Hey, yeah, it's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson and welcome back to the best of the vlog series. In this vlog, a true fan favorite, we're going to be addressing the question, "How exactly is it that you say that doing Bright Line Eating® leads to food freedom? When the minute I get on the plan, I feel more and more constrained and confined and imprisoned. What gives Dr. Thompson?" Well, this vlog called, "The Hourglass Shape of Recovery," explains it. Take a listen.
A few days ago on the Bright Lifers™ Accountability Call, which happens every morning at 8:30 AM Eastern Time, 5:30 AM Pacific Time, I was talking with Jerry McDowell, who is a longtime Bright Lifer from New Mexico. She's been in her right-sized body now for years, since I think at least 2017, maybe sooner, and she was talking about how with Bright Line Eating, she is really moving past the food and the weight and all that and moving into her purpose in life. She's taking a training course in Pilates that's really exciting to her, and her life is just opening up. I ended up bringing up something that on that call, I said, "I think this is going to be the topic of the weekly vlog," because I know I've talked about this somewhere before, but I don't honestly remember where. I just think it's a really important concept, and it relates in particular to the feeling of constraint versus freedom in one's life. I tend to think of it, especially in terms of socializing, moving through the world, like traveling celebrations and just the feeling of being able to move freely. What I told her, and what I want to share with you is that solid, Bright Line Eating recovery has an hourglass shape to it.
When you are not yet in Bright Line Eating your freedoms in terms of what and when to eat are unlimited. You're just eating freely. You're eating what you want when you want, and there is a certain freedom that goes along with that. Showing up to someone's house and not worrying what they're serving and just eating whatever and going to the movies and eating whatever, and traveling and being excited because you'll get to eat all the food that's there and eat whatever. For a lot of us, food is really in our sense of enjoyment and connection and socializing and partaking of events and celebrations and get togethers. Then we start Bright Line Eating and the hourglass begins. Our sense typically of the world starts to narrow. In many cases, that feeling of narrowing is almost intolerable. It feels like a death sentence. It feels like the gates of the jail cell slamming shut, and we can feel like we will never be let out of jail. Some of us experience our world getting so small and narrow that we feel cut off isolated, desolate, and we're afraid, not free to move around the world, afraid to eat in restaurants, sort of despairing that going over to someone's house to socialize doesn't even feel worth it because they'll all be eating and drinking and we won't be partaking. The social issue of calling ahead, or do I eat first, or it feels so constrained that it's almost as if life is lived just through this tiny little sliver of an opening. My suspicion is that for many people, they leave Bright Line Eating at that point, or they conclude that, yeah, just that it's not worth it, that it's too horrible an existence, and the trade-off is too extreme that, they'd love to have their health issues cleared up and yeah, they'd love to not be obsessed about sugar all the time. And they'd love to lose their weight and live in a right-sized body, but not at that price.
What I want to share with you that Jerry and I were talking about is that life opens back up. If you work a strong program and you allow the natural way of recovery to take its course, what happens is you start to feel more and more free, where restaurants as you practice in them become good again. You get a fair number of restaurants in your local area that you're used to eating in that you can get a Bright Line Meal. You go there a few times, you like what they serve, it's yummy. You start to look forward to it, and suddenly the idea of eating out is sort of back on the table and in a way that feels gratifying again. With that practice in your home environment, you find yourself traveling and just noticing, "Oh, I can eat out there too." You go on a few trips, and you find, "Oh, this isn't bad." I typically go to a grocery store or get breakfast foods and I weigh and measure my breakfast in my hotel room or in my whatever, Airbnb, and then I can eat out for lunch and I can eat out for dinner, or I can pack my lunch and then eat out for dinner. You start to get a rhythm with these things. It takes time though to get some of those experiences under your belt. Often the first ones are scary and the first ones are tentative, but then the world starts to open up, and if you stick with it, it opens all the way back up. Then you're in a right sized body, which is even better with lots of experience under your belt, socializing with people and it's fine.
This past weekend I went to Toronto with a group of friends. There were six of us, and we piled into this guy's suburban, and we drove from Rochester over to Toronto, and we stayed in an Airbnb for two days, three days, two nights. It was a workshop that we were participating in. We saw Hamilton one of those nights, which was amazing, and we laughed so much, and they were eating, and they were drinking. Every single one of them drank alcohol except me, and they all ate foods I don't eat. Funny enough, they all know me and a couple of 'em are now sort of doing Bright Line Eating-ish. I keep my eyes on my own plate, but they were drinking, so they're not fully on board. But it was fine. I had so much fun. At no point before that trip, embarking on that trip, on the trip, coming home from that trip, did I feel any anxiety about, "Oh no, what am I going to do?" The socializing I'm not really a part of? What am I going to eat? There was none of that, none of that. I just left excited to go. I navigated fine and I came home. That's what it's like when the hourglass opens all the way back up and you have enough practice under your belt, living in the world as a Bright Liner that you're good again, you're good again.
Sometimes people post, "What do you do on birthdays and occasions or whatever?" And I just sort of think, "Same thing everybody else does. I go out to a celebratory dinner and I'm just ordering a protein, a salad, a vegetable." But restaurants always make things a little sexier than I would at home. It always feels a little extra somehow just the way it used to. It's just that I'm Bright now and I'm living in a right-sized body. It opens all the way back up. So, this weekly vlog is meant as a message of hope. If you're embarking on Bright Line Eating and you're feeling the constraint, you're feeling the narrowing and you're thinking, "I couldn't live in a world where social situations feel this doomed and small and scary and deprived," I want you to know that if you stick with your Bright Lines, it will not always feel that way. It will open back up, and you will again experience the warmth and the cheer and the camaraderie and the closeness that you used to feel in those social situations when you were eating and drinking with abandon. It turns out that those good feelings don't require eating and drinking with abandon. They don't. They don't. You should have seen me laughing in Toronto. Oh my gosh, we had so much fun. So have hope. Have hope. Have hope. Stick it out, stick it out, stick it out. I love you. And that's the weekly vlog.
