Hey, yeah, it's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson and welcome back to our best of the vlog series. In this fan favorite vlog called, "Sane Choices," I explain how to navigate the boundary between sticking with what you wrote the night before that you're going to eat, following that plan and being religious about it, really, really doing it and knowing when to give, when life gets lifey, and sometimes it really is necessary to flex a bit, but the inner Food Controller inside of us doesn't want us to flex at all. So, how do you know when to give and not to give? Welcome to the vlog called, "Sane Choices" that explains. Check it out.
All right, I've got a great question that's been sent here, sent in by a woman named Susan. Awesome. Okay, but it's not me. You can tell from the first sentence. "Hi, I'm 72 and retired. I have been on Bright Line Eating® for four months, and I've lost 20 pounds that I tried for 14 years to lose and couldn't. I can't always write down precisely my food the night before because I don't know where I'll be the next day. It would be so much easier if I were working or had a routine, but I don't. Being retired for me and my husband means, luckily, means spontaneity, and we take many unplanned trips, so I don't know where I'll be eating, but I do no flour, no sugar or artificial sweetener, and I do not eat between meals when I don't know where I'll be eating. I write down four ounces of protein and my veggies, and I stick to that. Today I was at a brunch at 10 in the morning. I had a veggie omelet without cheese, and I had fruit. I really wasn't hungry for lunch. At lunchtime, if I'm done eating at 11:00 AM. Is it okay to wait until 5:00 PM to eat again? Thanks. P.S. Part of my success is watching your vlogs, of course, and I read three daily meditation books each morning, and I have a gratitude journal, and I fill out my nightly checklist each night. Please help. I'm feeling guilty over this. Susan."
Oh, Susan. I love your question so much, and I'm choosing it to cover in this week's vlog because I think it's so important to talk about sane choices within the Bright Line Eating framework. There are choices that are driven by our Saboteur, and they lead us off track, and there's choices that have to do with the ebb and flow of life, and they work for us, and they're honestly just the sanest choice given the circumstances. We eat in a real world. We live in a real world and life encroaches. Gor example, I often talk about the mom exception, which is if you've committed that you're going to have grilled chicken with sliced peppers and onions for dinner, but midday, your kid gets an ear infection and you spend all afternoon at urgent care with them, and you don't get home until seven o'clock at night, you're not going to start slicing peppers and onions at seven o'clock at night. You're going to grab frozen broccoli out of the freezer and microwave it. It's not like you're going to order pizza, but you might not take the time, it's going to take 40 minutes to grill chicken and slice up peppers and onions and make the salads and stuff, so you're going to choose, the mom exception comes in, you're going to choose a simpler meal, even though that's what you wrote down. That's fine to switch that up for that reason. If in contrast, you're like, "I don't feel like peppers and onions, I think I feel like broccoli." That's not a good reason to make a switch. Do you see the difference?
What I want to let you know, Susan, is two things. First of all, in what you wrote, I did not hear any red flags. I just didn't. It sounded very sane to me. It sounds like if you did know where you were going to be, like when you do, you write down your food. If you know where you're going to be for breakfast, you write it down, which is great. What I do when I don't know what I'm going to eat is I write down, "BLM," Bright Line meal. That's what I'm having for lunch is a Bright Line meal, and that's the brilliance of having a food plan that's as clear as the Bright Line Eating food plan. You have categories and quantities of food. Even if I don't know specifically what I'm going to eat, I know that I'm going to be eating about this much protein and about this much vegetable and a fruit and a little bit of fat. That's what I'm eating for lunch. That's lunch. It's very easy to just write down a Bright Line meal and then know that I'm going to gather and assemble the right stuff at lunch depending on where I'm at. I experience this on my Sundays. Sundays are a family day, and I don't know where I'm going to be at. I don't know if we're going to motivate to get out of the house for brunch, which really happens at noon, so it's lunch for me, but they all call it brunch. Or if we're going to end up going out to dinner that night, or if I'm going to say, "No, let's just, I'll stay home, I'll cook," or I don't know what Sundays are going to look like. For me, Sundays almost always look like my breakfast, which I know what I'm going to eat, and then a Bright Line meal for lunch and a Bright Line meal for dinner. I'm going to be with the family, and we're going to let it flow. And so, I've written my food, I've committed it. That's what I'm having, a Bright Line meal, and I'm going to have my protein, my vegetables. I'm going to have my food. I don't mind at all if you just write down Bright Line meal for the meals where you know that you're going to let it flow. I think that's fine, and if you're doing that a lot, here's the other thing I want to say.
