Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. Today I want to talk about restaurants and my experience and behavior in restaurants, and just an update on a couple of restaurant meals I had recently that didn't go so well in the sense that I did not have peace afterwards. I want to just share how I navigated that, what the lessons are that I'm taking out of it, and what it might mean for your Bright Line Eating? program.
Now, if you've known me for a while, you know that restaurants have been my Achilles heel for years. I mean, I don't know, seven, eight years ago, I was shooting vlogs on how I didn't feel good about my behavior in restaurants and quantities; just ordering in such a way as to try to game the Bright Line Eating system to try to get the biggest, sexiest, most fabulous meal. I just didn't feel great about it. It was noteworthy how much peace I had weighing and measuring at home on my own scale in my own kitchen versus when I was in a restaurant context and someone else was more in control of the methods of preparation and what was available or possible and quantities and all that.
Anyway, I've done it all. I've gone through periods of time where I've weighed and measured in restaurants. I've tried not eating in restaurants, and fast forward to 2022, my eating in restaurants had gotten out of hand to the point where I started walking out of restaurants, having panic attacks practically. I don't have panic attacks, but the closest I've experienced to it really like head spinning. What was that? What did I just do in that restaurant? I started to really inventory and analyze my behavior in restaurants and came to the conclusion that from my perspective, I'd been calling myself Bright, I'd been Bright entirely from sugar flour and any snacks or bites, licks or tastes in between meals for two or three years at that point. But I decided to go back to day one because of quantities in restaurants and not being honest about how I was navigating restaurants. That was two years and four months ago, and I'm really amazed and happy to report that restaurants have been a breeze since then.
Relatively speaking, I have been the recipient of grace, and if you want to say cracked the code or whatever, it's fallen into place. I still eat out a fair bit. I travel a lot. My family likes to eat out. I just have a life where I eat out a lot, and I mean, not every day or anything, but definitely every week and sometimes multiple times a week. The way I achieved that from two years ago was by partnering up with somebody who had a lot of peace in restaurants and going through with a fine-tooth comb how I ate in every restaurant and rejiggering it so that I just stopped triggering myself so much in restaurants. For example, my local Japanese restaurant, I used to order the salad with the dressing on it, and I know that there's sugar in that dressing. It's just there wasn't a lot of sugar in the dressing. It wasn't a sweet dressing. But I've asked them how they make it, and they said they put a little sugar in it, and I used to order the salad with the dressing on it. It was also a dressing that was made up of blended carrots and onions and a lot of vegetables, and I kind of rationalized it as part of my vegetable portion and whatever. Anyway, when I cleaned up my behavior in restaurants two plus years ago, I stopped eating that dressing altogether. I just started ordering my salad with no dressing, meaning literally I eat a little salad that's in a miso soup bowl. It's iceberg lettuce and a wedge of tomato and a wedge of cucumber and a bunch of iceberg lettuce, and that's it. I eat it plain with soy sauce on it. That's how I eat it. Sometimes that means I don't get fat at that meal, and I just let it go. So, a big change in a big surrender.
I don't have grain right now at dinner, but when I did, I used to eat their hibachi style fried rice grain that had some chopped-up egg in it, and they put oil on it and some little peas and sesame seeds, and I would eat that, and I started ordering a bowl of steamed white rice, which they have, keeping it simple. That's what I mean when I say I just cleaned up my behavior a lot, just simplified things, started ordering more simply. I also started really, really being more honest about my portions, actively eyeballing my quantities to the "T" and not justifying extras. I used to just, I don't know, order (on the theory that eight ounces of broth is fine to add to a meal), I used to just order a French onion soup and just not count that big without the crouton part of course, that's flour. So none of that, and just not count that all that cheese as anything, just eat it and be like, well, whatever. No, you just ate ounces and ounces of melted cheese. I don't eat melted cheese anymore at all, ever.
