Hey there, it's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson, and in this vlog, I'm going to teach you how to stay Bright when you travel frequently. It is a skill that I have learned over the years, and I'll tell you frequent travel is probably the number one thing that used to throw me off my Bright Lines. I would struggle. The stress, the overwhelm, and then the disruption to my regular rhythms and habits from travel...I didn't used to stay Bright through it.
From 2015 to 2018, '19, I was breaking my Lines and a big source of that was that my work suddenly required way more travel than I'd ever experienced one trip after the other, and I've really learned how to stay bright through almost really any amount of travel. I mean, I recently took seven trips and eight weeks or something. I got COVID on the way back from one of them and then had to stay put for a little while, but I was really all over the place to Mexico, to London, to Florida, to San Francisco, back to Rochester, back to San Francisco. It was quite a whirlwind. I was sharing on one of our Bright Lifers™ coaching sessions recently that I don't break my Bright Lines anymore when I travel, and people wanted to know what I do differently now, what have I learned over all those years of not staying Bright during intensive travel that is now different? I've really boiled it down to three things, but I want to preface this before I sort of launch into what the three things are.
I just need to pause and say, I know that this vlog is coming out the Wednesday before Halloween in the United States, and I think Halloween is also celebrated in some other countries around the world as well. I just want to say that I'm not talking about Halloween right now, and you are aware of that already, and there's method to that madness. The reason I'm not talking about Halloween is because I have several vlogs that cover in detail how to stay Bright through Halloween. And I know that Thanksgiving is coming up in the United States, and I may or may not do the vlog on how to stay Bright through Thanksgiving. Again, I've done it many times, and it seems like as we go into the holiday season, I want you to be aware. I want to make sure that you know how to access those resources because they're free. They're available to you and they're searchable. You can just search up anything you want through our vlog archive, and it's super easy to find past vlogs on specific topics like Halloween, Thanksgiving, holiday, holidays. Type in those search terms and see what comes up. There's a lot. Here's how you do it. You go to our website, brightlineeating.com, and then you click on vlog, which is one of the main menu items, and right there, there's a search bar on that page, and that's where you type in Halloween or Thanksgiving or holiday or whatever it is that you want support with. So, this vlog will be one of those. You can search travel, and this vlog will come up forever and ever. Well, I mean, I don't know, forever and ever, but you know how things go for as long as it's reasonable to have to worry about it, to think about it. Lots to search for in those vlog archives.
Okay, now, travel tips for extensive season travelers or nervous travelers or conscientious travelers or people who just don't want to break their Bright Lines because of travel. Here you go. Here are the three things that I changed that made a world of difference. Number one is I developed a really, really strong packing list template. I keep mine in Evernote with check boxes next to each item, so as I'm packing, I can just check things off. You could keep it in a Word document, an Excel document. There's all kinds of list managers in apps these days, but the difference maker is that I use it as a template. In other words, I've got one list that has everything that I might need to bring under the sun, including, for example, bathing suit, sunscreen, sunglasses. Those things aren't going to be necessary if I'm going to Seattle in January to a business conference at a conference hotel and I don't plan to see a lick of sun and I don't plan to go swimming anywhere, so similar to a headset for delivering a webinar from the road for work, I wouldn't need that on most trips, but the packing list template has all the things that might be needed under any circumstances, no matter the kind of trip. It's the extensive list.
