Susan:
Hey there everyone. It's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson and welcome to the weekly vlog. This week we're interviewing Dixie King, who is a Bright Lifer™. You just said something to me that was so sweet. Say that again, Dixie.
Dixie:
When I started Bright Line Eating® in October of 2015, it never occurred to me that I would be interviewed on camera by Susan Peirce Thompson. So, that's a pretty exciting little road mark.
Susan:
Well, there you go. I was coaching you on a coaching call recently and I heard snippets of your story and I said, "Oh my gosh, could I interview you for the vlog?" That was a little while ago and here we are. Dixie, tell people about your background. In particular, you come from pretty big numbers, right? You've lost quite a bit of weight. When did you first start gaining weight?
Dixie:
Yeah, I started gaining weight when I was three years old and I think if I had been older, it would've been drugs or alcohol, but food was what was available when I was little and there was a lot going on in my life at that time. I was always overweight at least minimally my entire life. I don't ever remember a time when I felt like I was at a quote unquote normal weight or the right size body. Ironically, I ended up doing my doctoral dissertation work, I'm a cultural anthropologist, on eating disorders. And this was before I ever gained a really significant amount of weight. That was really interesting because right after I started gaining weight and I ended up morbidly obese and I ended up spending over 20 years at between 280 and 300 pounds. I think my top weight was 313 pounds. What was really interesting is that in my doctoral work, I realized looking at some of the cultural issues around eating disorders and around how women are impacted by them, one of the things that we do as we gain weight is we disappear. We stop having credibility. We stop being seen by people or taken seriously by people and I wasn't going to let that happen to me. So, even though I tried desperately to lose weight and I was never one of those people who yo-yo'ed, I was never able to lose the weight ever. And so, I just kept going up. What I did is I made it the basis of diversity training. So, I was doing diversity training and instead of talking about gender and about race and ethnicity to begin with, I started talking about body size and I would walk into rooms at 300 pounds, and I would write the word fat on the board and I would ask people, what's the first word that comes to mind? I would watch their eyes pop out of their heads because I'm standing there 300 pounds asking them to tell the truth about how they feel about the word fat. But I was not going to be minimized by my weight. Ironically, it's such an oxymoron, but I wasn't going to be minimized by my weight. I wasn't going to hide. And it was sheer bravado because I had no self-confidence underneath it all, but I put on a great show. I'm a good actress.
Susan:
So powerful.
Dixie:
It was not good. Most definitely.
Susan:
At what age range did you gain the majority of that weight? And do you remember why?
Dixie:
Weight between in my early 30s, and I stayed that way until I found Bright Line Eating when I was 59 years old. So almost 60.
Susan:
Do you remember what happened in your early 30s that you put on all that weight?
Dixie:
Well, if I'm honest, I think it's because I returned to my hometown and started a business here and I knew that I was cutting myself short, that I could be doing other things with my life, but somehow I felt like this was a place where I could function where I had some family support at that time. My dad was still alive and it was a small pond and I could find a place here and make it work. And so, that was what I did, but I was chronically unhappy. I had had some very unhappy love affairs. I had just struggled with the horrible self-hatred that we feel when our bodies are out of control. I heard somebody say something yesterday and I wanted to be my mantra from now on. She said, "I don't have a body. I am a body." That idea of owning fully my sentience, if you will, my humanity, my body, and owning it and loving it is such a new concept even after all the work that I've done and I've done a ton of work over the years, a lot of therapy and still struggled. And I was truly at a point of despair. I had given up on personal relationships. I had constructed a life that worked for me and that was successful on the outside, but it was interesting that the greatest compliment people could give me at that time is, "Gee, when I look at you, your weight isn't the first thing I see." How sad that people have to say that, how sad that was the best thing that I could hear because I was so conscious of my body all the time. And it did limit me. Although I was hiking, I was doing all kinds of other stuff even at that weight, just struggling to push through, but always having to achieve and just feeling that desperate need to do more, do more, do more, and somehow prove my worth. And that's a hard-
Susan:
Dixie, help me understand how saying I don't have a body, I am a body feels empowering to you. Because when I think of that, I have a Part of me that says, "But I have, or I am a mind and a heart and a spirit, so I don't want to think that I am a body like I am just a body." So, help me understand how you're thinking of that.