Anyway, so I just cleaned up my behavior. That led to two years and several months of freedom, like, oh my gosh, freedom, peace, and a desire to hold onto that peace. Fast forward to, I don't know, maybe a month ago or so, I went to a restaurant that I normally would not go to. This was my daughter Maya's 13th birthday request. We went to a restaurant called Red Robin. It's like a burger and fries joint and there's not that much that I can eat there, but Maya had been talking about their Brussels sprouts in very excited tones. Now, this is not surprising. All three of my kids like vegetables, thanks to Bright Line Eating, but she was really talking about these Brussels sprouts, and I saw them on the menu. They were an appetizer, and they have to put calorie counts now on dishes in certain restaurants. Anyway, a side of Brussels sprouts was something like 910 calories. Okay, red flag warning right there. Now it was loaded with cheese on it, and so I was hemming and hawing about getting these Brussels sprouts. Maya was like, "They're really crispy. They're so good, Mom." And I ordered the Brussels sprouts without the cheese. Now this was a rationalization. I could probably have assumed that with the calorie count on those Brussel sprouts, all those calories weren't entirely cheese. They were frying those Brussels sprouts in an inordinate amount of oil, but I ordered them anyway. This place has steamed broccoli. It's terrible. It's awful. It's rubber. They put it in the microwave and it's awful, but it's edible and it's steamed broccoli. I should have just ordered steamed broccoli. But I got these Brussels sprouts. They came, they were deep fried, not with breading or anything, just Brussels sprouts, deep fried in a basket in oil, crispy, brought to the table, and I ate them, and they were very good. I left that restaurant feeling kind of like that panic attack, feeling swirly in my head. What did I just do? I didn't feel good in my body. I woke up the next morning and my ring didn't fit first thing in the morning. I was swollen from all that oil, and it stayed with me for a couple days. Not the end of the world. Nobody's dying. I ate a bunch of fried Brussels sprouts. I'm not dying. I ate a bunch of fried Brussels sprouts. I totally get that. This is not a big deal, and I did not have peace around it.
Here's what I did. I talked with some people about it. I called some trusted people that I know have sanity in restaurants, and I just debriefed it. One of the questions, one of them asked me was, what do you got going on? What do you think you were trying to get? What was that Indulger Part of you trying to get from those Brussels sprouts? Now, it was a little while ago, so I don't remember what my mental issue du jour was, but there was something I was concerned about, something, I don't know, whatever it was, I was like, oh, yeah, I'm kind of concerned about, I've been worried about blah, blah, blah, whatever it was. I hadn't really noticed that a Part of me was?a Food Indulger Part was active, trying to soothe me, reward me, comfort me, excite me, please me, make my life a little easier, a little better with some yummy Brussels sprouts. I've worked with that Part of me before. She appreciates knowing that my authentic self is in control and she can be redirected toward getting the goodness in life out of my companionship and my presence in the moment she can be get excited about being there. I was in that restaurant with my husband, our three kids. I could have connected with my family more. I could have been fine through that restaurant, chewing on rubbery, steamed broccoli and being fine. I just didn't have enough presence in the moment to recognize that.
After I talked about it with a couple people, got it off my chest, I think I did some writing about it. I felt okay. But then it happened maybe within a week or even less like three or four days, I walked out of a restaurant again, feeling stabbed with panic and feeling shame. Now, shame isn't a word I use much in the vlog. If you've been around for a while, think about it. Do I talk about shame? Not that much, right? That's because I don't feel much shame. I am not someone who does for whatever reason. I don't have much fear and I don't have much shame. That is exceedingly unusual in my experience for people who are highly addicted. People who are very high on the Food Addiction Susceptibility Scale? or have a history of addictions in general, tend to have more than average amounts of fear and shame. But people are different. There's bell curves for everything. I just happened to be on the really, really low end of the bell curve when it comes to fear and shame. I don't have much of either, but I felt shame and I named it as such. I said, "I think I feel ashamed." Oh, what a feeling. It's like this smarmy, sticky, heavy pit in my stomach of not feeling good about myself.
What did I do in that restaurant? It was that Japanese restaurant actually that I was just talking about the hibachi place that my family goes. It's family traditional celebration place when it's someone's birthday or whatever. We were at this restaurant, I ordered immaculately. My quantities were immaculate. Let me just back up and say for the Brussels sprouts meal, my quantities were immaculate, which is a huge win, not a quantities issue. At the Japanese restaurant, what I had done was I had ordered some salmon sashimi, so this is just pure raw fish, and I was dipping it in soy sauce in wasabi eating it, not a problem. Then when the fish was gone, I picked up the little dish of soy sauce in wasabi and I drank it. Then I had my cooked hibachi vegetables in a miso soup bowl. I weighed them out into that bowl. I didn't have the miso soup my neighbors did. My daughter or whoever on my right had miso soup. But then I used that bowl to weigh out with my eyeballs, what looked like six ounces of cooked vegetable. I had them put a little bit of butter on it from the hibachi because I hadn't had any fat because I didn't have that dressing, remember? Then I poured some soy sauce on it, and then there was buttery soy sauce at the bottom of that bowl, and I drank it at the end of the meal. Not a federal offense, right? No police are going to come arrest me for that. But I walked out of that restaurant feeling ashamed, feeling smarmy, feeling like I hadn't done something right in that restaurant. I called a friend and talked about it. I realized that when I was a little kid and I went to Chinese food with my dad, before our food would come, I would pour soy sauce on the plate and some white vinegar on top of that. I would usually have to order the white vinegar to come out. They didn't have it on the table usually, but I would ask for some. I would mix them together in about equal amounts, and then I would take my fork, I would smush it into that pool of liquid on my plate, and I would eat it and then smush it into the plate, eat it. I would in sort of, I don't know, kind of weird, weird in terms of not the norm, not the restaurant behavior norm in this weird way, I would eat this sauce before our food even came out. It kind of reminded me of that sort of like a concoction, sort of like an attachment.
