Hey there. It's Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson and let's talk about the goal range versus peace range in a weight-loss journey's Maintenance phase. What we're talking about this week is getting all the way down to goal range, meaning you've lost your excess weight and you're in the range that you're going to be maintaining long term. Now, Bright Line Eating® is unusually good at helping people get their weight off and live in a weight range that is comfortable for them long term and there's different ways to conceptualize that end state and that's what we're going to talk about this week.
I have lost 60 pounds from my top weight. I've been keeping that weight off now for 23 years and I think of my range that I'm maintaining in because my body's in flux. I don't weigh the same thing month after month, year after year. I think of my range personally as being in about a 10 pound range. I guess I would call that my goal range. I will say that over the 23 years that range has shifted a little bit. There were times a long time ago, gosh, in my early 30s, like 20 years ago where I weighed under that 10 pound range. I was quite fit and quite a bit thinner. And there were times a few years later when I was trying to get pregnant and deliberately put on a little bit of weight to try to get my period and get my hormones regulated and stuff where I was above that range. Then there were times when I was breaking my Lines about eight, nine, 10 years ago that my weight was up because I was breaking my Lines. So, there have been times in those 23 years where I was a little bit out of that range. I would say in those 23 years there's been about a 20 pound range.
Now for you, I want to talk about the difference between a goal range and a peace range. We have some people in Bright Line Eating who are talking about starting to conceptualize their weight range as a peace range as opposed to a goal range. And there is a subtle difference. For most people, the range is about a five to 10 pound range. We're really firm on this in Bright Line Eating, that goal weight is not a number. It is a range. A goal weight range typically is determined in advance. It's kind of a cold calculated thing of like it's almost like a should, this is kind of where I should end up. It can make people dissatisfied long term, especially if their body won't cooperate in getting there. It can be very frustrating.
A peace range may or may not be the same thing as a goal range. For some people they'll be the same. I would say for me, they feel pretty much the same. Although I would say when I get to the top end of my goal range, I lose my peace before I'm kind of out of the range. In the upper one to two pounds of that range, my peace goes. If I'm going to be firm about a peace range for me, it's going to be a slightly narrower range. It's not going to include those last two pounds because I don't really have peace up there in those last two pounds. My peace range is a little bit narrower for me.
The way I think some people are using the idea of a peace range to their benefit is noticing that it's not just about peace with their weight. It's about peace with their life, with their food, with their body, and they may actually need to weigh more to reach a state of equilibrium where their body's not screaming at them for more food, where they aren't really super hungry in between meals, where they're living in a sustainable day-to-day rhythm that feels like they could continue on this way for the long, long term. If they increase their range by a bit, by maybe five pounds, maybe 10 pounds, maybe 40 pounds, I'm not sure depending on ... I mean, we have people in our community who are coming from very, very big numbers and may have set a goal range off the cuff from who knows what idea or formula or whatever may or may not have factored in enough for loose skin and so forth. They may need to really look at a peace range that's quite a bit higher than the goal range that they once had in mind to reach an equilibrium where their body really feels happy and they're at peace with the ebb and flow of their program and it feels sustainable.
What I'm describing now is a situation where the peace range is higher than the goal range. This might involve doing some really deep inner work on the Maintenance Mindset, really letting go of diet mentality and deeply internalizing the reality that you may have come here for a diet, but this isn't a diet. Bright Line Eating is a deeply rewarding way of life around food and weight and inner work and community and habits and lifestyle that really transcends the notion of any given number. You may realize that what you want is flourishing. What you want is fulfillment. What you want is to live in a body that supports the life you want to live and being in a battle with your body trying to starve it down to a number that it's telling you pretty clearly over months and years of data that it's not on board with isn't what you want to do anymore. This is the work that sometimes goes into having a peace range that's higher than whatever goal range you had decided on before.
I have known people who have a peace range that's lower than their goal range. Here's how that works. They decided on a goal range based on some formula or however they decided on it, and based on their metabolism, their physique, their whatever, what they find is where they're actually at peace with their body is quite a bit thinner than that. Now, be careful here. I'm not talking about anorexia. I'm not talking about underweight to the point where it's disrupting things. You can tell you're underweight because if you don't have enough fat on your body to support hormone storage and production, it will mess with your mood, it will mess with your sleep, it will mess with your cycle. If you're a cycling woman, it will mess with things. Okay? I'm talking about people who were a little bit thinner or even quite a bit thinner depending on what quite a bit is, five pounds, 10 pounds, 15 pounds, what's quite a bit? I don't know. But they got thinner than their range had been, but they were still healthy. They were sleeping well, they were still cycling, getting their period. Everything was checking out as being fine, but for them they felt better being down there and they felt guilty for changing their range. It felt like maybe it wasn't okay according to the, I don't know, the grand poobah of who determines who gets to weigh what, but when they made peace with it and they said, "Okay, I'm just going to change my range down to where I actually feel comfortable in my clothes and in my body." They found that it was quite sustainable for them to have a peace range that was lower and they shifted their goal range down to be where their peace range was.
If you consider this notion of where do I have peace, holistic peace, peace in all areas of my life, my body, my mood, my activity levels, my health, can I create a sphere of peace and get the Venn diagrams of what I want to weigh, what I actually weigh and what my body is telling me it wants to weigh? Can I do the work to get them all to line up and ultimately have peace? It's a helpful framework I think to really think of it as a peace range and to do the work so that you end up with a five to 10 pound range where you have peace, your body has peace and as your weight fluctuates because it will in maintenance, you're checking your range, but then you're also asking yourself, "Do I have peace around it? Does this feel sustainable? And if I don't have peace, why not? And what work could I do so that I have peace?" So, just some helpful musings for those of us who are living this journey long term, bodies change over years and decades and we need different ways sometimes to look at the same situation as the years tick by. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
