sustainable weight loss

Dr. Cates: Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr Trevor Cates. On today’s podcast, we’re covering long-term sustainable weight loss. My guest is Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson. She is an adjunct associate professor of brain and cognitive science at the University of Rochester. She’s also a New York Times bestselling author and an expert in the psychology of eating. She is president of the Institute for sustainable weight loss and CEO of bright line eating solutions, a company dedicated to helping people achieve longterm sustainable weight loss. She and her team are on a mission to help 1 million people get to goal weight by the year 2030 her program uses cutting edge research to explain how the brain blocks weight loss and every day she teaches people how to undo the damage so they can live happy, thin, and free. In today’s interview, we delve deep into food addictions and weight loss. We discuss how to know when you have a food addiction, how to address it, and tips to rewire the brain to finally achieve your goal weight. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Susan. It’s great to have you on a podcast. Welcome.

Dr. Thompson: Oh, thanks Trevor. It’s great to be here.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So I know you know so much about helping people finally drop that excess weight that they’ve been carrying around and really struggling with. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. I want to first start off by what got you into being so interested in this?

Dr. Thompson: Oh, personal necessity really. I mean,for most of the formative years of my life and then like up til my late twenties, I was really, really focused on my weight because it was not, you know, anywhere where I wanted it to be. I mean, I weighed more when I was 11 years old and I weigh right now. And my journey with trying to like feel like I was in a right size body or be in a right size body, I didn’t have a lot of body dysmorphia, I kind of knew what size I was and I just wasn’t comfortable in my skin. Um, it took me down a really dark path cause I started to do drugs when I was 12 or 14 years old. Um, and I, you know, the first time was just like a little social thing. It was experimentation. But what happened was I lost seven pounds that night. And that is what had the impact. And, um, I had fun. I felt connected, I felt free and alive and like part of a social group for the first time and I lost seven pounds and my little 14 year old brain just sort of registered that one seriously. And so I did drugs pretty hardcore from the age of 14 to the age of 20. In the midst of that. Um, the drug use escalated, you know, from, you know, stuff that kids experiment to on to things like crystal Meth, uh, which I was heavily addicted to for a couple of years. And then cocaine and then crack cocaine. And I dropped out of high school and I started selling my body for money for drugs and um, burned my life to the ground essentially. I mean, by the time I was 19, that was my life and I was really like, I had woven myself into the underworld pretty deep. And when I was 20, I got clean and sober, which was miraculous and that’s a whole other story. But, um, so I haven’t had a drink or a drug in all that time, 24 years now. And, um, but after I got sober, I got fat really fast. It just, I knew it would happen, but like all this weight just packed onto me. And then I started to go through a period in my twenties where I noticed that, my eating was just like my drug use. Like I had been through the cycles with drugs enough to know what addiction felt like in my brain. And my eating was just like that and I was like, all be darned, you know, I am addicted to this stuff and, however, I couldn’t find a solution. It, food is trickier because the boundaries aren’t as clear and you have to engage with it and the societal pressures are greater and I couldn’t for a long time. I couldn’t figure out like what are the, what are the boundaries that are going to work for me here I went to 12 step food programs, not just one more, more than one. And um, by the time I was 28, I was oh well or whatever, mid twenties, I was obese. Um, and bottling around the obesity line there for a couple of years. And then finally when I was 28, I sort of adopted a set of rules that now I’ve built into the bright line eating program. Um, that allowed me to lose my excess weight and get into the size that I am now, which feels really right-sized for me. And, um, you know, so, you know, my, my own journey with my own food has continued and my weight has continued. You know, I’ve been in a right size body now for whatever that is, 15, 16 years, um, which statistically is almost unheard of. Like, I, that’s, that’s like, you know, one 100th of 1% of people who hit obesity will get into a right size body, like a normal BMI and stay there for longer than a decade. Um, but you know, my own, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if you ended up, uh, doing, you know, stuff around skin because of like a personal journey, like caring about your skin, being concerned about your skin. But for me it was just so part and parcel of, of my narrative of my life that I just fell into, you know, doing this professionally. The impetus there was that the universe told me to write a book basically about it all in my morning meditation and that’s what started the whole outward facing journey, um, back in 2014 but yeah, very personal stuff for me.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and you know, food addiction is very different like you said, because we all have to eat, we all have to do drugs, right? But we have to eat, we have to face food every day, all day long. And, and it’s very social too. You get together with people, you get together with family and friends and there’s always food there. You’re out, you go out and about and you go to the grocery store, you’ve got, you’ve got to do these things and food is always there. So let’s talk a bit about that. Like how do you, how do you deal with that kind of addiction and how do people know if they actually have an addiction when it comes to food?