In analyzing all this afterwards, because I've done some writing, I've done some thinking about this. What I notice is my motive in both cases was a food addiction motive. It was a motive of more, "Can I get this food to satiate, something to soothe, to calm, to comfort, to excite, can the food do something for me that I'm not for whatever reason, doing for myself? And can I get the food to help me achieve some level of okay-ness that I don't feel in this present moment?" What I know from my own experience is food doesn't do a good job of that for me because I'd have to keep eating it forever. It's only the eating of the food that makes me feel okay the minute it's gone. I feel a yawning chasm of wanting. Yearning food doesn't permanently make me feel okay. It only feels good while I'm consuming. Given that I don't live in a universe where endless consumption of food is possible or desirable without major consequences, I have to find my okay-ness elsewhere. I have to find it deep inside.
So, I Rezoomed?. I'm not on day one. I got two years and four months of squeaky clean, Bright Lines. That wasn't a quantities break, that was my food just consumed in a not great way. I mean, I guess one could say that was too much fat for that meal, but it happens in restaurants, they're going to cook their food with more fat. It just wasn't a good choice. If you're curious about where I think a break back to day one versus not, where to draw that line, go check out the book, "Rezoom." I've got a section in there on what to call a break, and it's nuanced, but I feel super clear that for me, those were not breaks. I am not at day one. I have two years and four months, squeaky, squeaky, squeaky clean, Bright and five years off sugar flour and eating outside of mealtime. So, that's great. I feel wonderful about that. I'm glad that I used my tools and talked about it with people, wrote about it. I sought the lesson, seek the lesson. I Rezoomed super fast.
One of the final things I just want to say is I want to claim the win that keeping my quantities really honest in restaurants has now become automatic. Neither of these issues were about quantities. What I find that I'm doing is I'm taking more food off my plate if needed. If I start to feel while I'm eating that maybe I didn't eyeball my food the first time around and it's more than four ounces of protein, or it's more than whatever my proper allotment would be, if I start to feel that I take some more away. Because the goal is to walk out of the restaurant feeling free. What I notice is that the motive of more the motive of I want to have an addictive bite, I want more food. When I indulge that motive, I don't feel free, even if just what I'm consuming is soy sauce at the bottom of the bowl, right? Oh, God, bless me.
Here's what I want to say. If you're not high on the Food Addiction Susceptibility Scale, this might all sound like crazy pants to you. Just not your experience, not your story. In which case lucky you first of all. And don't worry about it, right? Do what gives you peace in restaurants. A lot of people, for most people analyzing their behavior with a fine tooth comb like I'm doing in restaurants, would not give them peace, right? For me, it's necessary. I'm a 10 plus plus plus on the Food Addiction Susceptibility Scale. I'm about as highly food addicted as they come, and that means I have to keep my behavior really, really clean. Otherwise, I go off the rails big time and the consequences are severe for me, and I got to keep inventorying what I'm doing, or I can't maintain any kind of level of peace. But if you don't relate to this, that's fine. If you feel like what you're doing in restaurants is looser than what I'm describing, but it's working for you, that's fine. Keep doing what's working. If you have a Restrictor Part of you and taking away more food as you're eating, would an act of addiction, an act of anorexia, an act of food restriction? Then don't do it. Stay aware of what's true for you. Now, I'm an over eater. I don't have a strong Restrictor Part that takes over when I'm in a restaurant. I do not have a strong Restrictor Part that takes over when I'm in a restaurant ever. For me, taking some more food away is a healthy surrender and counterbalance to the Food Indulger that's always in my psyche saying, "More, more, more, more. " If for you it's the reverse and you have a Restrictor Part that's saying, oh, could you get away with eating a little less because you want to weigh a little less? Maybe a little less would be, maybe a little less would be good. The surrender for you would be probably to say, no, I measured my quantities or eyeballed them properly the first time, and I'm going to eat all my food. Now, that's my job, is to just surrender and eat all my food.
As always, it's nuanced and you are responsible for your own peace and your Brightness, your journey here. But I share these specifics this week because I think it's helpful. I know there are a lot of people who tune into this vlog who have a pretty high level of food addiction on board, and I just want to give you some actual specifics, kind of boots on the ground of what it looks like and sounds like to be living the Bright Life and to be enjoying long stretches of freedom and how sometimes that freedom gets interrupted, it gets punctuated by an, "oh no" experience. What do we do then? For this week, my answer is I checked my motives. I checked my motives, and I noticed where my motives were off, and that's what I needed to clean up. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
