Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. I got a provocative question for you. Is Bright Line Eating? your new addiction. You think? Is that possible? What exactly is an addiction anyway? If someone says, "I don't know, I had an eating disorder, but then I stopped throwing up, but I just made exercise my new addiction." Is that possible or is it true? Some people say everyone's addicted to their phone, their smartphone these days. Is that true? What is an addiction, especially a behavioral addiction, and who would be saying that Bright Line Eating is your new addiction? Is that you wondering that? Is that your spouse, your partner, your coworker, your mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son? Is that someone who supports your Bright Line Eating journey? Someone who doesn't? What would it mean for Bright Line Eating to be your new addiction? Does everyone have an addiction?
Let's break some of these questions down. First of all, I believe I've said before in vlogs, I know I've said it in webinars, I really do believe this to be true. Not everyone has an addiction. Addictions are very specific things, folks. They are patterns of use or behavior that cause clinically significant impairment or distress, and there are certain symptoms that are associated with it, like using more than you intend to, trying to cut back or quit and not being able to, or not being able to stay stopped once you stop. Having it cause significant impairment or dysfunction in your life, in your relationships, in your work life, in your health, in your ability to function in general, experiencing tolerance like it's ramping up. You need more and more and more of it experiencing withdrawal if you stop doing it. You don't have to have all these symptoms, but you have to have some of them and for sure, for sure, for sure. An addiction must have clinically significant impairment or distress, meaning it's got to be bothering you a whole lot. It's got to be distressing you, you've got to be upset about it, worried about it, stressed about it, freaked out about it. You've got to be knowing that it's a problem trying to cut back. That's an addiction. When I was eating pints of ice cream with tears streaming my face saying, why am I doing this? This doesn't even taste good. I hate this. I don't want to be eating this, but I could not stop. That was addictive eating.
Now let's ask, is Bright Line Eating your new addiction? Does that question feel entirely different? Now that I ask it in the context of what an addiction actually is? So, notice that someone that might be saying Bright Line Eating is your new addiction, might be noticing things like your passion for it, right? Maybe you're super into it. Some people start Bright Line Eating and they fall for it, man, they get into it. They think this is awesome, and they devote a lot of time to it, and they feel motivated to do it every minute. I mean, okay, first of all, I just want to point out that's probably not too different from how Einstein felt about his equations when he was discovering the theory of Relativity. It's how most artists feel when they're immersed in a project that they're doing. There's nothing inherently dysfunctional about getting super passionate about something and suddenly wanting to spend all your time on it. Human beings are like that. We get like that. Not everybody equally, but certainly some of us get like that quite a bit. I know I'm that way for sure, and yes, I'm super addictable, but I'm also just super passionate. I live life full out and when I get into things, I dive in. I am into it, right? It's not all addiction.
It might be the case that Bright Line Eating is disruptive and disrupting your relationships a bit, right? Especially since it's probably turned over the apple cart in terms of disrupting some regular behavior patterns with the people that are closest to you because people tend to eat together and now you're eating at more specific times. You're eating more specific things. You're eating only what you wrote down the night before. That's going to be super disruptive for the people around you. It's kind of breaking the unspoken behavioral contract that you had with 'em all along that you built up over time together, co-creating this unspoken set of shared norms about how you interact through the day and how you share food together, and now you've unilaterally without discussing it with them, probably just dropped your end of that contract. You're just out, right? Peace out, homie. See you. I'm doing this other thing now. And if you're also spending tons and tons of time on Bright Line Eating time that maybe you used to spend with them or that you used to spend talking about other things, now you're talking about Bright Line Eating all the time at work all the time. You're bringing it up, "Oh, yeah, well, in this other video, this and Oh yeah, I'm working on this and Bright Line Eating all day all the time." It might be disrupting your relationships. Does that mean it's an addiction or does it just mean that you have a new passion that you're talking about a lot and you're annoying them? It might just mean that the passion will settle down typically, or at least balance out these social contracts that got broken. If you're mindful about it and you're wise and you're compassionate and caring and agreeable, you will work to set new contracts and you'll maybe express to them, "I love you and I care about you, and I realize that I'm not eating with you the way I used to, but I want to be closer to you than I ever was. I'm actually more available for that now than I ever used to be. Can we please work together to find ways to bond and share and connect more now just not over food or at least not over food in the same way? Would you be open to that?" Those are conversations you can have.