Then what I do when I have a specific trip coming up is I copy that whole list and I create a new list that's packing list for going to Durango with David June 2025. That might be that specific packing list, and then I delete the things off it that I don't need, and I might add specific things like which specific clothes am I going to bring and stuff. So, as the trip is approaching, I modify my packing list template. I copy it over and modify it. Let me share some of the things with you that I have on that packing list that I've learned from hard won experience. I have things like a sharp knife because I really like to cut up an apple in the morning, and if I'm checking a suitcase, I can take a sharp knife in that suitcase and even a little thin plastic cutting board if I want to. A dish soap, and sponge. I sometimes like to do my own dishes in a hotel room, and I have a sponge that I've cut in half, so it's small. I put it into a Ziploc snack baggy, and I've got a tiny little vial, tiny, it's maybe like three inches high and I don't know, a centimeter in circumference or diameter rather centimeter. It's like a little tiny vial that I can fill up with liquid dish soap and bring that with me, the sponge in the dish soap so that I can wash out my shaker bottle, my knife, my whatever. I'll have a reminder in there to refill my portable salt shaker and to bring an extra salt refill. I've got to eat a lot of salt because my blood pressure is super low, so I've got that in there, my shaker bottle, because I do tend to travel with Complement protein powder, pre-weighed out baggies, and so I'm going to need to remember my shaker bottle. Of course, the basics, my cell phone charger, my readings, the books that I'm going to read out of. I've got most of those now on Kindle, so I don't need to bring physical books, but if there's any physical books I want to bring. You can develop your own extensive travel list but having that list at the ready so that I'm not forgetting things like kitchen type things that I might want to bring for my food, of course, the digital food scale, those types of things on the packing list, so I make sure to have them. Okay, so that's the first thing.
The second thing that I've learned to do differently is that I now, no matter where I'm going, really, I pack my breakfasts for the whole trip. I guess this would be different if I'm going somewhere for a month, but the truth is I haven't gone anywhere for a month. I don't need to do that, but if I'm going to be going somewhere even for 10 days, I will bring all of my breakfast for those 10 days in my suitcase minus the fruit. I trust that I'll get fruit where I am. What's the rationale for this and why does it help? Because my weighed and measured breakfast, what I'm bringing is if it's a 10-day trip, I'd be bringing ten one ounce baggies of oats with a little tiny bit of salt in there. That's 10 little snack baggies. I'd be bringing 10 baggies of seeds like hemp, chia, flax, like that seeds that would be half my protein, and then the other half would be Complement protein powder, so know I'm going to get a high protein healthy grounding, weighed and measured breakfast. All I have to do is find a piece of fruit to add to that. The difference is that in the past when I would get my breakfast on the road, typically what do they have for breakfast food? Eggs and potatoes, and are they greasy or not greasy? On average, if you're traveling, they're pretty greasy, and those foods light up my brain just a bit first thing in the morning, and they set the stage for wanting my food to be a little yummier at lunch and dinner, and by dinner time after a long day of travel, I would be making exceptions. That's kind of how it went. What I find is that when my breakfast is in my hotel room or tucked in my Airbnb just there, and it's all weighed and measured, and it's those kinds of really clean plant-based grounding, not greasy, not oily foods, like really, really healthy foods. All of a sudden, my nervous system is just starting the day in a whole different way. So, that's my second tip.
My third tip, the third thing that I've been doing differently, is I create a custom Nightly Checklist sheet for my travels, and I'm going to have my team give you a link to a document that is, I'll give you two documents. They're both actual examples of my actual custom Nightly Checklist sheet from recent trips from 2025 earlier this year. They have slightly different things on them. They were slightly different length trips. When I was traveling with my husband, when I was traveling with my wonderful, beloved 85-year-old dad back to San Francisco, we had such a blast, and what I'm doing when I create this custom nightly checklist sheet is I'm thinking through what is my program going to look like for this trip? For example, I'm thinking about how much connectivity with other recovering people in Bright Line Eating®. I want to have, I think on the examples I'm going to give you in both cases, I chose one connection point a day with someone doing Bright Line Eating that felt right. I know there have been times when I was on a cruise, for example, where I might've committed to connect through an app like WhatsApp with someone once a day, but no talking on the phone. Sometimes I expect myself to do something like digital decluttering or meditation or physical therapy, or in my case, Egoscue exercises. That's the form of physical therapy that I do is Egoscue. Sometimes I plan to let those go. For example, if I were on a safari in Africa, I might not expect myself to do Egoscue exercises. I might be thinking, I don't know what the floor is going to be like if I'm going to want to be rolling around on the floor, I might be sharing a room with other people. There might not be a good space to do it. I think I'm going to let that go for this trip. There might be habits that I'm willing to let go, whereas if I'm on a safari in Africa, I might be thinking my morning meditation I could do lying incline in my bed wherever I'm sleeping, and I think I might really want that quiet meditative time, so I am going to keep that on my Nightly Checklist.