Dr. Thompson: All right, those are two super good questions. So let’s take, how do you, how do people know if they have an addiction to food? And let’s cover, we can sort of see where that takes us and the other one is a really meaty question too. Um, I think a lot of people, like maybe people listening to this podcast might know intuitively like, you know, um, food addiction isn’t exactly the same as the weight struggle. They often go together, but they’re not the same thing. Like you can be totally in an ideal body size and be actually like research shows about 20% of people who are in a right size body or full blown food addicts. Um, and they’re maintaining their normal size by over exercising, by purging, by just obsessing about every calorie that goes in and saving up their calories all day long for that frozen yogurt that they obsess about and think about all day. And you know, but, but the point is that the narrative and the head is spinning, Spinning, spinning around around, am I on my food plan or off my plan? You know, how many miles, how many calories, how many pounds, you know, was I good with my food today? How am I going to do it different, you know, tomorrow, blah, blah blah. And that, that noise can be absolutely deafening and in the extreme just crowd out like pretty much like that’s, that’s all that’s going on there. Just the wheels spinning around that stuff. That’s food addiction. It, it has to do with cravings. It has to do is starting to eat and losing control over how much you eat. It has to do with not feeling satisfied with eating a normal amount of food. It, um, on the flip side can have to do with restriction and um, you know, lots of careful rules around not eating. Um, so someone knows they are food addicts. Maybe if any of that resonates, I also have a quiz people can take. It’s like five questions. There’s not that much to it. It’s a pretty straight up thing. Foodfreedomquiz.com will get them that, but yeah. So it is a genetic heritable, um, also environmentally influenced, um, trait, uh, that you know, that, that that is testable or you can test for it. Right. Food addiction is a thing.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. I, I think that in it, it does tie into eating disorders and all the fat, but, um, I think identifying an addiction, it is an important thing. It’s like the awareness of it. It’s really the first step.

Dr. Thompson: Yeah, totally. And I didn’t go on to share the rest of my story, which is that I went back to college or I went to college and ended up getting a phd in brain and cognitive sciences and one of the top schools in the world and becoming a tenured psychology professor and teaching for many, many years a college course on the psychology of eating and the neuroscience of food addiction. And it’s interesting for anyone who’s heard that there’s debate or controversy around whether food addiction exists. I just want to say that that’s not true in the realm of food addiction scientists like neuroscientists who study the brain, um, and addiction are super clear that food addiction is a thing. You point to it on a scan, it’s like, see the nucleus accumbens right there. That’s the dopamine down regulation. That’s where the dopamine receptors have been blown out by eating donuts and you know, crackers and cookies and French fries and all that stuff that people are eating. And the receptors have stopped functioning. They’ve, they’ve become less numerous and less responsive because of that extra that like overwhelming stimulation. Food addiction is right there. You can, you can actually point to it on a brain scan. The controversy is around people who are trained as clinicians, maybe social workers to help people with eating disorders who come from a background of clinical counseling psychology and were trained in their graduate school programs that people with bulemia and Anorexia need to be taught that there are no bad foods, that it’s important to eat every food in moderation. And that’s one theory, one clinical approach to the treatment of certain eating disorders that has nothing to do with the scientific reality of addiction in the brain. That’s where the controversy has come from. And yeah, I just want to say from a scientific perspective, food addiction is evidence based, like it’s right there. Um, so yeah.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Thank you for mentioning that. That’s, that’s a really good point. And with the main, with the main one, be sugar. I mean, I, you know, we know that sugar is very addictive, but it sounds like fast food and what, what are some of the big ones?

Dr. Thompson: Oh yeah. Sugar for sure is the biggest. It’s now, you know, 80% of the calories in the supermarket are now laced with added sugar, 80% of the calories. It’s really, you know, it’s hard to find a package food these days that doesn’t have added sweetener to it. Um, sugar is by far the worst, and there’s good research showing that sugar is right there on par with heroin and cocaine in terms of addiction. There are some studies that show that it’s worse by maybe even a lot. There was this great study several years ago that took rats and predicted them to intervene as shots of cocaine until they were really hooked and would shake if they didn’t get a shot. And then didn’t inject them for a little bit. So they were really craving some of that cocaine. And at that moment give them a choice between another shot of cocaine or some sugar. And in that state they actually chose the sugar. Just shocking. So yeah, sugar is super addictive, um, for sure. And the other things are, um, they have to do with reward value, like a food reward value. So, lik, flour. And, lot of people don’t relate to flour addiction, but some people actually super relate to it. Like, oh, I don’t care about sweets, but don’t take away my bread and my pasta. Right? Like, I will fight you to tell the truth on that one. Um, but what I find is people who I, who identify as understanding sugar addiction. What I experienced is when I got rid of sugar and didn’t get rid of flour, my diet shifted almost entirely to flour. All of a sudden I was eating, you know, noodles and quesadillas and Mac and cheese and you know, on and on and on and on. I’m not even realizing that my brain would take that flour as a substitute for sugar. to get it’s soothing. The other ones are the Umami flavor, which is like basically meat. Um, essentially it’s a, it’s a taste. Umami is a more recently discovered taste bud, that that senses meat tastes, but monosodium glutamate mimics it. Um, and some of the soy soy products like soy sauce and stuff, also habit that increases reward value. Fat Increases reward value, salt increases, reward value, and you layer these things together and basically you increase the reward value of food. So it’s hard to say with definitiveness, like here are the addictive foods. Some people lean more towards their potato chips and some people lean more towards their hard candy and stuff. But generally speaking, you can get a sense. And in the work that I teach people, if you eliminate sugar and flour, that seems to do it. And it took me years and years and years and years and years to sort of realize that those needed to be the, what I call now bright lines. Right?

Dr. Cates: You, you talk about when you talk about people’s way, you said you use the right weight, right? Right. Size body. That’s right. So what does that mean?

Dr. Thompson: Yeah, good question. I know there’s so much cultural baggage around this, right? Like there’s so much pressure to be thin, to be too thin, um, and it’s hard to talk about this issue in a way that’s not triggering to folks. