people like you here. What you will mainly find is that people who are high on the Food Addiction Susceptibility Scale are by far in the majority in our Boot Camp. You will relate to them because being a nine on the scale, that is exceedingly common around here. You will understand and relate to all the people in their struggles when it comes to food. You belong here, you really do.
So, Boot Camp is starting, and I chose your question to address today, because today the announcement is that right now, this video is being released on Wednesday, September 4th, 2024. Right now, to today, scholarship applications are being accepted just for a few days, Wednesday, September 4th through Sunday, September 8th, 2024. We will accept applications, then applications will not be accepted anymore after Sunday, September 8th. We'll close down application period. We will review them. We will be granting 20 full scholarships for the next bootcamp, and we will be letting people know that they won their scholarships in the month of September. At the end of September, the Food Freedom Videos will start to come out. All the food freedom bruhaha will start. I'll do YouTube lives. I'll do a webinar. The next big Coot Camp will be starting in the first week of October. I really think you should be a part of it. If you need a scholarship, now is the time to apply. There's a link below this video that gives you a video with more information about the scholarship application process, how you apply. Again, it's a very limited window.
For everyone else who's listening, I hope you'll join us in the next Boot Camp. Just keep in mind that whatever story you've been telling yourself in your mind about why it's not a good idea, why you don't belong, why it's not for you, odds are that's just your addiction, talking, trying to keep you in a state where you have your drug to use to help you get through life. Because that's been the go-to strategy, and it's scary to shed that. It's scary to branch out into a life where you're doing it differently. That's where the magic is. That's where the growth starts. That's where the sparkles happen. That's where you start to emerge from your chrysalis and become the butterfly that you've been waiting to become. I hope you'll join us for the next Boot Camp. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