Some of the things that are always on my Nightly Checklist have to do with, did I keep my food simple at my three meals that day? How's my food chatter and how's my weight scale body chatter? I rank those on a scale from one to five with five being high and problematic because if my food chatter is being kicked up over the course of a trip, I want to see it. I want to see that number go up. I want to be asking myself, checking in at the end of the day, was food calling to me today or did I feel free? Completely free? Is one out of five low, low, low? Sometimes I'm putting one and a half, then two, then two and a half. Now I start to get nervous. That's not great. My food chatters kicking up. Then I know to activate some tools, get my food a little simpler, maybe stop eating out, and get to a grocery store, something like that. But I can see it on a trip. It usually creeps up if it starts to become problematic. It doesn't happen all at once. It starts slowly, typically for me. So, that Nightly Check-in about how much food chatter and scale chatter do I have in my head all day is really helpful. This way I can be very explicit about intentionally letting go of some of my support structures or tools or habit stacks, parts of my habit stacks, while also being very intentional about keeping some of them and deciding I'm still going to do this piece of my program while I travel, and that thoughtfulness, that intentionality, because every trip is different, makes a huge difference for me.
I've found...I'll just say some additional tips. I always, always, always, always travel with all of my food, really for the whole travel day. I assume that there's going to be delays, that I'm going to be rerouted somewhere, that I'm going to be stuck in an airport. I have all the meals weighed and measured for the entire trip. I never, ever, ever, ever count on getting food on an airplane or anything like that. I always have all my food packed. So, that's one thing. What else do I do that is really helpful? I guess I'll say that success breeds success. Brightness breeds Brightness, and so in the early days of Bright Line Eating, I didn't travel a lot. Easy does it. Travel is sort of a more advanced skill and Bright Line Eating, but it's very doable. It's very doable, and it's a wonderful thing to get your sea legs with travel and to know that you can stay Bright anywhere in the world and feel free and feel happy.
The last thing I think I'll say is please keep in mind the hourglass shape of recovery, which means that early on when you don't have much experience with Bright Line Eating and or much experience with traveling in Bright Line Eating, trips will likely feel very hard, expect that you'll feel constrained. It'll feel confining. It won't feel that fun. It'll feel hard and scary, and it'll feel narrow, and you might have a part of you that feels deprived, that feels like, I don't know if I want to do this Bright Line Eating thing because it makes traveling not fun and who wants to live on this Earth if traveling's not fun and blah, blah, blah. Just know that it's temporary, that you can and will if you persevere with really being focused on staying Bright through the trip, even if it feels confining and like a jail sentence, even if it feels isolating and not fun and not connecting with the trip and the people on it, even if it's really hard, just know that it won't always be that way, that as you practice traveling, it will get more and more spacious to the point where you can get to where I'm at, which is where I pack my suitcase and I feel free as a bird. I head off to the airport and I can't wait to go. I feel, not only do I feel free like I used to before Bright Line Eating with travel, but I feel freer because my confident Bright self in my Bright body and facing the world with my Bright sparkly eyes and just knowing I'm the person I'm meant to be in this world. It's even better you can reach a level of comfort moving through this world freely that you have never, ever, ever experienced before. There's nothing like getting on a plane and having your meals packed for the day and just knowing, "I'm good, man. We could sit on this tarmac for two hours. I don't care. Lunch is coming up and I got my meal packed. I need nothing from y'all. I am good. I am a self-contained little traveling unit here, and I am happy to face this day no matter what comes." It's a great thing to know how to take care of yourself when you travel. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
