Bright Line Living™ - The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

In this fan-favorite “Best Of” vlog, I answer a question from Susan, who is retired and often takes spontaneous trips that make it hard for her to write down her food beforehand. Is this ever a good idea? Find out when it’s a sane choice to allow some flex in your food planning, and when it’s not. Sane Choices was originally published on November 1, 2017: https://www.brightlineeating.com/podcasts/bright-line-living-the-official-bright-line-eating-podcast/episodes/2147779385  FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/sconob The Best of the Weekly Vlog: Sane Choices | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

In this “Best Of” vlog, I talk about how important the hours of evening are in helping you to maintain your Bright, beautiful life. In fact, we say that the day begins not at sunrise—but at sunset the day before. Why is this the case? Find out more in this classic vlog that’s proven popular since I shot it several years ago. The Day Begins at Sunset was originally published on August 2, 2023.  FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/ycd4wn The Best of the Weekly Vlog: The Day Begins at Sunset | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

A Bright Lifer wrote in with a question about affirmations: Do they really work? The answer isn’t a simple “yes” or “no.” Researchers have uncovered some interesting factors that play a role in their efficacy. Sometimes they help, and sometimes they actually hurt. In this vlog, I take a look at that research and share exactly what you can do to make sure you’re getting benefit from your affirmations, and not unintentionally undermining your Bright mindset. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/nipuvm Do Affirmations Really Work? | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

You’ve probably noticed that health insurance costs have increased astronomically over the past decade as diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity-related chronic illnesses ravage our health and our pocketbooks. More recently, the cost of GLP-1 drugs has exacerbated the problem. We want to help, and I know we can. In this vlog, find out what we’re doing to break into a completely new sector for us—in a way that everyone benefits. Contact us to learn more about how Bright Line Eating can benefit your company. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/ynv7zy Health Care Costs Are Exploding and Bright Line Eating Has an Answer | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

This week, I’m introducing a new series of “Best Of” vlogs. Our first one is literally the #1 vlog that Bright Lifers say they refer to again and again. In it, I discuss what happens when you’ve been Bright, but then give in to the little voice that says, one bite won’t hurt… That’s called intermittent reinforcement. Learn what the science says about why it can indeed hurt you to give in to food cravings, even just once in a while. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/1ysucs The Best of The Weekly Vlog: Intermittent Reinforcement | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating PodcastIntermittent Reinforcement was originally published on September 23, 2020.

Body positivity can be hard. We’re programmed by society to think negatively about our bodies from an early age. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In this vlog, I share a new story you can tell yourself that might just reprogram your thoughts and feelings about your body at the deepest level. This story helps me to think the best about my body…and it may just help you, too. Watch to learn more. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/ozn56r Developing a Positive Body Image | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

How do you determine if something is an addiction or a bad habit? The DSM-5 has 11 criteria they use to help diagnose addictions. Having even a few of those may indicate addiction. But there’s another criterion I use to help determine whether something is a bad habit or an addiction. Watch this week’s vlog to find out what it is. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/4ms87c What’s the Difference Between a Bad Habit and an Addiction? | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

Read the research paper here: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1586490/full  This week, I have another article to share with you from Frontiers in Psychiatry. In this one, we talk about using an abstinence-based model—like Bright Line Eating—with those who have eating disorders, such as bulimia. Does it work? Watch the vlog to find out how my own story may help you to understand the nuances involved. Read the research paper here: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1586490/full  FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/hqszrq Abstinence-Based Treatment for Eating Disorders | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

I’m excited to announce that we’ve just published a paper in the prestigious journal Frontiers in Psychiatry. It outlines the results of a six-year follow-up survey of people who did the Bright Line Boot Camp in 2017. What we discovered is exciting and gratifying—and I share it with you in this week’s vlog.Read the research paper here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12169135/ FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/3w5esg 6-Year Follow-Up Research on Bright Line Eating | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

Can you have an allergy to sugar, flour, or unmeasured food quantities? It all depends on your definition of “allergy.” In this week’s vlog, find out what allergies are when you’re talking about food addiction, and why an allergy mindset can help you make your Bright Life possible. Take the Masterclass! FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/cqrpll The Allergy Model of Addiction | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

