Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson and welcome to the Weekly Blog. The other day I was on the morning Accountability Call, on Sunday morning, as I do with my beloved Bright Lifers?. A woman raised her hand and needed coaching. She's a mother of two young kids, like a 1-year-old and 4-year-old. And she's not Bright, she's not staying Bright. She has had quite a bit of success with Bright Line Eating?. She loves Bright Line Eating; she's well connected in Bright Line Eating. What's happening is she's going, giving to the family, giving to the family, she's getting depleted, depleted, depleted. At the end of the day, she just doesn't have it in her to start chopping vegetables. She turns to her partner, and she says, let's order takeout. Then she sits on the couch, and she binges or overeats or whatever. It doesn't go well, right? She's not Bright.
What she said is, I'm looking around Bright Line Eating and I see that it's mostly older people. It's mostly retired people. It's mostly people who don't have young kids at home. I feel like it's impossible to have habit stacks. My schedule's really unpredictable. The kids always need me. She described the Part of her that gives her license to order takeout, sit on the couch, and indulge in that food as a Caretaker Part, like caretaking her. It's sort of a Food Indulger Part that has added as its fundamental motive caretaking her so that she can just rest a bit. I told her that I completely related to that when I was Bright all through my kids' earliest years and then Bright Line Eating blew up. The combination of juggling this growing monstrosity, that Bright Line Eating was becoming this amazing, gorgeous, fabulous monstrosity that Bright Line Eating had become. Plus, all the travel I was suddenly doing tipped me over the edge. I found myself in a pattern of every few weeks getting a bunch of food and sitting on the couch and binging my brains out. After doing that a bunch of times and looking at my Parts, I realized that just like she described, I had a part that was trying to get me to rest, trying to give me a respite, a rest, a break. This Part of me knew that I needed a break. It also knew that I wouldn't give myself the permission to take a break unless I was already in the food. I knew that all was lost anyway, and the evening was just going to be more eating because in truth, at that point, I knew that my food addiction was advanced enough that once I started to eat, I pretty well knew, okay, well this evening is shot. I'm just eating now, and I'll get Bright when I come out the other end of this binge. She related to that; she related to that.
What I said was I had to learn how to give myself the permission to rest without eating. I had to learn how to give myself the time to go take a bubble bath. If I would give myself the night off to go binge my brains out, I could spare an hour and a half to go take a bubble bath. The story of "I can't," it's BS, right? Because when I was on the couch eating that food, I was checked out. I was not taking care of my kids. I was not helping my husband manage family life, and he would've way rather me gone and taken a bubble bath rather than binge my brains out and then be out of commission for all of that night and most of the next day as well. I told her I had to learn how to give myself permission to rest, and that resonated with her.
We also then talked about the story that she has in her head, that Bright Line Eating is just for retired folks who have the time for it. I said, while I do agree that our population in Bright Line Eating tends to skew a little older than average, I think that that's mainly because it often takes people enough research out there in the trenches with food to come around to the conclusion that they really want to embrace a solution as potent as this one. It takes a lot of research for most people to get to that point. Food addiction is a progressive disease, and it progresses throughout someone's life and just not a lot of people are that far progressed in their 20s. I was, but not a lot of people are. God bless me, I'm certifiable. But what was great was we were on the Accountability Call and these moms and parents kept popping into the chat thread," I'm super Bright and I got all these kids and I've been Bright for five years." It kept happening. She was like, "Oh." I said, yeah, look around. It is very doable to stay Bright while your kids are young.
Here's some of the strategies we talked about then. I mean, I think retooling that narrative, that unhelpful belief structure, that Bright Line Eating is only for retired folks. Plenty of young parents are succeeding with Bright Line Eating. Bright Line Eating is for anyone and everyone who's come to the conclusion that they're done trying the moderation thing with food, it does not work for them. They want to embrace a Bright Line approach to food so that they can be free and healthy and get their body back and their life back and their agency with food back. That's who Bright Line Eating is for. We have lots of people who are in their 20s and 30s who are doing it successfully. Disusing yourself of that notion that you can't do it because of your age or station in life, your situation in life, and then learning to rest without turning to food. But we had some other concrete strategies as well. Someone popped into the chat exactly what I was thinking, which is you can have a habit stack when you have little kids, and the secret is to get up earlier and to do your self-care things before they wake up. That might mean getting to bed earlier and waking up at 5:00 AM. I know that David and I put our kids to bed when they were little. We put our kids to bed at 7:00 PM and they woke up at 7:00 AM and I got up at 5:00 AM sometimes 4:30 AM to get all my stuff done and all my self-care stuff done before they woke up. Now, that might sound like a lot, and it is a lot. And guess what? Being a parent of young kids is a lot. It is. But it's way better to do it with gas in your tank, having meditated, having had a delicious breakfast with peace and ease, having amazing contacts that you're in touch with in the wee hours when you can connect with someone in a different time zone, it's light for them. Or maybe they're up early like you are, and they're a parent too. That was another thing we talked about is mom groups. She's already in some in Bright Line Eating, but just how important that support is. There is a particular season of life when you've got little kids and to be around other people that are in that same boat in Bright Line Eating is so helpful. So, we talked about that as a wonderful strategy.
Then we talked about how she needs to have a go-to partially ready-made easy to grab emergency dinner meal where if she reaches that point where she is done with the day depleted, got nothing, she's not going to chop a vegetable. She can still have a Bright meal. Where's the bag of peas you can throw into the freezer? Where's the baby carrots that you can dump into a bowl at six ounces? Where's the two mozzarella cheese sticks that are already in the package at one ounce each? You can grab two of those and boom, there's your protein. We talked about how she's going to need, or maybe you pre weigh out baggies of two ounces of nuts or pre-hard boil a bunch of eggs for the week or something right there, easy to grab and you can just get your Bright dinner. Frankly, let's be real here. Faster and easier than getting takeout. If you think about takeout, it is not utterly simple and easy and quick. You got to open up, you got to decide, you got to order. You got to wait a while. If you have food that you could literally assemble in 90 seconds, I've done it with a timer, I can make a Bright meal in less than 90 seconds. If that's already decided on in advance, oh, it's time for my emergency meal, you just go grab it, assemble it, it's done. It's done. She was like, oh yeah, that's a great idea. That's a great idea.
All this toward what end, right? We talked about how it's so important when we have little kids that we are structured and steady. That's what those kids need. Love, fun activities. Absolutely. But we have got to be steady with a structured pattern of daily living that they can rely on. When we're in the food, all of that gets flung onto the wall like mud. It's just a mess. When we're Bright, we're eating our weighed and measured meals on time. We're feeding them good meals, sit down meals on time. We've got hours in between to do crafts and to plan fun things, to go to a park, to go to a museum that we know when it's mealtime again, and we're steady and present for them. That's why we stay Bright when we have young kids so that we can be those people. We can't be that kind of caretaker if we're in the food or recovering from the binge that we had last night.
It was such a sweet conversation. I literally searched the vlog topics. You know that you can go to BrightLineEating.com and search our vlog library? Well, I do it all the time to see what I've already talked about. It's been nine years shooting these vlogs. So, I forget, and I typed in kids and scrolled through all the videos. I've talked about kids a lot, but never in quite this context of how do you stay Bright when you're parenting young kids? It's a particular type of life experience. I have a lot of experience with it. I'm so glad that it came up. If it's your situation, please get connected in our Bright Line Eating community because there are other parents of young kids who want to know you. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