Dixie:
My mind, my heart and my spirit, my energy, my essence is housed in this body. It's my home and that's what I mean by it is that I am my body and when I abuse it, when I reject it, when I discard it, when I hurt it, when I harm it, I'm hurting and harming my essence. I am not only my body, but my body is my house. It is my home and I'm trying to honor that. And as you know, and I know we'll talk about a little bit later, I had some hard lessons in that regard.
Susan:
Yeah. Thank you. So, take us to how did you find Bright Line Eating?
Dixie:
Yeah. Interestingly, it was the Urban Monk Pedram Shojai was talking about-
Susan:
No way.
Dixie:
Yes. He was talking about your program and this was after you had just started. I think you started early in 2015, and I got into the October Boot Camp, and I was really fascinated because I'd been in Overeaters Anonymous off and on pretty successfully actually when I lived in the Los Angeles area. But when I moved to my hometown, the only people in OA were people who were still anywhere from 40 to 200 pounds overweight. And there wasn't an eating program. There was a spiritual program, but there was not a food program. Like everybody else, when I first heard no sugar, no flour, I was like, "How is that even possible?" But, in fact, I talked to a doctor about it and he said, "That sounds pretty draconian. You can't live without eating." And I said, "Yeah, but you can live without eating sugar and flour." And he looked at me and said, "I never thought about it."
Susan:
That's so funny. Just so you know, we started Bright Line Eating in late 2014. We had a Boot Camp at the end of 2014 in October of 2014 and then one in February and one in June. So, the October 2015 Boot Camp would've been Boot Camp number four. It was the first really, really big one. The first really big one. And yeah, I met Pedram Shojai, I believe in February of 2015, and we did a vlog together and yeah, I'm not in touch with him anymore, but that's amazing. That's amazing. So, you got into the first very big Boot Camp, the one that Ocean Robbins promoted to the Food Revolution Network and brought in thousands and thousands of people. Okay, so, what happened? You found Bright Line Eating. You'd had some experience and Overeaters Anonymous.
Dixie:
Brilliant. I ended up actually losing weight for the first time ever and I did brilliantly and I got down to about 225 pounds and then I quit. I didn't quit Bright Line Eating, but I broke my Lines and it took me a year to get back and the way that it worked and how I ended up getting back because I struggled and struggled and struggled and I just thought I'm hopeless. It's just not going to work for me. Then I was driving to my sister's in Arizona. It was an eight-hour drive and it was two days before Christmas in 2016. I listened to every Boot Camp recording on that eight-hour trip. I just saturated myself. Wow. Just finished the whole Boot Camp. I got to my sisters and I spent Christmas completely 100% within my Bright Lines and I didn't look back and I ended up losing a total, I actually ended up losing a little bit too much because I do have quite a lot of skin having spent over 25 years morbidly obese, one does, and I ended up losing 170 pounds total and I ended up regaining about 10 pounds and that put me right where I should be. I'm about 10 pounds above that right now. But yeah, just finding the whole idea. I just want to say something about body dysmorphia here because when I was at 300 pounds, I would look in the mirror, and I would not see 300 pounds. When I would see a photograph of myself, I would be stunned. I would be horrified and shocked because when I looked in the mirror, that wasn't what I saw. Interestingly enough, today, 160 pounds lighter, I look in the mirror and I still see the same body that I saw 150, 160 pounds ago. I do not see myself as in a right size body. And when I see the photographs, I'm like, wow, that's amazing. So, body dysmorphia is a real thing ,and I think some of us don't recover from it or it takes a very, very long time. I know that when I look at myself in a video recording, I'm just like, wow, that's amazing. I look like a quote unquote normal person. Well, when I started studying overeating and I started studying eating disorders, it wasn't normal to be overweight. Unfortunately, thanks to the Standard American Diet, our SAD diet, what? More than 50% of us are overweight now, significantly overweight. And as much as I want to agree that we don't want to vilify our bodies and we want to celebrate our bodies at whatever size they are, there is a health-related component here and I really kind of learned that the hard way, but I don't want to pretend either that it was a perfect journey or that I stayed within my Bright Lines perfectly the whole time because I didn't. I will say it's been years since I've had sugar or flour. I think once accidentally I took a sip of something that had some sugar and I was shocked and appalled. It's like, oh my God, but it tasted horrible. And so, the beauty is that when I stay off of that stuff, it doesn't even look like food anymore to me. So, other people around me can be eating it and I can remember what it tastes like, but it just doesn't call to me anymore. And so, that kind of freedom is incredible where I still struggle on occasion, I struggled recently with it is with quantities. And so, ironically, it'll be vegetables and fruit. It won't even be hardcore stuff because I have an autoimmune condition. I eat almost no grains. I eat oatmeal is the only grain I can eat. And so, I have some real limitations in my diet. I don't overeat protein. I don't overeat grains. I don't overeat anything except fruits and vegetables. But let me tell you, you can still gain weight over eating fruits and vegetables. Those Bright Lines are there for a reason.
Susan:
You can. And what do you do to support yourself when you find yourself overeating when the quantities Bright Line is feeling hard for you?
Dixie:
Usually it's interesting, I'm taking a line too and I will say looking back, usually it's when I am stressed out and I am letting my habit stack fall away because I have a very intensive habit stack in the morning and it includes some ... Well, it includes journaling and I am absolutely adamant. I never miss a day of journaling. It includes usually listening to the Accountability Call while I'm getting dressed and that's at 5:30 AM my time right now. Very early. And then, I have some brain games that I do because I have a sister with Alzheimer's and I'm doing everything I can to keep my cognition strong. I also meditate and those are the things that really set my day up. So, I get up at 4:30 in the morning so that I can do all of that and it's been crucial to me and as long as I keep that habit stack sacrosanct, I usually do very well. I've also discovered something interesting about myself because I'm not a religious person, but I definitely consider myself a spiritual person. I've learned lately that I don't commit to God and the reason I don't commit to God is because then I have to keep it. The admission of that was kind of shocking to me. It's like I will not do the ultimate betrayal here. And so, I will have days when I sit there and say, okay, I'm not going to commit today because I don't know that I can keep it but help me because I want to keep it. And so, I ask for the help when I can't make the commitment. That's what I do.
Susan:
Interesting. Have you tried having a ceiling and a floor for your morning habit stack? Have you tried that? So, for people listening who don't know what that means, a ceiling would be the maximum, and the floor would be the minimum. Having the full habit stack would be the ceiling of maybe from 4:30 in the morning all the way to 8:30 in the morning or something, you've got things back to back to back to back. Whereas if you're more stressed or time is tight or you have to catch a plane or something, you might journal for 10 minutes instead of 30. You might meditate for one minute instead of 20, you might, et cetera, et cetera, and have a condensed version. You've tried that. Does that help?
Dixie:
Definitely. It does. Yeah. I'll journal one page instead of three pages because normally I just write three pages however long it takes. Morning pages. Yeah. I'm distracting myself and it takes longer, obviously, so I try not to distract myself. I'll do my one page. I'll do five minutes instead of 30 minutes of meditation. Yeah, exactly. And lately I have fallen off my meditation practice and so I'm just starting to get it back and solid again. It really is interesting to me how all of those things really conspire to help provide the foundation that I need to be okay with myself during the day. I do have a Mastermind Group that is phenomenal, that helps a lot. And I have buddies that I can reach out to, which is really helpful as well, all of the above.
Susan:
What's your Bright Line Eating journey been like for the last few years?
Dixie:
Okay. Well, I think we talked about this on the coaching call because I was in deep gratitude and that's the place I really live these days because three years ago, actually about three and a half years ago, I was through my work, I own a small business that I'm bringing to an end this year, as a matter of fact, finally after 29 years. But I was working literally for three months. I was working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. At the end of 2022, I found something break in myself. And then in March of that year, I found out that one of my two best friends was dying and I went to visit her in April. We thought we were going to have more time than we did and I ended up basically with her the last five days of her life around the clock and I thought I came out of that okay, but a few months later I was hiking up in Canyon Country feeling at the top of my game, 68 years of age and able to hike at 7,000 feet and hike a thousand feet at a time. I have an incredible picture of myself at Capitol Reef National Park at Hickman Bridge just celebrating my life and so grateful for the fact that I had this. Six weeks later, I was wheelchair bound and had no feeling in my hands, my feet or my legs. I couldn't walk. I couldn't hold a spoon. I had exactly one finger that I could use and it was this finger, which the irony of it does not escape me.
Susan:
For those who are listening on the podcast, she's pointing to the middle finger on her right hand. So, just in case you want to give the universe the middle finger, you have one appendage left.
Dixie:
Literally. I was hospitalized. Nobody could figure out what was going on. I had an autoimmune condition and I had had it for 10 years, but it had been in remission and nobody put two and two together. I kept saying I have an autoimmune condition. I had just moved to Central Arizona and where I live, there's not a lot of breadth or depth to the medical system. It took a specialist in Phoenix to finally four months later figure out what was really going on. But in a month, I became so weak, running a chronic fever and the like just before I became virtually crippled that I couldn't get out of a chair without help. I lost 25 pounds in six weeks. And finally, I went into AFib, they put me in the hospital, found out I was anemic, gave me a blood transfusion and my autoimmune condition went berserk, and I literally had severe nerve damage, which I still have in my feet in my legs and in my arms and hands. They saved my life, but I was on 60 milligrams of prednisone. And by the way, when I started Bright Line Eating, I should say this for people who are on steroids and who struggle with that, I lost 150 pounds on prednisone. It wasn't that prednisone, but I was on 20 when I started Bright Line Eating that went down because I just had an autoimmune flareup and it went down to about three milligrams and then I finally was able to get off of it and here I was back on steroids again. I didn't regain my weight. So I was very fortunate in that regard, but I have a form of vasculitis that's called polyarteritis nodosa. It's very, very rare. Lucky me, couldn't have bought a lottery ticket, but instead ended up with this. And for a week I was hospitalized and then I was put into a rehab facility where I stayed for a month and literally, this is how work obsessed I was, Susan, I had my computer with me in the hospital and I was writing reports that were due for my office with on finger of one hand because that was the only use I had. I couldn't zip pants on. I couldn't pull pants on. I couldn't walk. I couldn't use my wheelchair because I couldn't grip. I couldn't do anything, but I sat there and finished those damn reports. I actually had a doctor walk in and look at me and say, "You do realize that you're very sick and that you are in a rehab facility, do you not?" And I said, "Yeah, and I'm not going to lose my business or my life over it." And I did it. Now, that was insane and I realized that looking back, but what was I think part of who I am, and I don't know where this comes from, but I am grateful for it. There was a part of me that never ever considered the possibility that it wasn't going to be okay. And that's I think the nature of faith for me is less a religious concept of faith than it is the belief that somehow there's a reason behind everything that happens. I had one moment sitting in a wheelchair unable to wheel myself anywhere after I'd been in the dining hall. And by the way, I fought to keep my Bright Lines throughout that rehab facility. The nutritionist had to come to me and they went out and bought plain yogurt and Bright Line Foods so that I could stay clean because-
Susan:
I was going to ask, what happened to your food?
Dixie:
Sugar in everything that they served. And I asked, "People are in recovery here, why are you serving this?" She laughed and she said, "Dixie, we've tried to serve totally healthy food and people will not eat it." I was like, oh my God. I watched people who were morbidly obese while I was in that facility struggling, not able to regain their mobility, not able to stand up. They had me in there learning how to stand up with a walker and if I had been hauling up 200 more pounds or 150 more pounds than I was hauling up already, I wouldn't have been able to do it. So, Bright Line Eating set the stage for me to be able to recover, but I did have one moment sitting in that wheelchair when I hit absolute despair and I thought I had hit despair in my life before. I had never hit despair for one moment, but I did something I don't think I had ever done before, Susan. I actually, I'm going to cry saying it, I sat with the feeling. I let myself feel that despair all the way down to my gut and it passed and I couldn't believe that it passed and I couldn't believe that there was that part of me that knew somehow I might never walk again, I might never be able to hold a spoon again, but that I was somehow going to be okay and I just kept on keeping on. I did something I had never done before. I asked for help. I was always the person who helped everybody else. I wasn't the person who asked for help. And I wrote to friends, all of my friends were not where I lived. They're all over the country and they're people from graduate school and people from my childhood. I wrote to people and I said, "I live alone and in order to stay in my home, I have a nurse that can come in during the day starting in," this was at the beginning of September, at the end of October, but until then in order to stay in my home and not have to give it up, I need help. At that point, I was able to actually stand on a walker. I could get myself into my walk-in shower and sit down and shower. I needed help with certain parts of dressing, but I could more or less handle some of my dressing at that point. I was in for a year, I was in pull-up stretch pants because I couldn't do loose, very loose ones because I couldn't use my hands. I couldn't use a rolling walker because I couldn't grip the brakes on it. I had to use a standard walker. I remember sitting in the car at the grocery store watching people while my friend was in the store shopping for me and watching people walking to and from their cars and wondering if they understood how privileged they were to be able to walk. It was quite an experience, but I wrote to these friends and by golly, eight of them split up the next two months and they flew in from all over. I had somebody from South Carolina. I had somebody from Washington State. I had a bunch of friends from California who flew in and spent anywhere from four to 12 days with me around the clock helping me so that I could stay in my home. At the end of that time, I was actually able to, with the help of a retired nurse through the Unitarian Church I've belonged to, she would come in during the day and prepare my meals for me and clean the cat litter. Those are friends, by the way. People who will come and clean your cat, that are for you, those are friends.
Susan:
There's a good definition right there.
Dixie:
Yep. But just the fact that people came through like that was just stunning to me and humbling to me. I have two nieces that I actually moved to Arizona to be closer to. They're the ones who are going to be stuck with me when I can't take care of myself. They were sitting with me one day in the rehab facility and I said, "I didn't come to Central Arizona to be a burden on everybody and I am so sorry." One of them turned to me and said, "You know, Dixie, I'm going to be harsh here. You've lived alone way too long and you don't get what family is. You don't have to earn our love. We love you. Are part of our family, so just shut up and stop that bullshit." And it was like, okay, I was just stunned. That started a whole new journey of looking at what it was in me that had to work 12-hour days, seven days a week, that had to always get the accolades, that always had to prove herself, that always had to make sure that people knew that I was somehow worthy. And the only person I was trying to prove that to I finally realized was me. Nobody else cared. They either loved me and liked me or they didn't like me and they didn't love me, but really the only person that I was trying to prove anything to in the end was myself and what a shocking awakening that was. If there's one thing, there's a saying that God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves I would have worked the way I was working until I dropped dead, until I fell out of my chair. And that disease, this disease stopped everything from me. And it took me a year to get to the point where I could use a rolling walker with ease. About a year later, I was able to move to a cane. I live in an area that has some trails, dirt trails and like I had my rolling walker on those dirt trails walking. People would look at me and say, "What are you doing?" I was like, "I'm coming back. I'm getting back to health." My specialist in Phoenix recently, I just saw him, he said, "My God," he said, "You are a walking, talking miracle because most people don't come back from this." I have 95% of my hands back, which is amazing.
Susan:
You have 95% of the use of your hands back?
Dixie:
Yeah.
Susan:
Amazing.
Dixie
It is. It's stunning. And I have 70% of my feet back, but I have a great photograph of myself at Arches National Park last April. I actually hiked a few miles with my two nieces in Arches National Park and I had to go up slick rock on my bottom pushing myself up backwards, but I was able to do it. I had my two poles and I hiked. And the whole idea, because I mean, I just stood there at the top of one summit and just cried because I honestly didn't know if I'd ever even be able to go back to a national park again, much less hike than one and Canyon Country's this whole place. And it's where I go for renewal and to be able to go back and to be able to share that moment with my two nieces who were incredibly supportive was just stunning. I want to bring this story home just to say that I really credit Bright Line Eating with the fact that if I hadn't had it and this had happened to me, I'm not sure I would've recovered. I know that my food helped my body. I know that there are environmental factors that contributed to my disease and I know that there are stress related factors that contributed. I have control over the stress related. I don't always have control over the environmental factors, but I do have control over my food, and I can choose what I put into my body. I've had to, because of this disease really restructure my program and Aligned 2 is coming along at just the right time for me to sit down and think about what is going to be a customized program that will work for me that will keep me at the weight that I am or lower, a little bit lower, not a lot, but a little bit lower. If I'm at the weight I'm at right now for the rest of my life, I'm in a right size body and that is so amazing to me. So, on top of everything else, I've been wanting to write since I was seven years old and one of the things that changed is I had to really reprioritize what was important to me in my life. I knew that I wanted to eventually bring my business to an end and I have been able to do that pretty naturally. In September, I'll be closing it permanently. I'm 71 years old. It's time, but I had started writing and I've written a little bit along but never done anything with it. I had been working off and on and I do mean off most of the time on a novel, a fantasy novel for almost 20 years. I finally finished it last year and went through a book coach and an editor and beta readers and my book came out on the 24th of February of this year. Then I just had a piece of memoir about dealing with my father's stroke, which happened 10, oh God, 14 years ago now. I just had that published in the Journal of Narrative Medicine called, "Intima." So, all of a sudden, my life as a writer is coming to life. As I transition out of my business, I'm transitioning into full-time writing and that is such a joy and so amazing to be able to craft and use words and to be able to generate a story about a woman who is making her way under unbelievable, fantastic, because it's a fantasy circumstances, finding her power and is finding her way. It's funny, when I finished that book, I looked at it and I thought, my God, I just wrote the mother-daughter relationship that I never knew I need to write. My mom died when I was 19 and I processed it through this book.
Susan:
What's the name of the book for people who are curious?
Dixie:
Ithia's Dance.
Susan:
Ithia, is I- T-H-I-A-S. Ithia's Dance by Dixie King, D-I-X-I-E. Dixie L. King.
Dixie:
And yeah, thank you for asking. But yeah, it's the first in a trilogy. So, I'm midway through the second book and this is just I'm having the time of my life and it's not like I don't have lots of little speed bumps because I do, but I am so grateful for the fact that I've been given this opportunity to come back and to rethink my priorities and to just really focus on doing what is creative and what I'm passionate about. I'm also very active in social justice right now and doing a lot of work in my community and the only thing I can say is just thank you Susan Peirce Thompson, but thank you universe. Thank you for the fact that there is something in me that just wanted to keep going no matter what. And people say they're stunned that I came back and I actually had somebody in Bright Line Eating tell me I couldn't have done what you did. I wouldn't have come back. And you know, Susan, my response is, bullshit. You never know until the moment when you're challenged how you're going to respond. But if somebody had told me I had three months to live, it might've been a different story. I was told I had a chance to recover. Why the hell wouldn't I do every possible thing I could do in order to recover? Bright Line Eating has been a major part of that, so thank you.
S
usan:
Thank you, Dixie. I want to end with just one question. What do you feel like you see or understand or believe now about the meaning of life or your purpose in life that you wouldn't have seen or understood if you hadn't gone through the journey that you've been through?
Dixie:
It's interesting. I think we all have a purpose and I'm convinced that in the little ways that I've touched people and that people have touched me, that's really what it's about. The connection is what it's about and especially in a very polarized world right now and it doesn't matter what side of that polarization one is on, we tend to vilify the other and I'm just not willing to do that anymore. We are all in this together and if we are honest, we do have more in common than we have apart. That's what I want my life to be about. I want it to be about fostering connection and challenging myself to grow no matter what. And that means be careful what you pray for. It's like I want to and you know what? Stuff like what happened to me is what makes you grow. I would just say be grateful for those opportunities to grow. It means we're alive.
Susan:
Yeah. Dixie King, thank you so much for being on the weekly vlog. Congratulations. Really appreciate the time. That's the weekly vlog, everyone. I'll see you next week.