Someone wrote in and asked whether people who have a more intuitive, creative, spontaneous personality type can succeed with Bright Line Eating. She pointed out that BLE seems to be a natural fit for people who gravitate toward structure, order, and discipline, but what about the rest of us? I relate to this so much! Watch this week’s vlog to hear my answer. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/nm62oz Can You Do BLE With a More Freewheeling Personality Type? | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast  

This week we’ll be addressing a provocative question: How do weight-loss drugs affect romantic relationships? In 2018, a study out of Sweden looked at bariatric surgery outcomes for long-term romantic relationships. They found that those who had the surgery and were married were significantly more likely to get divorced afterwards, while those who were single were significantly more likely to enter into a long-term relationship. Furthermore, the degree of weight loss predicted the changes—the more weight someone lost, the more likely they were to divorce if they were married, or find a partner if they were single. As far as I know, no comparable study has been done with GLP-1 drugs. But earlier this year, the New York Times published an article by Lisa Miller, who interviewed more than two dozen people who were on GLP-1 medications to talk about their relationship challenges. The article focused on one couple, Jeanne and Javier. Jeanne was 53 and had fatty liver disease. She started taking Zepbound and lost 60 pounds—and her marriage utterly changed. At the time of the article, she and her husband had not had sex since she went on the medication. Not once. Both said that the time since she went on the drug has been the hardest in their 15-year marriage. Jeanne reported that the weight-loss drugs gave her her “no” back. She’s a people pleaser, but now she wasn’t afraid to say no—to sex, to staying out late with friends, to alcohol. She and Javier started to fight. The article doesn’t wrap up what will happen to them, but said that suddenly they’re talking about divorce. What are the factors here? Are weight-loss drugs taking away people’s sex drive? Studies on that are mixed, with no clear conclusions. What else could be going on, then? One factor is that weight-loss drugs shift people’s identities. For Jeanne, her identity as a people pleaser went away. She found her no. Another factor: the couples with better outcomes had some looseness in how they navigated things like mealtimes. For example, couples who didn’t eat together fared better than those where dinner was a big production. Couples who were not in lockstep, with relaxed expectations for each other, were better off after the weight-loss drugs came into their lives. The article also got into how some couples split up because the weight loss suggested a change in social status. Data shows that couples are often matched in social desirability and physical attractiveness. So, when one person loses a lot of weight, it may mean their social desirability increases, causing a loss of balance in the relationship. Lastly, there are hormonal changes. Hormones affect our behavior, our thoughts, and our moods, and a lot of them are made and stored in fat. When you lose weight, they are impacted. At Bright Line Eating, we help lots of people lose weight. We help them change when and how much they eat and how they relate to food. This may break social contracts that people have in their relationships. The article talked about how sometimes that weight loss isn’t attractive to the partner. This can be a challenge, too. I lost 60 pounds 22 years ago, and I was married at that point for 3 or 4 years. We survived it—but it was hard. So I appreciate how the light is starting to shine on how weight loss and weight-loss drugs can impact primary relationships. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/2kzrra How Weight-Loss Drugs Impact Romantic Relationships | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

