Hey there, it's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson, and I'm going to introduce you to a new series we're going to be doing with the Weekly vlog, which is something we've never done before, which is a "Best Of" series. I've been shooting vlogs for 10 years at least, and a new one every week. Never repeat, never show old ones. But we realized that that's probably a mistake because one of the things that's valuable about this vlog is that people for fun and for free, who are trying to get answers to important questions like, is food addiction real? And how do I recover? And on and on. What about sugar addiction? What about flour addiction? They go searching online, and we only recently have been learning about how to put tags and captions and things in place so that they can find us. We've put out a lot of good vlogs in the past that don't have that tagging, don't have that captioning, and we want to replay some of our "Best Ofs" to make sure that people can find them in this day of AI searches and Google searches and all that stuff.
We asked our Bright Lifers™, what are the best vlogs? What do you recommend most? We got a flood of responses, and one vlog in particular came up as the winner, the favorite. It's a vlog I did on intermittent reinforcement, and it answers the question, why is it a bad idea to follow that thought that says one bite won't hurt? Why exactly is it that staying consecutively Bright for long stretches of time can feel really easy, but after you break your Lines, it can be so, so hard to stay back to back Bright again after that. There is something about an abstinence-based approach to food addiction that makes sustained abstinence easy. It's easier to stay with your Bright Lines than to get them back after you've lost them, and this vlog explains why. So, check it out. It is the number one fan favorite intermittent reinforcement.
Some time ago I was doing a coaching call with a bunch of Bright Liners, and I ended up talking about this thing called intermittent reinforcement, and several people responded, wrote in or whatever, and said, "Would you do a vlog on that?" That was really interesting and I want to hear more about it, so I know some time has passed, but I think you will enjoy this. Here we go. The idea is how do we create a brain that is peaceful in the midst of all of this, a horribly unhelpful, unhealthy food that we're exposed to right at every turn, right at the checkout aisle of pretty much everywhere? I mean the hardware store, right? There's stuff that, yeah, we don't really need to be buying three of those and eating those, or even one, you know the drill. Every vending machine, every movie everywhere, every person's house that you go to everywhere. How do we create a brain that has stopped hounding us to eat that stuff?
Well, it turns out there's some principles in psychology that really apply to this notion of a brain that is acting in a way that is relentless and nagging and addictive in its, "Please, can I have some? Please? Can I have some? Please? Can I have some? How about now? How about now?" Almost like a little kid who's just begging for food down the candy aisle. This is the notion where the brain is the kid, the rat, the organism, the creature in the study, and we are the scientist doling out or not doling out the rewards. This is research that hearkens all the way back to the 1920s and '30s and '40s and '50s by researchers like BF Skinner where they would put rats or pigeons in a little box that was outfitted with an ability to deliver a food reward and a lever for them to press. You've heard of these experiments. The Skinner box.
At first, BF Skinner and all the psychologists back in the day, this was the school of behaviorism where it had its limitations, but we sure learned a lot about reinforcing certain kinds of behaviors. This is where they would drop a little rat pellet down after the rat had pressed a lever, a little pellet of food. Food is super rewarding for all kinds of folks, not just me. Food is super rewarding. Through that research, they discovered that there's different ways to reinforce the lever pressing. In this case, the lever pressing is analogous to the brain going, "How about now? Could I have some food? Now would be a good time to eat." That's the like, how about now? Then actually eating the food is the equivalent of dropping the food pellet down. The brain says, "How about now?" And you give it food. "How about now? I'd love some food." You give it food. "How about now?" You give it food. That is a completely predictable fixed delivery schedule where the brain will just say, "I want food." And you'll say, "Okay, you get food." In this scenario, there's complete clarity about what's happening. The brain wants food. You give it food. I got to say, I used to live that way. That was basically my childhood, my teenage years, and much of my 20s was spent reinforcing my brain's constant suggestion that I might want to eat with delivery of exactly what it was suggesting that I might like to have to eat.
Now let's imagine that you go on some sort of plan, oh, like Bright Line Eating® or whatever, fill in the blank, where now the brain might be saying, "Maybe I'd like to eat. How about now?" And you're like, "Nope." The question here is how long does it take for extinction to happen? This is a psychological term. It's in all the Psych 101 textbooks. Extinction is the gradual disappearing of the behavior, the suggestion, the nagging at all resulting in what? Peace. Peace. A brain that you could take anywhere into a hardware store, into a convenience store to get a pack of Kleenex and not have it suggest you might want to buy that. You might want to eat that. You might want that. You might want that. No, no, no. Just peace. The process is extinction. Extinction. You got that?
