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The Bright Line Eating Plan is a food plan based on brain science that allows us to lose weight by taking will-power out of the equation. I used it to lose 70 pounds. You can read more about the plan here: My Bright Line Eating Plan Journey Ideally, signing up for a Boot Camp is the best way to change your eating habits. I believe the Boot Camp was very important to my success. However, it’s pretty pricey if you’re on a fixed income. If the cost is completely out of your reach, here are the tools needed to use this eating plan.
Bright Line Eating Plan Tools: Essential
First of all, the two most useful tools are a food scale and a notebook. I prefer to use a 5×7 inch spiral notebook, because it has plenty of room to record my daily food for each meal. I write the next day’s date at the top, and add what I’m eating that day for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. On the top of the page, I use hash marks to keep track of glasses of water that I drink during the day. By picking the next day’s food beforehand, you eliminate making decisions about what you’re going to eat when you’re already hungry.
If you’re doing this plan without joining a Boot Camp, the other essential tool is the book Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin, and Free by Susan Peirce Thompson, PH.D. Her book is divided into 5 parts.
- The first part goes over the science of how our brains are blocking weight loss.
- Part 2 discusses how this eating plan solves the problem of our brain blocking weight loss.
- Part 3 covers the eating plan and how to do it.
- The 4th section talks about working the plan in real life.
- And part 5 covers reaching your goal weight and maintaining it.
Bright Line Eating Plan Tools: Worksheets
Secondly, under Resources in her book, there are two worksheets you can download and print out copies. The first is the Sample Nightly Checklist Sheet. This worksheet gives you a place to record how you’re feeling each day, and if you stuck to the lines. Susan includes things that she are helpful to keep us on track. For example, Did you write down your food last night for today? Did you read something uplifting or spiritual? How many hours of sleep did you get? Have you written in a gratitude journal? This nightly checklist is good for a week.
The next worksheet is titled Permission To Be Human Action Plan. When you slip up and eat off plan, this worksheet has questions to help you figure out why. When we eat off plan she encourages us to start over as soon as possible.
Bright Line Eating Tools: Support
Thirdly, making any large lifestyle change really needs the support of others on the journey and those farther along than you. If you cannot afford to do a Boot Camp find a friend or family member to go on this journey with you. I loved the amount of support provided in the online Boot Camp. I found it really helpful to just focus on one day or one meal at a time. It was also helpful to say to myself, “That is poison to me,” whenever I was tempted to buy or eat something off plan.
To help support you on your Bright Line journey, I’ve created a graphic of 8 tips that help me stick to the plan. It’s item #7 in my Subscribers Resource Library.
Update Of Where I Am With the Plan
Finally, the year 2020 was very stressful, and I did fairly well with staying on track up until September. My eating got completely out of control in the fall, and I was pretty frustrated with myself. My post titled Comfort: How to Soothe ourselves in Healthy Ways goes into the details of how I figured out what was going on, and how I solved the problem. Basically, I was beating myself up over how I was coping with the new pandemic restrictions. That led to feeling even more upset, and it ended up with me eating too much of the wrong things. Once I stopped judging myself for how I was feeling, the crazy eating went away. Unfortunately, I gained about 15 pounds. So I’m back to the weight-loss eating plan.
I’m confident that I’ll lose those extra pounds, because I know that this way of eating works for me, and helps me feel my best. I plan to re-read my Boot Camp materials, and Susan’s book as well. If you have any questions about this post, please let me know below. I’ll let you know how I do. Till next time, stay safe, Kathy
