Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. Oh, my goodness. I've been feeling this feeling lately that led me to shoot this vlog, and I think I'm going to call this vlog, "Why We Stay Bright." Why we Stay Bright. I am right now?five years since my last slip with sugar or flour or eating outside of meal times, and I'm two-and-a-half years into a stretch of being a hundred percent Bright with all four Lines, including quantities in restaurants. Just really, truly rigorous, immaculate, brilliant, Bright Lines. And what I can report, this is not the longest stretch I had. I mean, I've had eight years or so in the past, and I've been doing this for 21 years, and I've had a lot of times in the ditch in that time. But what I can say is that over the last two-and-a-half years, I can really testify that consecutive, sparkly, rigorous Brightness confers a lot of gifts.
There are reasons to live that Bright, and if you've never experienced it for years back to back without a bobble, I just want to give you a glimpse of why you might want to strive for that, why you might want to open your horizons to that, why you might want to keep yourself available for that and work your program strong enough, Bright enough, clean enough, true enough that it happens for you because it's really, really worth it. It's amazing. It's amazing. There is a level of freedom that I've had from the food chatter, but also from the scale chatter. Over the past bunch of years, I've had long stretches where I'm not addicted to anything, and I'm telling you, I get addicted to things so easily: caffeine, decaf, certain people that I'm texting with, or something. Suddenly I feel a hook there, or oh God, what are some of the more current things? I don't really get addicted to shopping. I don't really get addicted to gambling, but certain foods that light me up just?I've had amazing stretches of not being addicted to anything. Oh! My phone, my smartphone, certain Netflix shows or other types of streaming things, online gaming, all sorts of things, right? Addictions, having stretches, being free from any addiction.
Anyway, I came up with eight things and collectively speaking, what I think of these as is my current best answer to what does it mean actually when we say this program is more than about the food and the weight, or what do we mean when we say non-scale victories? Or what do we mean when we say this is not a diet? What are we talking about when we say we come for the vanity, but we stay for the sanity? These eight things put flesh on those bones.
Really, this is why I work this program, and I'm going to start off with number one, which is what I opened this vlog with, which is a feeling I've been having lately and the feeling I would best describe it as is outrageous joy, outrageous joy. It's like a bursting of gratitude from the heart. I know I'm not alone in this. I have a friend in Bright Line Eating? who called me, who's been doing Bright Line Eating now for 10 years. She was in the very first Boot Camp, and I talked with her right after her birthday recently, and she said it was the best day of her life, and she said she just felt giddy with gratitude, felt like the luckiest person alive, just felt so fricking lucky. I knew she was describing this outrageous joy that I feel sometimes. This bursting with gratitude, and I get it for no reason. When I asked her, "Oh, what did you do for your birthday, the best day of your life?" She said, nothing. I didn't do anything special at all. It was just a hum day, but I just felt so much gratitude. I get it often when I'm driving and I just see a vista, whatever, just a view from my car window, just being on the open road, it's very liberating for the heart and soul. I get it in the shower, I get it when I'm doing mundane chores like making my bed or folding laundry or doing dishes. I get this burst of gratitude. Just the gratitude of doing the next right thing feels so vibrant to me. I think just being available for that feeling, right, the gift of being alive, really, it's the gratitude of the present moment. That's one of the reasons.
The second one is I stay really, really Bright so I can be the best version of myself, the me that I am when I'm dialed in with my morning and evening habits stacks. It's a feeling of really knowing that I'm achieving my potential, knowing that I'm using or being the best steward I would say of my inherent gifts, talents, capacities, what I was given to work with, playing the cards I was dealt, but playing them well, really being the best version of myself. That feeling is worth a lot. I remember when I didn't have that feeling, which was for most of my life before I started eating this way, sometimes I would feel like I was kind of getting my act together, but mostly I felt off. I felt like I was not being the best version of myself. Whenever I would get the knock of self-actualization of "Susan, you got to uplevel here, you got to rise to the challenge of this life." I'd make a list and the first thing on it would be I got to lose the weight. I got to lose the weight. I always knew there was something in my relationship with food that was holding me back from being the best version of myself. I tell you when my food is dialed in, and then I'd give myself some time with the food dialed in and the habit stacks in place, my ducks start to be in a row in a way that they just never are otherwise. I get a shot at that feeling of being like I'm the best version of myself. That's number two.
Number three is I get to fulfill my purpose in life. I think a lot of people maybe don't know what their purpose is. For some people, they're clear it's to serve their family, or it's to paint, or what have you. For me, I've come to discover, and I only discovered this in my late 40s, God bless me., it took me a long time to come to my purpose in life, but my purpose in life is to help ultra-processed food addiction become a recognized disorder in the DSM-V and in the ICD-11. That's my purpose in life. And to help as many struggling food addicts, people who struggle with their weight because they have an addictive relationship with food, to help as many of those people on the path as I can while I'm alive. That's my purpose in life. I know that if I'm not Bright, really, really Bright, I'm not doing as good a job as I could do, showing up to that purpose. That is one of the gifts of being really Bright.
Number four is being available to do God's will. I don't pretend to know what God's will is. If you don't like the word, "God," substitute out great spirit, unknowable mystery, the divine essence, I'm not sure, right? But there's a serendipitous flow to the day that when I'm really Bright, I'm in harmony with that flow. What happens is sometimes miracles happen. Sometimes just the right thing happens at just the right time. Sometimes there's a coincidence that feels like beyond coincidence, and I experience that so much when I'm Bright, so much when I'm Bright, being at the right place at the right time and the day feels kind of like, "Hey, God, checking in for duty. How can I be of service? How can I help?" That's what the day feels like being available to do. God's will. It is a privilege, and I'm not an available tool if I'm messed up in my head with my weight and my food, I'm just not right. I'm just not.