So, what did psychologists learn about how to produce extinction? Well, the best way to produce extinction is to start on the reinforcement schedule that we were just talking about, where the brain says, "Can I have food?" And you're like, "Yep." Can I have food? Yep. Can I have food? Yep. Then one day you just stop. Can you picture a rat in a Skinner box that's used to pressing a lever and getting a pellet of food? Every time it presses the lever, presses the lever, it gets food, presses the lever, it gets food, and then one day it doesn't anymore ever. What happens in actual reality is the rat will press that lever just maybe three or four more times, and then it will never press the lever again. Why? Because it knows it's broken. It doesn't work anymore, so it stops doing it. That is a brain that is like someone who comes into Bright Line Eating, having been reinforcing its brains. Every notion, "I'd like more food. Yes, please." Okay, there you go. More food. There you go, more food. There you go. And then they come into Bright Line Eating. They follow the plan, and suddenly they have peace almost immediately. Okay?
The next scenario is the person who's been giving their brain food when it asks for it, it gets extinction by following the plan, and then it introduces some exceptions, some breaks because the person probably fairly starts to think, "Well, it's been so great. I've been so peaceful. Now I can surely just deviate here, deviate there, and still keep my peace." Now we're putting the brain on what's called a variable interval schedule of reinforcement. I know that's a fancy term, but stay with me. It means once in a blue moon you give in. That's the fancy term. Once in a blue moon, you give in a variable reinforcement schedule, and this, oh, by the way, is the same reinforcement schedule that slot machines in casinos use. You pull that lever, you never know when it's going to pay out. It might be the next time. You never know. Some, who knows how long amount of time needs to go by before it pays out again, and it might be just around the corner. This type of reinforcement schedule produces almost maddeningly long. I was going to say infinite, but I don't want to say infinite because it's not infinite, but an extremely long tale of resistance to extinction, meaning a brain that will hound you for food, even if you've said no time and again and again because it still thinks there's a chance you might pay out.
Here's the way it works. Picture a rat in a box. It's pressing a lever. It gets a pellet of food. Then it presses the lever, and it doesn't. Presses the lever, and it doesn't. Presses the lever, and it does. Now the rat's like, oh, this is an interesting kind of lever. What's the deal with this lever? Press, press, press, press, press, press, food. Now, the rat's really interested. It's like, wow. That rat will press that lever a hundred times without getting any food. If on the hundred and first time there's food, now it'll press it a thousand times without needing any food reward to keep pressing the lever. Please, can I have some? Please? Can I have some? How about now? How about now more now? Now, now, eventually one pellet of food is all it needs to press the lever 10,000 times without food, which means that 10,000 nos, and you still have a brain that's saying, "I'd really like to eat now, how about now? Do you want to give in? Now? Do you want to give in?" This is the danger of that variable reinforcement schedule where you never know when the payout comes. The brain keeps hounding you for food, extremely resistant to extinction, meaning resistant to peace.
That is the danger of deviating a little bit and thinking you'll just get back on track on Monday. This is hard to overcome. Once it's built in, what's the solution? Get back on the plan and be firm and just ride out the cravings that come now for a longer period of time because you gave in a variable way a few times. I know that's scary, but here's the thing. If you're coming into Bright Line Eating, having just been eating what you wanted when you wanted, most of us do, we come into Bright Line Eating, having just been eating what we wanted when we wanted, and you just stick with the plan is outlined. Peace can come extremely quickly, extremely quickly. If you've created a monster by giving in here and there and you feel tortured now by a brain that's suggesting that you eat all the time, it does mean that it's going to take a fair long period of vigilance to get back the kind of peace that you got for free at the beginning. It's just the science of it. You can look it up. It's in every Psych 101 textbook, variable reinforcement schedules, and there will probably be a little box in the textbook on the side that talks about addiction, and it says, oh, by the way, that kind of reinforcement schedule, it produces addiction.
We're all about the science here at Bright Line Eating, and I do my best to give you a clue about the easier path. The easier path is just to come in and follow the plan and trust us when we say it's easier to just not deviate, but we never deny anyone their research. Most people in Bright Line Eating end up doing some research at some point, but some just don't. Some just heed the warning and say, "You know what? This is so easy and so rewarding, and I've now gotten all the biggest things that I wanted out of this program. I think I'll just stick with it as outlined." They walk an easier path. I'm not one of them, and I've gotten a brain back that's peaceful, so it's totally possible. I've done it actually many times. I am one of those people that says quitting smoking is easy. I've done it lots of times, but I can tell you what it takes to earn back a peaceful brain. It takes a fair bit. It takes a fair bit. It's doable, but it takes a fair bit, and that's because of intermittent reinforcement, and that's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