Now, is Netflix an addiction? Is your smartphone an addiction? Well, again, is it escalating? If it's an addiction, you're probably building tolerance over time. Is it escalating? Are you using more than you want or intend to? Do you have boundaries around your smartphone that you fail to keep? Do you promise yourself that you'll turn the Netflix off or the TV off or whatever by 10:00 PM and you keep breaking that promise and watching two more episodes till midnight? Is that distressing you a lot? Is it impairing your functioning at work the next day? It might be an addiction, a mild addiction if, I mean, I'm sure there are severe smartphone addictions or episode-based streaming TV service addictions, but yeah, there might be addiction in there. I'm not saying it's not. These things can be addictive. I'm not saying it's not.
Is the person who had an eating disorder and now says the gym is their new addiction? Is that true? Well, it could be. Exercise addiction is for sure a thing. Are they doing it to the point where it's disrupting the rest of their life? Is it really unhealthy? The level of are they continuing to jog through knee sprains and hurting themselves? Is their doctor concerned? Are their family members expressing concern? "Hey, you're spending six hours a day in the gym or worried about you?" Yeah, maybe it's an addiction. It could also be though that what they've done is they've gotten really involved in a healthy habit that they're not purging anymore and going for an hour jog every day, and they're really committed to it in that black and white way that they can often get, but their hour a day jog is not escalating. They're not trying to quit. They feel really committed about it, and they feel really empowered about it, and they don't actually have clinically significant impairment or clinically significant distress. They're not distressed about it. They're loving their runs and it's not impairing their functioning. So, I guess it was a trick question. The person who used to have an eating disorder and now is saying they're addicted to exercise, that could go either way. That's totally ambiguous. We don't know unless we ask them a bunch of questions and figure out the parameters of their exercising, whether it's addictive or not.
I just wanted to shoot this vlog to shine a light on what addiction actually is and how I just encourage you just to be mindful, I guess I invite us all to be mindful about how we use that word addiction. Addiction is a beast. Addiction is a real thing, and throw in that word around like, oh, everyone has an addiction. Everyone's addicted to something, or I've been playing gin rummy with my daughter every night. It's my new addiction. Easy, easy on that. Really, it's an addiction. Addiction is a thing that said, I'm no language police. If you want to keep saying that, keep saying it, but I just wanted to, through my lived experience, God knows I've had more than my average share of it just through my lived experience. Just share what addiction is so that if you're actually curious, if a Part of you is wondering, geez, am I addicted to these streaming episodes? Now you have some criteria by which to make that assessment. Is it causing you clinically significant impairment? Is it messing with other things? Like are you chronically not getting enough sleep to function at work? Is it causing you a lot of distress? Or overall, do you just look forward to watching your episodes? Do you keep trying to quit and you are not able to? Do you try to cut back and you can't? Do you keep promising yourself one episode and then watching five, then yeah, maybe it's an addiction. I don't know.
Of course, addictions are mild, moderate, or severe, so it could be somewhere on the spectrum of an addiction. Maybe. Is Bright Line Eating your new addiction? Is that even possible? Could be. I could see that could be, I mean, spoken by someone who's gotten addiction to more than her fair share of things. It could be. What would that look like? Well, first of all, you would've had to have identified that it's not good for you for some reason. I don't know why that would be and would have to be trying to cut back or quit. Your involvement in Bright Line Eating and your inability to do so would have to be causing you clinically significant distress, or the level of your participation in it would be having to impair your functioning in other aspects of your life. You'd have to be not going to work, so you could stay in post in the online community and binge watch more videos, right? You'd have to be ruining your relationships by your impassioned love of Bright Line Eating. You'd have to be really affecting other areas of your life, and maybe you used to watch an hour of Bright Line Eating videos a day, and now you're up to five or six hours a day and you're going through all the archives and multiple times, right? Yeah. Then it's an addiction. Then it's an addiction. If it's just something you love and you're passionate about and your friends are annoyed because you're talking about it so darn much, it's not an addiction. You're healthy, you're happy, you're finally free of the albatross that's been around your neck for all of these years. You're not addicted, you're free, and you're joyous, and you're excited about Bright Line Eating, and I'm thrilled for you. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
