Often Bright Line Eating can feel confining or restrictive at first. But, when you stick with it, the brain changes and you begin to feel more and more liberated.
Does Bright Line Eating Feel Difficult or Restrictive?
In this “Best of the Vlog” favorite, we address an important question: How is it that you say that Bright Line Eating leads to food freedom, when the minute I start the plan, I feel more and more constrained and imprisoned? This vlog explains why that is—and why there is so much hope.
Moving Past Food and Weight Issues
On a recent Bright Lifers Accountability Call, I was talking to a long-time Bright Lifer. She’s been Bright for years, and was talking about how she’s moving past food and weight and paying more attention to her purpose in life. Her life is opening up.
Her comments relate to the feeling of constraint vs. freedom. I told her that solid Bright Line Eating recovery has an hourglass shape. Before you start Bright Line Eating, your freedoms are unlimited. You eat what you want, when you want.
Starting Bright Line Eating Can Feel Isolating
Then you start Bright Line Eating, and the hourglass starts to narrow. In many cases, that feeling is hard to take. It can feel like a death sentence, or like the gates of a jail cell slamming shut. We feel like our world is narrowing, and we are becoming isolated. We’re afraid to eat in restaurants or to go to someone’s house for dinner.
I suspect for some people, that’s when they leave Bright Line Eating. They decide it’s not worth it. They might love to be able to clear up their health issues and live in a right-sized body, but not at that price.
The Best Antidote: Working a Strong Program
But what Gerry and I were talking about, and what’s important for you to know, is that life opens back up if you work a strong program. If you allow recovery to take its course, you start to feel more and more free.
As you practice, restaurants become good again. You learn where you can get a Bright meal that’s tasty, and you start to look forward to it. Suddenly, eating out is on the table again, which is gratifying.
And as you get more comfortable being Bright, travel gets easier. Typically, when I travel, I go to a store for breakfast food, which I weigh and measure in my hotel room. And I can pack my lunch, or eat out. You develop a rhythm.
It takes some time to get these experiences under your belt. The first ones may be scary and tentative. But then the world starts to open up. If you stick with it, it opens all the way back up, and you’re in a right-sized body, with lots of experience under your belt. You socialize more, and it’s fine.
A Message of Hope
This past weekend, I went up to Toronto with five friends. We stayed in an Airbnb, saw Hamilton, and participated in a workshop. We laughed so much! And they were eating and drinking, and it was fine. I had so much fun, and at no point on that trip did I feel anxiety about food. I navigated fine. That’s what it’s like when the hourglass opens back up. You can go to restaurants just as you used to, and it’s not hard.
So this weekly vlog is a message of hope if you’re embarking on Bright Line Eating and you’re feeling the constraint. You may be thinking that you can’t live in a world where social situations are so scary and you keep feeling deprived.
I want you to know that if you stick with your Bright Lines, it will not always feel that way. It will open back up. You will again experience the warmth and camaraderie, and closeness that you used to feel socially.
Turns out that those good feelings don’t require eating and drinking with abandon. So have hope. Stick it out.
The Hourglass Shape of Recovery was originally published on March 11, 2020: https://www.brightlineeating.com/blog/the-hourglass-shape-of-recovery
Historical note: When Susan and her five friends went to Toronto, the news of an illness was in the media but it was unclear how worrisome it was. As they drove back to Rochester, NY from Toronto, COVID lockdowns happened. They were some of the last people from the USA to get across the border from Canada.
