Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the weekly vlog. Someone called me yesterday. First, they texted and said, “Are you free to talk sometime today?” And I said, “In a little bit.” I called them back and they said, “I binged today.” We talked for a bit. They were sharing about how they keep doing this. They stay Bright for a bit, and then they pick up the food again and they work their program a little bit, and then they fall short, and it unravels, and they don't work their tools, they don't stay connected with people on this path. They let things slip and then they binge. They've been doing this for a while, and they asked me for my thoughts, and I was very candid with them. I said, “I don't actually think you have a genuine problem with I not being able to stay Bright. I think what's going on is you don't want to stay Bright deep down.” I said, “If you really wanted to stay Bright, you'd be doing things differently. Deep down, if all the way down you wanted to stay Bright, you'd be doing things differently. You wouldn't be letting your tools slip. You would be defending your Bright Lines. You would be doing what you know you need to do to stay on this path.” She was so relieved to hear that. She said, “You're right. That's so helpful.” I shared with her that something has happened for me, thank God. It feels like such a miracle, such a blessing.
The coming up on three years that I've been immaculately beautifully, sparkly, Bright, what I've experienced is deep, deep, deep down, there's been a shift. Here's what it feels like at the deepest level. It feels like a clarity, a certainty, a knowing, an absolute conviction that I will defend my Bright Lines no matter what, that I will protect them. That no bite of food, that no fancy experience, that no travel, no restaurant, no nothing is worth the peace that I have right now. The freedom that I have right now and the life that I get to live because I'm so grounded in the cadence, the structure, the security of my beautiful Bright Line Eating® program. Nothing is worth that. I know that if you airlifted me blindfolded into the middle of a jungle, I would not break my Bright Lines. That might look bizarre. I might go hunting for a roadside stand that had vegetables. I might be getting insects together into a pile and eyeballing four ounces of them. I can't tell you what I would do, but I know that I would not break my Bright Lines. I would stay Bright no matter what, no matter what. There are so many moments when I reaffirm that to myself on a regular basis of like, no, I am not going to order a more complicated thing in a restaurant. I just want to stay Bright. I just want to protect this. It's amazing how in these last three years, I've gotten back on track with my habits and my routines, my morning habits stack and my evening habit stack. Immediately when I come back from a trip and I stay on my rhythm, even when I'm on a trip, I print off a custom nightly checklist sheet for each trip. I go on thinking in advance what my program is going to look like, how I'm going to carry my Bright Line Eating program portably to wherever I'm traveling to. I don't ever rely on an airplane to give me food that I'm going to eat. I weigh and measure every last bite of food, every meal, I bring it on that plane, even if I'm going to be served a meal and there's an entree available, that's chicken and rice and vegetables. No, I'm not eating that. I'm going to weigh and measure my own food and bring it on that plane. I will defend my Bright Lines.
When I talked about my feeling all the way down, that's like that. Now, don't get me wrong, I have a Food Indulger Part for sure. My daughter, Maya, is baking up a storm these days. She's quite a competent little baker. She really understands all of it. She's exploring recipes, and so my kitchen is filled with that stuff regularly all the time. I can feel a Food Indulger Part of me that wants to consider the possibility of looking into that bowl of dough in a certain way. And it's like this. It's a Part of me. It's down there. But the preponderance of perspective in all of the Parts inside my system is such a hell no for that. No, it's not any form of pleasure, release, excitement, deliciousness. No, it's not. It's toxic. It's poisonous. It comes with hell. It comes with the squirrels running around in my head. It comes with the demolition of all I hold dear and true in my life and the overwhelming army of Parts inside of me roar up. And as I'm walking through the kitchen with all of the baking stuff all around, I'm avoiding even looking in that bowl. I'm avoiding the smells. I wash my hands sometimes I am weighing a Bright meal on a counter as far away from the epicenter of it as I can. And Maya says, “I'm sorry I'm taking up so much of the kitchen.” I say, “That's all right, sweetie. I'm good.” And I'm just bring my digital scale over somewhere onto the table over here and weigh and measure my food. It's fine.
