Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. I'm thinking today about what it's like to break the Bright Lines and just how scary and demoralizing it can be and especially getting into a pattern of breaking. I have broken my Bright Lines more times than I can count. Not in years, thank you, God, but I've been in some form of food addiction recovery for literally 30 years now, literally 30 years, and relapse has been one of the most common themes of those 30 years. I mean, I have broken so many times, and one of the hallmarks of Bright Line Eating is how we orient to a break. We really, really understand that addiction is a chronic, progressive, very, very difficult disease to battle, and that in our current food environment, we are sitting ducks for cues that are going to trigger us and invite us to break our Lines. It is incredibly necessary, I think, to work a Bright Line Eating program that is stronger than the level of stress and challenge and temptation that you've got going on in your life. It can take a long time to get to the point where we're surrendered enough, willing enough able to do that. And breaks are part of the journey to getting to a place where we're willing to work a program that's that strong.
For a lot of us, that level of willingness isn't present when we first discover Bright Line Eating. For many of us it is. If you're one of those folks who came here, really done with the food and really, really ready to embark on a new life, then that's awesome. I offer what I'm going to talk about in this vlog as an action plan, as a roadmap in case you ever do break your Lines. But if you have been breaking your Lines, I just want to remind you that this book here, ?Bright Line Eating,? the original Bright Line Eating book, Bright Line Eating on page 237, it's got a roadmap for what you do when you break your Lines. We call it the four S's. The four S's. I think for anyone who does Bright Line Eating, having these four S's top of mind, you could rattle them off. You know them inside and out. It's part and parcel of being equipped of being prepared on your Bright Journey.
Let's go through the four S's together and remind ourselves of what we do when we break our Lines. The four S's are like the emergency kit in the car, right? It's got water, it's got Band-Aids, and a first aid kit. It's got flares, it's got a tire change kit, it's got phone numbers for AAA or your insurance or whatever. It's got a warm blanket just in case. It's got a little bit like an emergency meal. It's the kit that if something happens, you're prepared. The four S's are literally what's in that kit in case something happens with your Bright Line Eating Journey. This is what you do.
First and foremost, the first S is speed. You're going to get back on track quickly. That is the first S. It's not on Monday. ?Oh, I'll wait for January 1st.? ?I might as well eat everything I've been missing because now's the time to tie one on.? ?Obviously I've blown it all already.? No, no, no, no. That's diet mentality. Being a Bright Lifer?, being on a journey of Bright Line Eating means that every breath of being Bright is precious and preferable to a moment where you're shoveling down food non-consciously hating yourself and moving further and further from the person that you want to be in this life. And so, literally, the moment you come to awareness that a break has happened, the first S comes right to mind and it's speed. We're going to Rezoom? right now with this breath, literally putting down the fork or the spoon mid bite and saying, ?No, I can restart my day at any time, and I can be Bright from this moment forward, and that is absolutely the right thing to do. I'm going to Rezoom right now.? This is why starting years and years ago, based on the suggestion of a Bright Lifer, we started to spell Rezoom, which is the word R-E-S-U-M-E, Rezoom, right? We started to spell it with a Z-O-O-M, Rezoom to build the speed foundationally into the process of simply resuming. So, speed is number one right now with this breath. We get back on track.
The second S comes right in at that moment, which is self-compassion. The immediate tendency is to beat ourselves up and to start a shame spiral. The Food Controller comes in, we've blown it. We're awful. We always do this. Right there, the self-compassionate Part needs to come in and say, ?It's all right, sweetheart. It's all right. We have a chronic disease, and this is what managing a chronic disease looks like. Sometimes it's messy, and it's okay, sweetheart, you're not alone. You're not bad, you're not wrong. It's okay. It's okay.?
Self-compassion partners with the next S, which is social support, because we might find it hard to be maximally without a little social support. The isolation mindset is so negative often, and when we crack ourselves open to be exposed to another and say, here's what I just did with my food in detail, I always share exactly, here's what I ate. Here's what happened. Here's what I was thinking. If I don't share the exact details, I feel like I'm hiding it in shame, and it's really opening my heart and my life and my actions to make them visible to another that drains the shame out of it and makes me feel, because inevitably they say something like, ?Oh, I've done that. Here's what it was like for me,? or ?I was just thinking about this or that with my food and feeling a little wonky. I'm so glad you called. I'm so glad you shared this.? And suddenly, I just feel not so alone, not so broken, not so defective. I feel like I can breathe again. So, the social support comes in and it facilitates the self-compassion and self-compassion and social support become a nice little reciprocal mojo there. Oh my gosh. So, those are the second and third and social support.
Then the third S, sorry, the fourth and final S is to seek the lesson, to seek the lesson, because fundamentally, a break is information. What it is, is it's a light, a red light coming up on your instrument panel as you're flying your plane, right? You're flying your plane, you're in your weight-loss phase, or you're in your Maintenance phase, and what you're aiming to do is not crash and stay steady, and now suddenly there's a red light on your instrument panel and it's information. So, curiosity and proactiveness are the appropriate responses. What does that light mean? What's it telling me? What's behind it? Is it this kind of warning or that kind of warning? What made that light go on? Okay, now we are in business. Now we're asking questions to get down to the root of the matter, and this is where the Permission to Be Human Action Plan comes in. So, the Permission to Be Human Action Plan is also in the book, ?Bright Line Eating.? We will link to it below this vlog so that you can print it off and have copies ready. I encourage you to put pen to paper and physically answer those 10 questions in writing every time you break your Lines. With each time you turn the break into a breakthrough, you have the opportunity to use the information from that instrument panel to make the corrections you need so that you can fly straight and true. So, seeking the lesson is super critical.
If you're breaking your Lines and not going through this process of the four S's, you're leaving a lot of good opportunity on the table. You're just not utilizing what's there for you in the break to help inform your journey, right? There's information there. It can be a gold mine for you, right? Because ultimately the goal isn't thinness. The goal is peace. The goal is personal growth. The goal is flourishing. And for those of us who have a food challenge and a weight challenge who are gravitating toward Bright Line Eating as a potential life path, not a diet, a life path, for those of us who are drawn to this because we need it, because our food and our weight have been so unmanageable that we're claiming our seat here in Bright Line Eating. For us, our food is the litmus test. Our food is the canary in the coal mine. It is the stones on the path that guide us on our way. It is what lights up our instrument panel to let us know that we are going too fast, too slow. We need to turn right, we need to turn left. And in that way, it's a blessing. It's a miraculous thing because it's not drugs or alcohol or cigarettes, the kind of thing that you can just put down and be done with forever.
We have to keep eating three times a day, and that means that the food is in our face as a reminder of the nature of our emotional sobriety, our spiritual condition, our emotional mental fitness. Food will let us know how we're doing. And with each wobble in our Lines, we have the opportunity to use it as a trailhead to go deep inside and find out what our system is trying to tell us. Our system is trying to tell us something with whatever it is that we just did with our food. There is information there, and I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's that you need to leave your job. If it's that you need to be gardening, why aren't you gardening? If it's that you're lonely and you haven't reached out to family or friends in a while? I don't know what the message is, but I do know that the red light on the instrument panel means something. It doesn't just go off for no reason. If it did go off for no reason, that's information too. You can do the thorough check of the whole airplane and go, you know what? Everything's in order. And the reality is, I just picked up that piece of cucumber off the salad cutting board and popped it in my mouth, and I've inventoried everything and the only thing I can find is I was moving a little too fast and I had a moment of non-conscious. Then with some social support and some self-compassion, having done my absolute best to seek the lesson all the way through, the reality is very, very quickly with speed, I simply Rezoom and it's the end of the story, and now we're clean and clear to move on. That might be it, but you won't know that until you've gone through the process of the four S's. Speed, self-compassion, social support, seek the lesson. So, so powerful, and that's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
