Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. So you probably know about our quiz that we have here in Bright Line Eating, right? We call it the Susceptibility Quiz, and it's spits out a score from 1 to 10, which is your Susceptibility Score. And we've had this quiz for many, many years.
And a long, long time ago, I validated it and changed the scoring of it based on some data we'd collected. And we really looked at the validation of the instrument and so forth, and you can find that Vlog in the Vlog archive.
And ever since the beginning, the Quiz asks you in the instructions to think back to a time in your life when your eating was at its worst and to... like a three-month period of time, and to take the Quiz with the perspective of how your eating was then.
And the reason for that is very, very neuro-scientifically solid. The reason is that once those behaviors are established, once those fiber tracts are laid in the brain, they never go away. And so, you've got to approach your eating and your recovery program with the same vigor that you would've needed back then, even if it was a long time ago, because you're always vulnerable.
Once you have that kind of brain that engages in those intensely addictive food behaviors, you've just got to be more vigilant than someone who's never been there.
It is unfortunately true, neurologically speaking, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Once food obsessed, always vulnerable again to food obsession.
So I emphasize that a lot. And what I realize and what I want to talk about in today's Vlog is the flip side of that coin, the downside of that perspective, which is that there's been relatively little discussion around here of how Bright Line Eating really is an effective treatment for food addiction.
And how someone's Susceptibility Score in terms of how they orient toward food today really does change. So even if once a 10++, always a 10++; once a 9, always a 9... Even if that's true, we really can celebrate, yes, but I'm living as if I'm a one or a two or a three on the Susceptibility Scale today.
In other words, that's how much my condition of food addiction, my disease, is in remission. And yeah, Bright Line Eating is a very effective treatment for the disease of food addiction. And we do recover around here.
And something that I did the other day kind of blew my mind. I don't want to say frequently, but periodically, let's say, I have periodically taken the Susceptibility Quiz again to see how I score in terms of how I'm doing today.
And typically the score I would get would be a three or something like that, maybe a four, a three, or... yeah, usually a three. And I took the Quiz the other day and I scored a one.
And if you'll recall, a little over a year ago, I cleaned up my act with quantities in restaurants. I went back to day one. And since that day, I have not had one bite of extraneous food in a restaurant or out of it, just really, really clean, immaculate, Bright Lines.
And I've been gifted, it just really feels like, grace, with honest eyes. So I go into a restaurant just wanting to get the simplest, Bright meal that I can. And I have this orientation of just not wanting to walk out of the restaurant second guessing myself or thinking about whether this quantity or that quantity might have been too much.
And so, I just am really honest with how I order and how I take off food off my plate that I'm not going to eat, and I get it onto a side plate. And I stare at my food again, and I make sure that if I were at a carnival and I were submitting this piece of protein, this plate of vegetables as my entry into who can come closest to exactly four ounces of this or six ounces of that contest, that would be my entry submission. And I would be as sure as I possibly could be that it is exactly that amount and I'm able to access that level of rigor in my honesty. And it's incredible.
And I'm working my program very vigorously these days. My habits are on track, and I'm not saying this for pats on the back or because I'm so virtuous, I don't know how I have gotten this willingness except, of course, just being beaten into submission by doing it the other way and it doesn't work.
I get tired of not being free, not really, really feeling in alignment and feeling free. And so, I'm so spot on these days and I feel so free. And sure enough, it came out in my Susceptibility Score.
And so, I've started to notice because I got a one... I am working my program differently and my Current Susceptibility Score is not a three. It's a one. I am utterly free from wanting more food at the end of the meal, from being obsessed about eating this or that, from not being satisfied by a regular amount of food, all those things. I'm just free to a level that I wasn't before.
And I also notice that sometimes some amount of wanting to eat a little bit more at the end of a meal, not that I do it, but that I want some, my breakfast ends and I want a little more food. Well, then that's not, on the Quiz, a one out of five--that would be two out of five.
And so, I was curious. So I put in two out of five on a couple of those answers, and that puts my score at a two. And I'm like, "Okay, so that's interesting."
Depending on how I'm working my program right now, I'm probably ebbing and flowing between a one and a two, and I could use that Current Susceptibility Score as a litmus test for how I'm working my program, and a way to give myself feedback about whether I want to make a change in some kind of way to get yet more free.
So I want to introduce this tool to you, the Current Susceptibility Score, because we talk so much about your real Susceptibility Score, but there is such a thing as a Current Susceptibility Score, and it's a measure of how much your condition of food addiction, however much food addiction you have on board--maybe you're a six, maybe you're a 7, 8, 9, 10, whatever--how much it's in remission, how you're working your program, and how free you are.
Current Susceptibility Score, CSS, and to take the Quiz from that perspective, you do need to modify the questions a little bit. I find that not all the questions really apply, especially if you're weighing and measuring your food. Do you feel satisfied at the end of a meal or are you able to stop after a normal amount of food? If you're weighing and measuring your food, then, I guess, the question is: when you eat your weighted and measured amount, do you want more after that or do you actually eat more? Do you grab another handful of nuts after dinner? Do you put additional food on your plate? Are you eating bites, licks, and tastes? Right?
So yeah, with just some slight wording modifications, you can take the Quiz as you are today and get a reading, get some feedback on how you're working your program, and use retaking and retaking and retaking the Susceptibility Quiz as a way to keep a pulse, keep your finger on the pulse of your Bright Line Eating program.
I was pretty stunned when mine went from a three to a one. I guess prior to that, I'd so often gotten a three that I kind of thought, "Well, I'm not sure a 10++, like a hope-to-die food addict, like I am could ever be a one."
But sure enough, if I work a rigorous enough program that is appropriately rigorous for the extreme degree of food addiction that I personally have on board, I can be a one. Fascinating.
So Current Susceptibility Score, try it out. You can access the Quiz so many ways. There's a couple of you URLs you can go to. There's foodfreedomquiz.com. There is foodaddictionquiz.com, and there's also just the Bright Line Eating website, brightlineeating.com. And then to find the Quiz, you have to scroll all the way, all the way, all the way, all the way to the very bottom, to the little footer that looks like it just has the copyright date and the address or whatever. And down there, there's a link to the Susceptibility Quiz.
And notice that just by the way the tech works these days, you have to put in your name and email address twice. Sorry about that. It's just the way the system works right now. I know that's clunky, but it's not a mistake. It actually needs to be that way for now.
But you can take the Quiz as often as you want, it's free. And there's a new tool for you to use. And that's the Weekly Vlog. I'll see you next week.
