Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. I have something to talk about this week. I'm surprised I haven't shot a vlog about this yet, but it has to do with my journey toward getting a pull-up. If you know me well, this has been the number one thing on my lifetime bucket list for a long, long, long time. I mean, well over a decade, maybe two decades. I have been focused on this for a long time and I've been thinking lately about how this desire of mine to do a pull-up relates to my Bright Line Eating® journey and your Bright Line Eating journey. There's a lot of things in the similarities of striving to do some sort of physical feat and striving to lose all your excess weight. Keep it off. Yeah, they are similar. I'm going to talk about that this week. In particular, I want to talk about five key similarities.
First, I just want to set the context of what this means to me. When I was young, let's see, I was raised in the late 70s and all through the 80s there was this thing in the United States called the Presidential Fitness Challenge. As far as I know, it was required. Now, I went to a private girls school for fifth through eighth grade called Ms. Catherine Delmar Burke School in San Francisco, California. I was there on scholarship, and we wore little blue and white sailor girl uniforms. Every year, the time would come around where we would need to do a battery of fitness tests. I remember doing full sit-ups, like the kinds that are no longer recommended. Apparently they're really not good for your back, but where someone holds your feet and your knees are bent and you've got your hands behind your head and you're going all the way up into a full sit up. The challenge was how many of those could you do in a minute? There was also some running involved, and one of the challenges was to hold yourself at a pull-up bar with your chin above the bar. Someone would lift you up there or you would stand on a platform kind of already up there and then the platform would disappear, and you would have to just hold yourself there for as long as you could. The metric was how many seconds could you hold there. It was a measure of upper body strength, and I was abysmal at it. I mean, I was in the bottom 10% of the class for sure. There were 44 students in our class, and I was in the, I don't think I had the shortest hold time, but maybe the second or third shortest hold time in our whole class. I just couldn't do it. I would step off the platform and try to hold myself and I would just drop. I just had no strength to hold myself there, and I wasn't super overweight at that time, but didn't have the muscles to hold. Whatever weight I did have, I did not have it. So anyway, I guess all that to say for me now, I'm almost 50. Doing a pullup is a big, it's like just a long way away. I think they have those gravitron machines at the gym where you can get a lot of support. I have known for years that I've got to support more than half my body weight. In order to be able to do an assisted, I need a lot of support.
Anyway, the first Bright Line eating Principle that I think applies to all this is unstoppability. Just the reality that just because, for example, we come into Bright Line Eating, we want to get Bright, we want to lose all our excess weight and keep it off for good. It might not be our time. Life gets lifey. Things happen. What happened for me was I started seriously training to try to do a pull-up and then shoulder impingement injuries kicked in, and I was just in too much pain in my shoulders. Then about a year and a half ago as I was going to get a cortisol injection, cortisol, no cortisone, cortisone injection in my right shoulder for that shoulder impingement pain, somehow the needle injection of that cortisone injection triggered frozen shoulder and suddenly I couldn't move my shoulder at all. I couldn't lift it five inches my arm, I couldn't lift my arm five inches. That shoulder impingement took over a year to thaw away. That brings me up to this year 2024. My shoulder impingement was mostly gone. My frozen shoulder was mostly gone. I was doing a lot of physical therapy and a lot of fancy stuff like soft wave ultrasound treatments and things like that to try to, I've talked about my joint pain here on this vlog before doing a lot of treatments, and my shoulders felt pretty good. So yeah, it took years of attempts to start training, and there were times when I did train successfully, but it just took a long time. It just took a long time to get to a point where I could actually start to train. But in February of this year, I did start to train toward a pull-up. So, active training.
That brings me to the second lesson that I want to talk about because in the book Rezoom™, one of the best books I've written, I just really love this book and it's on page 100. I feel like this is one of the least valued but most valuable books in the Bright Line eating library. I just really encourage you to get that book. It's so comforting, especially to people whose journey is long and not perfect. It's all about relapse, how to prevent relapse, how to inoculate yourself against relapse, how to ride the waves of a journey that goes on and on and has its undulations to it. Anyway, on page 100, in the book Rezoom, I talk about something James Clear talks about in “Atomic Habits,” which is that most people when they want to change something, when they have a goal, they focus on the outcome. My outcome being I want to do a pull-up. But he said that focus on the outcome doesn't get you anywhere. I mean, it doesn't get you nothing. Having a goal is better than not having a goal. At least you know what you're striving for. But what creates sustained behavior change and actually achieving outcomes is actually to start at the level of identity and then move on to processes, systems, habits, actions. What process or system are you going to follow to get there? And oh, by the way, are you going to be someone who shows up for that process or system faithfully? If you focus on those two things, the identity and the process, then the outcome takes care of itself. I started to think about that deeply. The process that I chose was basically I got a good personal trainer and I just resolved to do what he told me to do. The process basically looked like for years, I focused on hanging, like dead hanging, from a stationary bar, just hanging all my weight down, just hanging. That was kind of cool because it made me taller actually by about three quarters of an inch. I got taller doing that. I'm the only person I know at midlife who's gotten taller. But that's a consistent measurable finding at the doctor's office. I am taller than I used to be, so that's cool.
Then as I was dead hanging there, just hanging, dead weight hanging, I would seat my scaps, meaning pull my shoulder blades, down over and over again. That was my training for a long time. Then he had me incorporate some pull-ups with a thick stretchy band assisting me. I was stepping on a band that would, kind of like a rubber band, that would help carry some of my weight as I did. That was my routine for a long time. I would transition from thicker bands down to thinner bands, down to yet thinner bands over time. Anyway, I just did what he told me to do. I transitioned from training once a week to twice a week and then to three times a week on my pull-ups. I did some of those trainings at home. We have a pull-up bar at home. Then he incorporated some negatives, which is like you hold your chin at the bar, kind of like that presidential fitness challenge, just holding there and then lower yourself down as slowly as you can. When you get all the way down, that's called a negative. I would do two sets of negatives in a training session as well. That was my training regimen. This brings me to the identity piece. How did I, was my identity someone who could do a pull-up? No. I realized what my identity needed to be was someone who strives for physical goals and shows up for the training consistently with accountability and support. That's my identity as an exerciser. It's not so much a particular exercise goal, it's the identity of being an exerciser, being someone who's striving towards specific exercise goals, showing up for the training consistently, and getting support, having accountability.
That brings me to the support accountability piece, which is the third way that this whole thing is similar to Bright Line Eating, because I don't really feel like my training was as on track as it needed to be. Yeah, I was focused on doing what my trainer said, and I was doing a pretty good job of that. But then my friend Timo said that he wanted to partner with me somehow in supporting each other. He wanted to do 10 pull-ups, and he was at like seven or something like that. He said, aren't you trying to do a pull-up by your 50th birthday? And I said, I am. And he said, well, I want to do 10 pull-ups, and I could make the date by your 50th birthday. Let's have that goal together. I said, Timo, I kind of like the idea of having a shared goal that we're both striving for, but what I really like the idea of is us supporting each other in the process or the system of actually getting there. I said, how about we leave each other a voice memo every Sunday night saying how we did it, sticking to our process that week, right? However many workouts it is, however many sets and reps did we stick to it. In early February, we started to report into each other on how we were doing, sticking with our processor system. That is what really completed my identity. Again, my identity is that I strive for physical goals. I show up for the processor system that I've chosen, show up to those workouts faithfully with accountability and support. That's my exercise identity and Timo and my check-ins on Sunday nights, really flesh that out. I got to the point where I was pretty close to doing a pull-up actually recently, within the last three weeks, and something kept happening. I'm going to show you a couple videos here.
This is me trying to do a pull-up. Check it out. You can see my trainer is there. That's my trainer, Justin. He's trying to hold my shins, but he's not touching me actually. He's there to support if I need it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do one. Then in the second video, it's just me by myself. That's one of my kids taking that video. I couldn't do it. I got stuck at 90 degrees. At 90 degrees. So, not today. This is where the final, well, it's not the final, the penultimate, the second to last Bright Line Eating similarity comes in.
Last Tuesday, I came up to the pull-up bar. Someone recorded me, my trainer Justin recorded me. And naturally, before I started to do my pull-up, I paused for a second and I remembered the WOOP. Do you know the WOOP? Have you learned the WOOP? We teach the WOOP here in Bright Line Eating. It's an acronym from Gabrielle Oettingen, who's a professor at NYU, and she teaches effective visualization. Visualization itself is only moderately effective. What's really effective is the WOOP style of visualization, which is where you visualize yourself succeeding at something, and then you visualize the obstacle, and you visualize yourself having a plan to overcome that obstacle. At this point in my journey, I knew that I was going to get stuck at 90 degrees. I closed my eyes, and I visualized how hard I was going to get at 90 degrees, and then I visualized myself bursting through it with pure grit, like mental fortitude and pulling myself higher than 90 degrees and getting it all the way up there. This is what happened. Check it out.
Oh yeah. Oh my God. That was it! That was it. This past Tuesday, I did a pull-up! I did a pull-up, I did a pull-up, I did a pull-up! Oh my God, I did a pull-up. If you're on the podcast and listening, you missed it. I did a pull-up. You had to see it visually, but it was me holding a bar visualizing for a while. That was the WOOP. That was the WOOP that I did. I literally visualized myself bursting through that 90 degree stuck point. Then I started pulling up and I did. I burst through the 90 degree stuck point, and I got all the way to the top. Then Justin accused me of being a showoff because I went down slowly and looked at the camera. I was so happy. I was so happy. That slow on the way down, that was just training for my negatives. I just was used to doing that slow on the way down.
Anyway, so that was amazing. I feel super proud. I got in my pull-up two plus months before my 50th birthday. I'll be 50 on June 29th. And this brings me to the final Bright Line Eating lesson, which is something that I teach in Bright Line Mind, our positive psychology course in the Bright Line Eating membership. I teach about goal setting and how achieving goals doesn't make us happier. Now, was I happy when I did that pull-up? Heck yeah. I was happy. I was thrilled. I'm thrilled. Now recounting it to you. I was so, so happy. I was just giddy with joy and happiness, and I was happy for a couple days, but did you catch that? I was happy for a couple days, right? This type of goal achievement does not move the needle in terms of raising our baseline level of happiness. It's a temporary spike. It's a blip. It's a blip.
Achieving our goals doesn't actually make us lastingly happier. But what does, is having a goal and striving for it. It's the striving that makes us lastingly happier. The pursuit of something that matters to us. It can't be any goal. It has to be a self-concordant goal. What I noticed, self-concordant, meaning true to us, really aligned. Here's an example. After I did that, I found myself suddenly thinking, oh my gosh, I probably have time to do three pull-ups by my 50th birthday. I only started seriously training for this in early February. I've got that much time again till my birthday. I could probably do three pull-ups, maybe five. Then I realized, actually, that's not what I care about most right now. Right now, I am trying to become a swimmer, like a lap swimmer. I never was before. I mean, I could always swim, but my knees are just not tolerating jogging anymore, or even walking on steep hills. I'm looking for a way to do cardiovascular exercise that's easier on my joints, and swimming is a good option, and my shoulder was creaking at me when I was swimming. Now I'm trying to get my shoulder acclimated to me swimming laps. What I want to do is build up to 30 minutes a session. Right now, I'm at about 15, 16 minutes a session and increasing very slowly, like a minute a week. My goal, my next goal is to become someone who can swim 30 minutes a session three times a week. I also have a goal to be able to do 20 full pushups like I used to be able to do. Pushups are pretty hard for my shoulder impingement. But with the right form and maybe some assistance with the grip, I think I could do that. What I did is I let go of the goal to do three pull-ups by my birthday. Why? Because it didn't feel self-concordant, to be honest. It just felt excessive. I mean, not excessive, but not what matters to me most.
As you look at your Bright Line Eating journey, remember that reaching goal weight's not going to make you lastingly happier. It'll feel good for a moment. But what will make you lastingly happier is being someone who is in the process of striving for what matters to you and gamifying your Bright Line Eating journey in some kind of way, whether it's making it all the way through the Bright Roadmap and then doing it again so you can help other people through the Bright Roadmap, whether it's really maximizing your peace and serenity in your bright body, in your goal body. Maybe there's certain things you want to be able to do in your body when you get to your Bright body. If maybe you're there now, what do you want to be able to do in your body? Maybe it's that you want to publish a book or pick up painting, but that kind of striving is healthy, and it's important to remember that getting there will be fun momentarily, but it's not going to move the needle in terms of lasting happiness. And that's okay. Just set another goal. So, I did it. I did a pull-up before my 50th birthday.
Oh, a bonus tip. One more thing I forgot to say. The other thing that this illustrates about goal setting is that a good goal is a goal that you've got about a 50% chance of achieving what'll make you stretch and reach so that when you achieve something, it feels really amazing. If you don't ever achieve it, it's okay. Because the truth is that not achieving goals that we set doesn't decrease our esteem of ourselves. As a matter of fact, we think more of ourselves that we strove for something that was worthwhile and hard to achieve, and we understand we didn't achieve it. It was hard. Anyway, a pull-up was a goal that I think I had about a 50/50 chance of ever achieving, but this one I achieved. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.