The fifth one is that I get to be an example of what Bright Living looks like. What it looks like in practice, how it sounds, how it feels, how it looks. And what that does is it gives people hope, other people who struggle in ways that I have struggled. Hope is very literally optimism, which is the belief that future things could be better than current things. That's optimism plus a pathway, like literally an idea of how things might get better and agency, the belief that you could actually walk that path. It's very hard to have real hope without a living shining example who's walked a particular path, who's explaining that path to you, and you know that they've done it, that they've been in the pit that you're in, they've walked out of it and they're telling you the path. And so, by very definition, when I live Bright, having suffered the way I have with my food, having been face down in the food with the snake of the food around my neck, choking me, stuffing my face till I'm passing out and just coming to eat just a little bit more because I have suffered that way with food and struggled to lose weight for years and years and years and years and failed and failed and failed and failed every last attempt, and now I am not struggling in that way anymore, and I have a pathway that I walked to get out of that mess, by definition, my very existence now gives people hope. If you are Bright, yours does too. Whether you know it or not, you become a walking billboard for what hope looks like for someone who has a food and a weight problem. That's amazing. That's a reason to live really Bright.
Another one, where am I at now? Six. I think it's six. I live Bright because I love the peace, the peace that I have when I'm really Bright. I meditate for 30 minutes every morning and the peace that greets me in the mornings when I sit on my meditation bench in the dark and breathe, breathe up my spinal column, feel my back, straighten out, and just sit and breathe for 30 minutes, the peace is so delicious. It is worth it. I am at home in my skin and I didn't used to be. I started meditating for 30 minutes in the morning, 21 years ago, 21-and-a-half years ago, and it was a madhouse in my head, and I'm not saying I don't have thoughts now. I have a human mind, and it does its human mind thing. It does. Its monkey mind tricks, but there's a lot of peace. There's a lot of home in inside me and it's beautiful.
Number seven is I stay sparkly, Bright, consecutively Bright, because I want to grow. I love growing. Like what I was saying earlier about not being mired in any addictions right now, that is the result of three decades, three full decades, 30 years of commitment to addiction recovery and peeling back the onion and shedding the layers layer after layer of this addiction and that one and that one and that one. I know there's people watching who've known me for a long time or listening who've known me for a long time and have witnessed it, have seen that I'm not currently engaging in addictions and unhelpful behaviors that I used to. I've shed them, and it's been a long process and it's growth. It's a beautiful thing to grow in all the ways that we can grow, growing in the ability to self-regulate, to just stay connected to a grounded, authentic, highest self-place. When the shit's hitting the fan and things are getting really hard, life is getting really lifey when other people are stressing out, it takes a lot of growth to be able to stay centered when everything's coming down, right? Anyway, growth. I just love growth. I'm a growth junkie. I don't have any tattoos. Don't ask me how. I don't have any tattoos. I think that's a miracle that I don't have any tattoos, but Meliora, which means ever better, it's Latin forever, ever better, like a constant state of growth, that's something I would consider tattooing on me. I don't have any tattoos, whatever. I might tattoo the print symbol on me or the Bright Line Eating symbol on me. No tattoos yet, but we'll see. But Meliora, growth ever better.
The last one, I saved the best for last. You ready? The best. The best is for last. Here's why I am so grateful right now to be consecutively Bright, to be really, really Bright is because I am amazed at how much I'm able to be available to others, how much people are able to lean on me and how much I can get from being there for them. One example is one of our three daughters decided she was all done with high school. She was 16, and high school was not her cup of tea, she's actually 15 when she realized she was done with high school. We looked into it and sure enough, the local community college has this program where she can finish high school there by taking college classes, but she wasn't doing her best in high school. At 16, she enrolled in college, not having graduated from high school, not having taken any test yet, just enrolled in a program that would simultaneously give her a high school diploma if she also got her first year of college under her belt with good breadth requirements. She got thrust into college level classes, and I have got her back, and she is thriving. She's working now. She got her driver's license. She is thriving. She's about to wrap up her first semester. She's on track to pass all her classes. As a matter of fact, she might have, I don't know, a couple a's a B and a C, I'm not sure, but she's doing well. She's passing, she's doing well, and I am there for her. As she does this, she's able to lean on me and feel that her mama's got her and it's a beautiful thing. High school was not her bag, but college is. She's liking it and she's doing well. I have other friends right now that I am able to be there for, and it is such a privilege. I think back in my life when I was a teenager and in my early twenties, well, mostly when I was a teenager, well, no, then a lot through my 20s too, I needed support for a lot of that time. I was a hot flipping mess. Mad is a cut snake sometimes, and when I was 14, 15, 16 years old, we had to have family tribunal meetings every Tuesday of "What are we going to do with Susan because she's created such a mess this week. How are we going to clean it up? How are we going to support her? How are we going to help her function?" I was a mess, and it took full-time effort for many adults in my life to help keep me alive and kicking and going. I am not a mess today. I am of service today. People lean on me today. I can be there for others today, and it's amazing. It's a privilege. Again, it's like that check in for duty, feeling like, okay, God, what you got for me today? How can I show up and help? How can I be part of the solution? How can I be part of the peace? How can I be part of what's positive and good and shiny and Bright and beautiful in this world? How can I show up and make other people's lives better? It's such a privilege.
I hope that nothing that I just said sounds like bragging. I hope that it sounds like inspiration and hope and possibility. If you are suffering with your food, I get you. I've been there. You have a lot to give in this world. So, please come all the way in and sit all the way down and let go of the foods that make you crazy and put your next meal on the scale and weigh it out and eat it with gratitude and know you are on the path. You are on the path, and there are good things ahead. That's the weekly vlog. I love you. I'll see you next week.
