Hey there. It's Susan Peirce Thompson and welcome to the Weekly Vlog.
I'll tell you right now, the big question in this vlog is, am I going to drop an F-bomb? And you'll see why in a second. I think maybe I shot a vlog once on swearing. I stopped swearing in the Vlog a few years ago because, I don't know, a few people said to me, "I really want to show the Vlog in church, and I can't because I never know if you're going to swear." Some mom was saying, "I really want to listen to the Vlog while I'm making dinner, but I got my little kids around. And when you swear, it's not good for me."
Anyway, the topic of this week's vlog is JFTFP, which is an acronym that we use all the time now in Bright Line Eating. I didn't think of it. Some Bright Lifer at some point thought of it. If it was you, and I'm failing to acknowledge you, I apologize. I really don't know who came up with the acronym JFTFP, but it's brilliant. It's a part of our culture now. It stands for Just Follow The Frigging Plan. Just Follow The Fabulous Plan. Just Follow The Fantastic Plan.
I want to talk about this notion. It's pretty core now in Bright Line Eating. I would say other than maybe the BLE logo or UnstoppaBLE, B-L-E, I would say JFTFP is the most common tattoo that we see people getting in Bright Line Eating, and we do see people inking themselves up with JFTFP. I've got it on a couple bracelets people have sent to me.
The thing about JFTFP is it's an identity and it has to do with not just owning an identity, but a really brilliant twofer because it's, I think, the best way to develop an identity because when you decide to just follow the fabulous plan, you can do it on a day-by-day basis. You can do it on a trial basis. You can do it on a one-meal-at-a-time basis. You can do it as an experiment. It really works as a way to baby-step your way into Bright Line Eating, to ease into the swimming pool from the shallow side, if you will.
But then what happens as you watch yourself JFTFP, of course, it works. It really works. It starts to build your identity as someone who really does just JFTFP, someone who believes in doing that, someone who has found that it works for them, someone who prefers it, and it becomes an identity that you grow into. I always say that you can't build an identity overnight. Having a solid identity as a Bright Lifer, as someone who does Bright Line Eating is really critical to succeed at this for the long term. But you can't just decide to have that and boom, you have one. But with JFTFP, you can, because you can decide to have the identity of someone who just follows the plan for today when you start out. It makes sense conceptually. Then as you grow in your Bright journey, you don't really have anything to change. Your identity is still someone who does Bright Line Eating, JFTFP. It's brilliant in that way, I think.
This Vlog topic was brought to me by my dear friend, Tosca, who's actually at my house right now. She's right over there in the kitchen. Hi, Tosca. Thank you, Tosca, for the Vlog topic. She's a hiker and she's quite the mountaineering, amazing outdoors person. As a matter of fact, she's training for a triathlon right now on her Bright journey, having lost her, I don't know, 110 pounds or something like that. She's got this new, Bright body that she loves doing stuff outdoors with.
She was sharing this story about climbing a mountain, which is something that she does quite often. This was a long time ago. She was with her friends, I don't know, maybe high school, college, climbing mountains in Colorado, where she's from. She and her friends noticed that this mountainside had these long, broad paths. We call them switchbacks. These long, broad paths snaking back and forth across the mountain.
In their teenagers-know-best kind of way, they thought, "Well, that's dumb. What a waste of effort. Let's just go straight up the mountain." They left the old fuddy-duddies going there along these big, broad, well-trodden switchback paths, and they just took their own paths straight up the mountain, and it kind of wrecked them. It was really hard. The rocks were loose. It was scrambly. There were no good paths. They had to stop a lot. It was treacherous.
And she reports that the old folks walking the switchbacks beat them up the mountain. She just said, "Why do people recovering from food addiction or looking to lose their excess weight, why don't they just follow the path? There's a well-worn path that works, that lots of people have taken, that you know is going to get you up the mountainside comfortably, easily, and it's just effective. Why are people looking to reinvent the wheel?"
I think this is just a great analogy of JFTFP. It seems almost too easy. It's very easeful. It's not going to be treacherous. It's a big, wide path because so many people have walked it before you. But you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You don't need to create the path. If you just JFTFP, it's pretty much guaranteed to get you where you're trying to go, and with no angst, no strain, minimal possible effort. I love that analogy. Thank you, Tosca.
Yeah, I actually, sitting right here on this, well, on the couch that you can't see that's right behind me, I went to BrightLineEating.com yesterday, and I always do this in anticipation, like in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Vlogs that I've shot, have I done a Vlog on JFTFP? I went to BrightLineEating.com and I went to Vlog, and I put JFTFP into the search box and nothing came up. I thought, "Well, I'll be. It's time."
That was the Weekly Vlog. I'll see you next week.