I said I had two things I wanted to say. The first one is it sounds like a sane choice. It sounds like a sane choice. You're doing the best you can with the life. The second thing I want to say is you will be able to tell if it's going off track. In the Boot Camp, we talk about the four questions that you can ask yourself to know if something you're doing is working or not working. The four questions are, do I have peace about it? You didn't have peace about it. You felt like you were doing something wrong. But now that I say it's cool, go live with it for a month or two and see, do I have peace about it? Is it really cool? Even though I said it seemed okay, if it's not okay, it'll niggle at you. It still will. You'll go, "Oh, I, I'm actually using this as an out. It's actually not great." It'll niggle at you. So, do you have peace about it? Is it healthy? Is it messing with your weight? Are you noticing that you're having a hard time maintaining your weight or losing weight if you're still trying to lose weight? Because when you don't write down your food precisely, you end up eating a lot more and therefore it's messing with your weight or your weight loss. Is it messing with your weight and then is it escalating? Do you have peace about it? Is it healthy? Is it messing with your weight? Is it escalating? Is it snowballing out of control? That's what addiction does. It snowballs out of control. So, if it's a sane choice, it will not escalate. It will stay in its place. You'll make that little adjustment when it's called for. You won't make it at other times. You won't say, I'm too tired to write down my foods, even though you know you're staying home tomorrow. I'm too tired to write down my food. I don't feel like it, and just say, I'll figure it out tomorrow. If you find yourself doing that a lot, then it's escalating. It's seeping into other situations where it's not really a sane choice. If you know you're going to be home tomorrow, open up the fridge and figure out what you're going to eat and write it down. That's basically the gist of it.
Now, about your two meals a day thing, basically you're saying if we get a late start to the day, can I have two meals that day? And my answer to that is yes. Now, in the 12-step food program that I was in forever and ever, again, that would've been just the biggest red flag. You would've been back to day one. Your abstinence would've been broken. It would've been Armageddon. The truth is, I've done stuff like that a bunch, and it's fine. I've found it to be fine for me. I think it's going to be fine for you too. The way you're describing it, it sounds like the sanest choice to not try to squeeze lunch in there. If you're finishing breakfast at 11:00 AM great. On to dinner. Done with food. Now, here's where you'll see if it's not working for you. If the next day your Saboteur is saying, "I only got two meals yesterday. I think I'll eat some more today." If you find yourself doing that, then it's not working. If you find yourself ravenously hungry that night and you find yourself eating off your food plan late at night before bed, then it's not working. But if it's just that you have your meal that finishes at 11:00 AM you have dinner at 5:00 PM you don't think about food for the rest of the day. You feel peaceful. You go to bed and the next day you have your three meals as usual, then it's working for you. Do you have peace about it? Is it healthy? Is it messing with your weight and is it escalating? Those are the questions you need to ask yourself. In my opinion, Susan, your situation covers all those bases. You sound fine to me. You sound like you're making sane choices, and I encourage everybody in Bright Line Eating to make sane choices. We don't need to. Bright Line Eating is prescribed and it's laid out, but it's not a club to beat yourself over your head. If you're doing something that's working, then it's working. It might be a sane choice for you, and that's totally fine. That's the weekly vlog, and thanks for being with me. I'll see you next week.