So, when I describe that to her, it was clear to her that she's not in that place. That on some level, and I don't think she's done Parts Work yet, but that on some level, the preponderance of what's going on inside her is a narrative of this is too extreme. I'm not sure I want this. Do I really have to do this? Am I really a food addict? Do I have to stay Bright? That's actually what's going on inside of her. She also, I'm sure, has Parts of her that want it and certainly would rather lose some weight and that kind of thing. But there is not an alignment around really wanting to be Bright. I think that that's helpful to know and understand if you're struggling in the food. I don't think that's everyone's story. I have actually, gosh, when I was binging in Australia back in 2003, the end of 2003, so this is like 22 years ago, I was binging my brains out and I wanted to be Bright, and I just couldn't be. The addiction was too strong. I couldn't until I could. It took me three months of binging my brains out intermittently to get back to sanity and to put my food on the scale one day at a time and have that stick. But so, I don't think it's everyone's story. I'm not accusing you. I'm not saying if you're not Bright, you don't want it. Don't misunderstand me. I'm describing a psychology deep inside that you can explore for yourself what is true for you on the inside about how much you actually want this, right? Or is there a level of conflict inside, that's fair. You may not want this right now, or Parts of you may not, and there might be some work to do to come to mediate between the parts of you that want it and the Parts of you that don't want it. I shared with her, that's fair.
I've had three years of this level of Brightness, this kind of, I don't want to call it fanatical but defended to the hilt. My Bright Lines right now are defended to the hilt just when I'm doing my budget, my national budget, deep inside, I put a lot of funds toward defense on my Bright Lines, like I am not letting my Bright Lines slip, and that is the priority. But I have had three years of that, and I first came into food recovery in 1995 into a 12-step program. It wasn't a no sugar, no flour weighing and measuring program. It was a more figure out what works for you and abstain from the eating behaviors and foods that might give you difficulty. It took me a long time even to figure out that sugar should be on that list. I remember being insulted. This woman came up to me in a meeting once and said, maybe you should abstain from sugar. I was horrified. I was so insulted. I said, what makes you think that? She was sheepish, and I was so defensive that it caught her off guard a little bit. She said, “I don't know. Well, I mean, you were just sharing in the meeting. I know you're in college at UC Berkeley, and if you were writing a paper last night, didn't you share just now in the meeting that you ate a box of brown sugar as a snack to get through writing that paper?” She said, “I don't know. I'm just thinking maybe that's not a healthy snack.” I was like, oh, maybe she's right. Maybe I do have a problem with sugar. It took me a long time to even arrive at that level of self-awareness. So I mean, God bless me. I didn't know what I didn't know. It took me time. There was no Susan Peirce Thompson explaining to me back then the neuroscience of sugar and flour addiction. These videos weren't available then.
So, I was slow on the uptake, God bless me. But I started trying to address my eating in a really systematized way back in 1995. It took me 27 years of actively being in the game of trying to address this to reach the level that I reached just coming up on three years ago where I deeply surrendered all the way. Now, don't get me wrong, in those 27 years, I had long stretches of peace, and I wouldn't call those stretches. I had long stretches of Brightness, of abstinence, whatever you want to call it, years, years. Many times. I would say that for those stretches, I wasn't defending my Lines the way I am now. I would say that 51% of me was defending my lines enough to get through every day. And that's kind of how I feel about drugs and alcohol. I'm super clear that I'm a drug addict. My drinking was alcoholic at first and then petered off into occasional binge drinker. Toward the end, I was so fixated on the uppers on cocaine and crack cocaine that I felt like I could kind of take alcohol or leave it alone. So, my identity as an alcoholic is more inferential. It's more like, yeah, I know I got no business drinking alcohol, and it's not calling to me. But I don't have that deep level of defending it the way I have with the food because the food has beaten me down over so many decades. I have suffered with food so much. And so, what I shared with her is, don't feel bad. You're in your process. I mean, some people get here, and they get Bright, and they stay Bright, and it looks like they've got this day one magical journey.
Don't be fooled. They had years of experimentation and suffering before that, years, decades. Nobody gets here and just says, oh, no sugar, no flour wing, and measuring every bite, never snacking, ordering really simple things in restaurants, never having alcohol. That sounds fabulous. I think I'll just do that forever with no qualms at all. Nobody does that unless they've had years or decades of suffering with food before they got here. So, everybody's on their path. Everybody's somewhere in the phase of experimentation or surrender. Don't feel bad at all. It took me a lot of years of hiking through the research Rockies to get to the place of being as convicted as I am of knowing that I will defend my Bright Lines above everything. She seemed grateful to hear that perspective, that it is a process, and she's just in her process, and now she's got some thinking to do, some writing to do, maybe some Parts Work to do. It's a good thing. It's a good thing.
So, I just wanted to talk about defending your Bright Lines and to invite you deep inside to see if you can allocate more of your inner resources potentially to that defense, to protecting what's precious about this Bright Journey of just focusing on knowing that when we're Bright, we get the opportunity to have so much vibrancy and fullness and aliveness and presence in our day. It matters so much and every bit of monkey mind around the food or the bathroom scale, it's a detraction, it's a death, it's a waste. It's not where we want to be. The Brightness is so much better and it's so worth defending. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