I’ve been thinking about weight-loss drugs and long-term weight-loss maintenance. If you’re curious about how these two pair together, you’ll want to watch this video. Last weekend, I submitted the completed first draft for my fifth Bright Line Eating book, called Maintain. It’s about the shift needed to sustain lifelong weight loss. In it, I wrote about weight-loss drugs. It’s clear they are not going to solve the obesity pandemic. Why? Because people aren’t staying on them. 85 percent of people go off them within two years. People see them as a short-term fix, and then regain the weight when they stop using them. The way to keep weight off is to lose it, and then keep doing whatever you did to lose it. This relates to the first of three identity shifts I talk about in the book. You’ve got to become someone who is not dieting, but instead is devoted to a lifestyle change. Diets are a temporary quick fix. But with a lifestyle change, you’re looking at a new way of life. It’s the difference between giving up meat for Lent and becoming a vegetarian. You’ve got to become devoted. The second identity shift is that you’ve got to become resourced, meaning that you’re not using food as a crutch. You’re not eating for every emotion, or getting into food when life becomes lifey. You’ve developed other resources for coping with emotions. Finally, you’ve got to become liberated, meaning you are willing to face what your life will be like without the food and weight struggle, and fill that space with beautiful, Bright pursuits. People generally don’t think of weight-loss drugs as a long-term thing. I assembled a couple of hundred people on Zoom recently who were on or considering weight-loss drugs. I asked the people who were currently on a GLP-1 medication how many planned to stay on them, and 76 percent said no. These people had not crafted a long-term program. Which ultimately means they’re on a diet. Here’s what works: a three-pronged system: food, habits, support. You need a food plan. If you take the Food Susceptibility Quiz, at foodaddictionquiz.com, you’ll get a number from 1-10. 10 means you have a brain that is profoundly addicted to food. Your approach to food needs to factor that in when looking at solutions. You need habits around healthy living. Sleep, gratitude, and self-care habits. You may need habits around meditation and human connection. In the Bright Line Eating Boot Camp, I talk about these habits and guide you in setting them up. Lastly, you need support, a community of people walking this journey with you. People you can call when you’re afraid of the number on the bathroom scale, and so much more. So, where do weight-loss drugs fit in? If you can’t stick to a program because of cravings and hunger, weight-loss drugs can be a tool to help you work your program. But expect to use them for the long term. Whether there are exceptions to this is something we’ll see in the coming years. What works for maintenance is whatever you did to lose weight. Long-term maintenance means doing what takes the weight off, using the three-prong path. If you have relapsed or can’t seem to manage a consistent plan, you may want to consider a weight-loss drug. If you absolutely insist on getting off of them, I would encourage you to reach maintenance, stay on the drugs for at least two years, and then slowly wean off. We’re on this journey together. I’m watching the relationship between these drugs and food addiction, and advise you that whatever method you use to lose weight, keep doing it. I’ve created a new video series, called Weight-Loss Drugs and Beyond: What Really Works for Lifelong Success. I talk about the latest research, side effects, and more. In it, I tell you how you can get the effects of drugs—without using them. I invite you to join our new Boot Camp Cohort to find out more. I’d also like to ask you to answer one quick question at the link below, about how you feel about weight-loss drugs. That will get you free access to the video series. I’m glad we’re all on this journey together, and I love you. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/zqxbgp How to Use Weight-Loss Drugs With Bright Line Eating | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

In this vlog, I want to talk about how to manage the “muchness” of life, especially if you have multiple priorities—a job, family, and more—and fitting it all into your Bright life feels overwhelming. I’d like to share with you some insights I’ve gained in the past week about structuring my days, and especially my evenings.  I struggle chronically with over-busyness. Sometimes I feel like I’m just treading water and can barely keep my head above water.  But recently, I talked with one of my life coaches, Clive Prout. I told him I’ve been feeling overwhelmed, but I didn’t think there were any breakthroughs possible, because I’m not willing to get rid of any of my major “buckets” of activity that I’m devoted to. I’m committed to everything: my family, my job, my body work, and more. I knew it was all too much, but didn’t think I could take any of it away.  Clive helped me realize something about how I live my Bright days, and it blew my mind that I’d never noticed this before. The first three hours of my day, after my alarm goes off at 5:12, are strictly scheduled. I have a support call at 5:30, meditation at 6 am, then breakfast—and it goes on. I know where every minute of my morning is spent. Between 8:30 and 4:30, it’s also true; I know what I’m doing every hour.  But after 4:30, I couldn’t tell you what I’m doing. I never noticed this before, probably because I do have an evening routine. I finish up in my office, I pray, I go through a mental gratitude list, and then get in bed for my nightly readings, 5-year journal, and Nightly Checklist. It all seemed structured to me. But I was in total denial about when all that happens. I intend to get to bed at 9:30 every night, but my Oura Ring told me I wasn’t getting to sleep until nearly 11. I was averaging only 6 hours and 22 minutes of sleep over the past several months—not enough! Working with Clive, I realized my mornings are structured because there are people I need to work with. I’m committed to being there for them. But commitments to myself feel more flexible.  So, during my coaching call, I declared that from now on, it’s lights out at 9:30. I committed to that. Then I made a nightly office checklist to streamline my process of shutting down for the day.  The first night I did this, I thought it would take me an hour to shut down my office, but at the hour mark, I wasn’t even half done. No wonder it was taking me so long to get to bed!  Now, with the checklist, I am clearer about what needs to be done. I can get through it faster. And, because I know the lights need to be out at 9:30 p.m., no excuses, I cut corners and move faster when necessary. So now the lights are going out at 9:30 and I’m getting an hour’s more sleep. My readiness score skyrocketed, and I feel great. For me, structure works. For this time of my life, with three teens still at home who are a priority and a career I’m devoted to, a 25-year marriage, and an aging body that needs attention, I’m committed to a lot of things these days. And structure is key. What about people who aren’t structured? For example, people who are Ps rather than Js on the Myers-Briggs? Believe it or not, I’m one of those—a high P, which is someone who doesn’t prefer structure. I’ve learned, however, that accepting some structure in my life lets me get the things done that I need to do. Without structure, I’m flailing.  So I’ve come to prefer structure because that’s how I make things work.  I offer this to you if you’re like me, with lots of commitments, and you’re trying to live Bright and still show up for everything. For me, structure is key. My evening Bright Line bedtime is making it all work. I offer this as an anecdote and data point to see if it might feel helpful for your life as well. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/pjh5bd Bright Line Bedtime | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

Barb sent in this question: “Recently, I’ve heard you mention a healthy, gentle kind of dopamine. Can you say more about that, especially in connection with Bright Line Eating?” People come to Bright Line Eating with an addictive relationship with food. These people have brains that are more affected by the ultra-processed food environment. Sugar, flour, foods that you buy in convenience stores and movie theaters—these hit the addictive centers of the brain with floods of dopamine, more than the brain can handle. These floods of dopamine cause the receptors to downregulate. They thin out and become less responsive. Then the problem becomes that we need to keep eating that way to feel okay. If we stop, we start to feel depressed and desperate, we have cravings, and feel off. This is addiction. Our Bright Line data shows that within eight weeks of starting the Boot Camp, people’s cravings subside significantly and the dopamine receptors start to heal. Then we want to avoid flooding those receptors with lots of dopamine. We should avoid watching pornography, for example, because that’s too much stimulation for the receptors. We want to avoid using cocaine, or going crazy doing one-click shopping, or going to casinos. Many things can flood the receptors. This dopamine circuit, called the desire circuit, always wants more. It’s in the reward centers of the brain—the mesolimbic pathway that includes the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens. It ensures our survival because it’s about sex, food, protection, and safety. In past days, that part of the brain, for example, would tell us to go back to a stand of berry bushes if we needed food. That’s the desire circuit—but there are other circuits in the brain that are dopamine dominant, particularly the control circuit. This is in the brain’s frontal cortex. This circuit is about planning, preparation, checklists, and calendars. It’s about setting up our environment in an orderly way. I’m very dopaminergic, and I’ve set up my whole day to get dopamine rewards. Early in the morning, over breakfast, I open Wordle and solve the puzzle, and there’s a dopamine reward. Even the finger tapping of video games or screens releases dopamine. As I go through the day, I get dopamine. I have calendar trackers, and I am still doing my decluttering challenge. I get dopamine when I turn to that task, and again when the timer goes off and I’m done. When I put laundry in the dryer, I get dopamine. When I fold the laundry and put it away, I get dopamine. All of this, moving toward the state of the world that I want to create, is controlled by dopamine. It’s manageable and healthy. I didn’t have this when I was mired in my food addiction. I was not doing habit stacks, was sleeping all afternoon, and I was a mess. I felt like I wasn’t able to keep my head above water. Now, I’m in a symbiotic relationship with controlled dopamine where I’m getting dopamine rewards and keeping my head way above water. I’ve gamified my day, with all the things I resist doing, like opening the mail, which I do when I’m decluttering. Another aspect of dopamine is creativity. Creativity and inspiration are all about dopamine. Doing art, writing, and playing music can give you a dopamine reward. Finally, dopamine is not the only happy chemical. Others include serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphin. There are many ways to use the “here and now chemicals” that are in a symbiotic relationship with dopamine to create a nourished and fulfilled brain, so you don’t have to turn to food. If you use controlled dopamine to do your laundry, write down your food, and declutter, you get a dopamine reward. Then you can sit there and survey your surroundings at the end of a beautiful Bright day. The socks are in the sock drawer, the food is written down and committed, and you’ve eaten three Bright, beautiful meals. And you can let the here and now chemicals flood in and know that you’re safe, well, and Bright. Breathe in your peace, and feel secure knowing that you’ve built a brain that supports your new, Bright life. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/qind2x Healthy Dopamine Rewards | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

Today, I want to explain why whole wheat flour is a problem for us, even though it may not have been a problem in the past.  Beth wrote in with a great question. She said: “Though I am convinced that white flour is horrible for your body and your mind, I’m not convinced about whole wheat flour. Many centuries ago, people ground whole wheat and other grains to make their flour. Why was whole wheat not a problem for them?” Centuries ago, the food environment was different. Whole wheat flour might still have been triggering, but they ate unrefined meats, vegetables, fruits, and unprocessed foods. No industrial ingredients, no chemicals. They weren’t getting 50 to 60 percent of their fuel from ultraprocessed food.  Plus, there were times when they ate and times when they didn’t—they were out in the fields, and working. In that food environment, people weren’t getting obese or developing food addiction at the rate we see now.  But that doesn’t mean whole wheat wasn’t a problem. Centuries ago, gluttony was one of the seven deadly sins, and looking back, I think, what were they getting gluttonous about? It sure wasn’t broccoli! Maybe bread and butter were in the mix. So we don’t know that it wasn’t a problem. But in the context of a sane, wholesome, farm-to-table diet, the population didn’t develop food addiction or obesity the way ours does.  So, wheat flour in the past may not have had enough impact on those diets to cause many people to become food addicted. But if you are living with a weight struggle and an addictive relationship with food that is already formed, what you must eat now to recover may be different from what they were able to eat in the past to stay healthy. I’d put honey in this category also. People ask me about honey all the time. It’s not refined or made in a factory. And hunter-gatherers may binge on it when they find it, and that’s fine. But if you have an addictive relationship with food and a weight struggle, whole wheat flour or honey are highly likely to throw you off track. For many years before I lost weight, I was in a 12-step program called Overeaters Anonymous. They didn’t have a specific food plan; they asked you to figure out the foods that caused you problems and abstain from them. The brown flour vs. white flour experiment was often run. I watched many people, including myself, try to manage with whole wheat flour. I discovered the utter deliciousness of whole wheat tortillas and pastas. They became much-craved and highly dominant parts of my food plan. And what I found is that people didn’t recover when they included whole wheat flour and abstained from white flour only. They didn’t lose their weight and they didn’t break free from food obsession. Whether whole wheat is a problem also depends on how badly your brain is wired for food addiction. Take the Food Addiction Susceptibility Quiz at foodaddictionquiz.com. If you’re a 5, then you probably don’t have food addiction, and whole wheat flour might be able to be part of your program.  If you’re a 7 through 10, though, I predict the whole wheat flour experiment won’t work. Running it can help you figure it out for yourself. I do my best to save people the pain and skew my materials to people who are 7 and above on the Susceptibility Scale. But you’re responsible for you. The Bright Line Eating program is strong. It’s for people with a weight struggle or food addiction who want a way out of the struggle, a pathway to freedom, that has worked for thousands. And brown flour is not in our plan.  Let me transition to this: We have a Boot Camp coming up in June 2025. We are opening applications for scholarships from Wednesday, May 21, to Sunday, May 25. We are giving out 20 full scholarships to this Book Camp 2.0. Click below, fill out the application, and let us know if you’ve applied before.  The launch is going to be about true secrets to success, beyond weight loss drugs. We’ll review research and how these drugs work. Our results in Bright Line Eating continue to parallel the weight loss drugs. Long-term data shows that Bright Line Eating even beats the weight loss drugs. All that starts June 10, and then the Book Camp starts at the end of June. *Applications for a Boot Camp 2.0 scholarship are now closed.   FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/e5aewk Is Whole Wheat Flour Addictive? | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

I’m thinking today about how scary and demoralizing it can be to break your Bright Lines. I’ve broken my Lines more times than I can count, though thankfully not in years. I’ve been in food addiction recovery for thirty years now. Relapse has been a common theme of those thirty years.  A hallmark of Bright Line Eating is how we orient to a break. It’s important to work a program that is stronger than temptations and challenges. Breaks, for many of us, are part of the journey.  In the book Bright Line Eating, on page 237, is a roadmap for what to do when you break your lines. We call it the 4 S’s. They’re like having an emergency kit in the car, with water, a first aid kit, and flares. So let’s go through them.  First is Speed. You’re going to get back on track quickly. Not on Monday, not January 1, not later this week. Being a Bright Lifer means that every breath of being Bright is precious and preferable to yet more breaths gulped down while you’re shoveling in food. The moment you become aware that a break has happened, that first S should come to mind. Put down the fork, mid-bite, and say no.  This is why we started to spell “resume” as “Rezoom,” at the suggestion of a Bright Lifer. It is foundational to build in speed.  The second S is Self-Compassion. Our tendency is to start a shame spiral. The food controller comes in, we’ve blown it, we’re awful. You need the self-compassion to say, “It’s all right, sweetheart. You’re not alone, you’re not bad.” Self-compassion partners with the next S, which is Social Support. We might find it hard to be self-compassionate without help. When we share, in detail, what we’ve done with our food with someone else, it drains the shame away because we’re no longer hiding it. Inevitably, they share how they’ve done the same thing. And suddenly we feel not so alone. Social support facilitates self-compassion. They become reciprocal. The fourth S is to Seek the Lesson. Fundamentally, a break is information. It’s a red light coming up on the instrument panel as you’re flying your plane. Curiosity and proactivity are the correct responses. What made that light go on? This is where the Permission to Be Human Action Plan comes in. The Permission to Be Human Action Plan is in Bright Line Eating and it’s also posted in the resources in both Bright Lifers and the Boot Camp Hub. I encourage you to answer those ten questions in writing every time you break your Lines. That’s how you turn your break into a breakthrough.  If you’re breaking your lines and not going through this process, you’re leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. Utilize the information you can take from the break to inform your journey. The goal is peace, personal growth, and flourishing.  For those of us who are drawn to Bright Line Eating, our food is the litmus test. It lights up our instrument panel to let us know what we need to do. It’s not like drugs or alcohol, which you can put down and be done with. We have to eat, and that means food is in our face as a reminder of the nature of our emotional sobriety, our spiritual condition, our mental fitness. Food always lets us know how we’re doing. With each wobble in our Lines, we have the opportunity to go inside and see what our system is trying to tell us. There is information there. Maybe it’s that you need to garden more, or leave your job, or you’re lonely—whatever. But the red light means something.  Maybe the reality is that you picked up that piece of cucumber off the cutting board and ate it, and the only thing is that you were moving too fast and had a moment of non-consciousness. Then, with some social support and self-compassion, having done your best to seek the lesson all the way through, the reality is that very quickly, you can Rezoom. And you’re clean and clear. You won’t know that, though, without going through the four S’s. Speed, Self-compassion, Social Support, and Seek the Lesson. So powerful. Download the Permission to Be Human Action Plan FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/mmct56 The 4 S's of a Successful Rezoom | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

My twins, Zoe and Robin Thompson, turned 17 on May 2. We celebrated their birthday at Plum Garden, the restaurant my family frequently visits for celebrations. Plum Garden epitomises how I’m working my program now that I’m peacefully Bright, as opposed to before, when I was mostly, but not always, Bright. This vlog is for you if you’ve been around Bright Line Eating for a while, but are not getting the results you want. You’re not able to stay Bright consistently, or maybe weight loss is not happening as you’d like. For you, I want to talk about mixtures.  Plum Garden is a Japanese hibachi house. That’s where you have a big skillet surrounded by a table and chairs, and a chef comes out and cooks the meal—rice, vegetables, meat, or tofu—right in front of you, and then puts it on your plate from there. He puts on a show for you while he’s cooking.  It’s easy to be Bright there, because you watch them prepare it, so you know if they’re putting sugar in it. But back before I was consecutively Bright, I had a hard time in Plum Garden, and frequently overage and felt out of control. I ate in a way that I didn’t feel good about. What I do differently now when we’re there is that I don’t eat the mixtures, and in particular, the fried rice. When they make it, they chop up and add egg, butter, soy sauce, sesame seeds, and bits of vegetables. These are all things I eat, but when you put them together, you have a mixture that crosses food categories. You’ve got rice, which is a grain; egg, which is a protein; butter, which is fat; and vegetables. Four categories in one concoction.  The longer I’m Bright, the more I realize that I work my program similarly to the women in Boston in a 12-step program I attended, which I thought was rigid at the time. They used to talk, in derogatory terms, about mixtures and concoctions. These were what they were drawn toward in their food addiction—and so was I. I’d make a big concoction and binge on it. I wouldn’t use measuring cups, I’d just dump everything in a bowl and eat it raw.  I didn’t see anything wrong with mixtures. But the research is clear: the number one factor that allows the brain to heal from food addiction is the simplicity of the food we eat, and the lack of triggering “reward value” of that food. Sugar and flour have a high reward value. So do refined carbohydrates. And so do mixtures and concoctions. You don’t find these foods in the wild. It’s not how nature makes food. The layering of all the ingredients has high reward value.  If I have a grain in my food plan at dinner these days, when we go to Plum Garden, I order a bowl of white rice and eat it plain. Similarly, their salad dressing has sugar and other ingredients. I don’t eat it. I have a garden salad with a bit of soy sauce. The butter on the vegetables is my fat.  And now I have not a whiff of an out-of-control feeling there. It’s gone—that attachment or obsession. This is such a win for me. I’ve reclaimed a cherished family space, and I can show up fully for my family. I don’t feel triggered or obsessed, and don’t need to stress about getting through the meal.  I offer this as an invitation for you, if you’re not getting the results you want in your Bright Journey. Have you kept your food complicated? Could you try for a week to keep your food separate, not mixed together, even your vegetables? A six-ounce pile of steamed green beans, four ounces of grilled tofu or chicken, and a beautiful eight-ounce salad with a tablespoon each of olive oil and balsamic vinegar? That simple. So it’s clear what each of the foods on your plate is. For breakfast: 8 ounces plain Greek yogurt, 1 ounce of simple oats cooked up into oatmeal, and 6 ounces of blueberries?  Can you try that? And see what happens to your brain as you let go of mixtures and recipes. Bring down the reward value of your food to hit the point where your addiction is matched by the strength of your program. Keep your food simple enough to let your brain heal. Give it a try—what do you have to lose? FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/vsrhna Mixtures | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

When you’ve been living in maintenance for a long time, there’s a way to figure out if something you’re doing with your food, whether it’s a specific food, a method of preparation, a restaurant, or something else, is working for you. As we go along on our life journey, we have an instrument panel in front of us—and we need to know how to read that panel, to fly straight and true. These four questions help with that.  We used to have these in Boot Camp, but we took them out because we want people to be on their journey for a while before they try them. You can’t ask these questions and get reliable answers if you haven’t been successfully Bright for a long time. If you’re not Bright and peaceful, and ask yourself, Do I have peace around this? You can’t answer that because you don’t yet know what it’s like to live consistently, month after month, at peace with your food and weight.  If you’ve been on your path for a long time, and want to experiment, or wonder if a food is working for you and you’ve been Bright and peaceful, you can use these questions. I’ve already given you the first question. It’s: Do I have peace around it? The longer I live Bright, the more certain I am that peace is the goal. Peace with my food, my weight, and peace in my mind. Then I’m available to be of service to the world, to connect with my family and friends, to do and be all that I can. Then I can go days and weeks without thinking about my food and weight. If I walk out of a restaurant and I don’t think about it a single time that evening, I’m at peace. If, on the other hand, I eat something in the restaurant that crosses my mind five times before I go to bed that night, I do not have peace around it. That’s a sign that it’s not working for me, that it kicks up the obsession.  The second question is: Is it messing with my weight? I might have peace with a food, but it’s not sustainable if it puts me on a path toward regaining my weight. If it’s not sustainable, then fundamentally it’s not working. The third question: Is it healthy? Not everyone in Bright Line Eating is aiming for optimal health, which is fine. Our job is to get you free and give you agency over what you eat and don’t eat. You can use that agency to eat for optimal health, or just settle for the general, overall amazing health you get when living Bright. If you add something that is not healthy but passes the other three questions, then you might not care.  The last question comes back to sustainability: Is it escalating? If you added a food at breakfast and it was fine, but then you did it again, and suddenly now breakfast doesn’t feel right without it, and you have to have it every day, then it’s escalating. That signifies addictive attachment. Building tolerance and escalation are signs of addiction.   Whenever someone asks me something, like, say, “can I have corn tortillas?” then initially, I’d say no, that’s not on the plan. But if you’ve been Bright for five years, are steady in maintenance, and are an eight on the scale, I’d say use The 4 Questions and try it. You just need to start from a strong baseline with your program. If not, you won’t be able to get an honest answer to the first question. Use them while in maintenance to find out how something works. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/yxkhbt The 4 Questions | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

I talked to someone the other day who told me that she had binged recently. She shared how she stays Bright for a bit, then she picks up food. She works the program for a while, and then it unravels for her.  I was candid with her. I told her that I don’t think she has a problem with the program. The problem is that she doesn’t want to stay Bright, deep down. If she truly wanted to be Bright, she would be using her tools, and she wouldn’t be letting herself slip. She would be defending her Bright Lines. She was so relieved to hear that. I shared with her my own experience. It’s coming up on three years that I’ve been miraculously, sparkly Bright. My experience is that deep, deep down, there’s been a shift. It feels like a clarity, an absolute conviction that I will defend my Bright Lines no matter what. No travel, no restaurant meal, no nothing is worth the peace that I have right now.  I know that if you airlifted me into the darkest jungle, I would not break my Bright Lines. I don’t know what I’d do, but I know I would not break them. I would stay Bright, no matter what. I prove that to myself on a regular basis. I stay with my rhythm even when I’m traveling. I print out a custom Nightly Checklist Sheet for each trip I take, thinking about my program in advance, and about how I will carry my program with me. I don’t rely on airplane food; I weigh and measure my own food and bring it on the plane. Don’t get me wrong: I have a food indulger part. My daughter is baking up a storm lately, so my kitchen is filled with all that activity. I can feel the food indulger part of me that wants to consider the NMF in that bowl. But it’s not pleasure, it’s toxic. It comes with the demolition of all I hold dear in my life. And when my food indulger starts to even think about getting curious, several other parts rear up and squash any beginning of an attempt to investigate.   When I described that to my friend, it was clear she wasn’t in that space. On some level, the preponderance of her parts thinks it’s not time to get Bright, or that it’s too extreme. She doesn’t have an alignment around being Bright. I think that’s helpful to know and understand if you’re struggling. I don’t think it’s everyone’s story, though. When I was bingeing in Australia 22 years ago, I couldn’t get Bright, but I did actually want to be Bright. Desperately and truly. It took me three months of bingeing to get back to sanity. I don’t believe everyone who can’t get Bright just doesn’t want it. I’m just describing a psychology that you can explore for yourself about how much you want this. You might need to mediate between the parts of you that want it and the parts that don’t. I’ve had three years of this level of defended-to-the-hilt Brightness. I’m not letting it slip—that’s the priority.  When I first came into food recovery in 1995, when someone first said that maybe I should abstain from sugar, I was horrified. I had no idea why she would propose such a preposterous thing to me. Nervously, she brought up that I had just shared in the 12-Step meeting about how I had eaten a whole box of brown sugar as a snack while writing a research paper at UC Berkeley. She said, haltingly, “I don’t know, I’m just thinking… maybe that’s not a healthy snack?”  It took me 27 years of active research and endless hiking through the Research Rockies to reach the level of surrender and conviction that I enjoy today. I had long stretches of peace during that time, but I wasn’t defending my lines the way I am now. That’s how I feel about drugs, too. But I don’t have the deep level of defense around alcohol that I have around food, because the food has beaten me down so, so much over the decades.  So I told her this: don’t feel bad, because you’re in your process. People may have years of experimentation and suffering before they are truly Bright. Years. Decades. Nobody gets there instantly. Everyone is somewhere on their own path.  She was grateful for that perspective. She’s got some thinking, maybe some writing to do. And I want to invite you, deep inside, to see if you can allocate more of your resources to that defense; to protecting what’s precious about your Bright journey. When you’re Bright, you have so much vibrancy and aliveness and presence. All the monkey mind around food is a waste. Your Bright journey is so worth defending. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/qm20mc Defending Your Lines | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast