Hey there, it's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson, and in this week's vlog, I'm going to share one of the key reasons that people who've been doing Bright Line Eating® for a long time get derailed. It has to do with fuzzy food plan boundaries, like being in a state of not really being super clear what exactly your food plan is, or having made a food plan change but not following it consistently. I've noticed this lately that a lot of people are in that state. We just did a course called The Bright Reset, and it was phenomenally successful. We had thousands of people sign up for it, and we had so many people who haven't been Bright for a while or who've been wobbly in their Lines, get Bright again and hooray for that. It's amazing. Because we've started to really drill down on who in our community is Bright and how can we help them get more Bright.
Being Bright is the state where you're following the four Bright Lines. You're not eating sugar, you're not eating flour, you are not grazing or snacking. You're eating meals, you're bounding your food plan quantities, and you're freed up to live your best Bright life. Now, some people are using that structure, not exactly, and it works for them. They might sometimes deviate from some of the four Bright Lines, but they may be lower on the Food Addiction Susceptibility Scale™. They don't actually feel wobbly in what they're doing. They feel solid. It works for them. That's great, that's fine. I'm talking about the people for whom their food plan is not clear and it's not working for them. They are wobbly or they're in the ditch. One of the things that went awry back in the past at some point was they lost clarity with their food plan.
Now, let me describe how this often changes or happens. It happens as food plans change as you're adding food to land the plane at Maintenance, meaning you need to add some food, you've lost a bunch of weight already, and your body's now asking for more food because you're hungrier, you're feeling tired or weak and your body needs more food, or literally you're just running out of weight to lose and you need to add food in order to stop that weight loss. So, you add some food, but maybe you do it in a sloppy way. Let me explain. The ideal way to add food is with someone else that is your designated person in Bright Line Eating, we often call it a Maintenance Guide, or it could be a Bright Line Eating coach, or it could just be a friend, like a buddy that you're doing Bright Line Eating with, but some other person, you discuss a food plan change with them and you both agree, yes, I'm going to change my food plan in this way. And then from the moment of that conversation, you now have a new food plan.
If you don't do it that way, what I see often happens with people is they think they need to add food, but they change their food plan on their own without talking it over with someone else, and they go into this state of half committed and fuzzy boundaries and not clear, not sure. For example, let's say what they added was four ounces of grain at lunch. Sometimes they eat the four ounces of grain at lunch and sometimes they don't. It seems like it's kind of working in some ways. Sometimes they just forget to cook the pot of rice, and so they just go out the door without having a complete lunch without that grain. Sometimes they remember to cook the pot of rice and they have four ounces of rice to put in their lunch, so they get wobbly around things. Over time, this becomes quite problematic as more food needs to be added, then suddenly diet mentality can creep in. Depending on how you're feeling about your weight, you might not eat that food because you want to not have the extra food in there. You'd like to maybe lose a pound or whatever. And now you can get into a zone where you're really monkeying with things.
The antidote to this is to have someone external who you commit your food plan changes to. I do this. I'm 22 years into my no sugar, no flour, weighed and measured meals journey. 22 years in. I have never once changed my food plan on my own without having someone else to talk it over with. Typically it's the same person that I talk it over with. I mean, it'll shift year upon year. I might switch commitment buddies, but I always have somebody that's one person in particular who's my person at that given moment, who as a matter of fact, I did it this morning. I did it this morning. Let me describe what happened. I've been waking up in the wee hours of the morning, not too wee, but 4:00, 5:00 AM, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 AM when my alarm might be set for an hour or two later than that. I've been waking up before my alarm, not because I've gotten enough sleep, but for no reason at all that I can tell. I emailed my functional medicine doctor, she said, you're in perimenopause. It could be that you're incredibly steady blood sugar that you've had. Your whole life could be less steady Now because of perimenopause, you might actually be having a blood sugar dip. I said that would make sense because I am taking off a little bit of weight right now. I weigh about three pounds or four pounds less than I did a month or two ago. So, I might actually, and my dinner is my lightest meal by far. I have twice as much food in my breakfast as I have in my dinner. I talked it over with my functional medicine doctor and we agreed that I would take half an ounce of Brazil nuts that I always have at breakfast for the selenium and move that to dinner, but she's not my external food plan commitment person. My food plan was not changed at that moment that I discussed that with my functional medicine doctor. Then what I was thinking was, let me talk that change over with my food plan commitment buddy, and I'll make it official. Okay? So, I talked it over this morning with my food plan commitment buddy, and they said, all they said was, that makes sense. Then I said, so that'll be my new food plan then. And they said, yep. Now, with that little conversation, we changed the state of reality before that 30-second exchange, my food plan was one thing, Brazil nuts in the morning at breakfast. After that 30-second conversation, my food plan was now a different thing. This is a magical thing, and there's some science behind it. In this case, it's actually a, I don't know if it's science, it's philosophy, philosophy of mind. I'm going to take you all the way back to when I was an undergrad at UC Berkeley.
I had the privilege of taking a course with the very, very famous John Searle, very famous philosopher. It was a course called Philosophy of Mind. It was all about the philosophy of the human mind, incredible course. He was a great teacher and in it, one of the books he taught was his own. This was a very common thing at UC Berkeley. I loved getting taught by the professors who wrote the books. This book was called Speech Acts, and there's this, it was all about the science of human communication and how the mind works in the language we use with each other. For example, when someone says, "Can you pass the salt?" They're not actually questioning your physiological or mental capacity to move salt from point A to point B. What they're saying is a request, would you please pass the salt to me right now, but saying, "Would you please pass the salt to me right now?" feels rude. So, we soften it by saying, "Could you pass the salt?" That's sort of the type of thing that was discussed in the Speech Acts class.
I'll never forget the day that he talked about this certain kind of speech act, which is unique in all the world of verbal utterances, in that it is a speech act that literally changes the fabric of reality. It literally turns the world from one state to a new state by the very act of uttering the words. Now for this to work, the person needs to be someone who has the authority to make that speech act, and they have to be in the right context. Let me give you an example. When someone says, "I now pronounce you man and wife," or "I now pronounce you husband and wife," or "I now pronounce you wife and wife," whatever they're saying, as soon as they say the words, they have changed the nature of reality. Do you get that? But not if they're five years old wearing a dress up tuxedo in the finished basement in the house, right? They don't have the context or the authority to make that statement. But if someone who is ordained in front of two people who wish to be betrothed in front of an audience of people who are watching say the words out loud, they literally, by saying the words, changed the fabric of reality. Do you see that?
Let me give you another example. "Class dismissed." I used to say that at the end of class sometimes, and by uttering the words, I created a new reality. Here's another one. "You're fired." By uttering the words, you change the state of the world. If you're a head of state, in the right context, "I declare war." There's not that many of these utterances. They're fascinating. In the case of what I'm talking about, I am saying, "I encourage you, if you do Bright Line Eating, to set up a formal structural relationship with someone such that your food plan is not ever changed unless they and you have a short conversation that agrees that it is so that you together change the state of the world by agreeing that your food plan will now be different and nothing other than that can change your food plan." It is a type of commitment level that takes your program up to the next level of accountability that can be really, really helpful. Then that food plan is a commitment. It's a contract. It is what you eat every day. When I wake up, I have my food written down from the night before, but my food plan is sacrosanct. I don't change categories. I don't change quantities. What I eat is exactly according to the scaffolding of my food plan. If my food plan is one serving of protein at lunch, I don't have two or not have one. I have exactly one serving of protein at lunch and whatever is my food plan, I encourage you to do it that way.
This may not be relevant to you, but if you are someone who's been doing Bright Line Eating for quite a while and what you realize is my food plan is not actually clear, consider getting it clear with the support of someone else and recruiting them to be your food plan commitment buddy, in exactly the way I just described. I predict that it will take your experience of doing Bright Line Eating and especially your odds of transitioning to Maintenance, living in Maintenance, and achieving those three Maintenance shifts of being devoted to your program. In this case, part of that is being devoted to sticking with your food plan exactly as it exists in contract with your food plan commitment buddy. Then being devoted, being resourced, someone who isn't using food as their main coping strategy for life anymore and being liberated. Someone who can finally let go of the food and the weight struggle and move on to focusing on their fullest. Beautiful, gorgeous, big, Bright life. That is the goal is sticking the transition to maintenance, making it last. And this, I think is something to take a look at in terms of what exactly is your food plan and what are the commitment structures around it that hold it in place. By the way, that Speech Act type is a declaration that is the name of the type of speech act that changes the state of reality. So, as you share with your person and you say, "I'm thinking I should change my food plan like this. What do you think?" And they say, "Yes, that sounds good." Then you make the statement, the declaration, "Okay, then that is my new food plan." With that declarative statement, you have now changed the reality of the program. You're working in that way, and you've stepped carefully from one state of commitment into a new state of commitment and not allowed any fuzziness or lack of clarity to derail your program in between. Something to keep in mind. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
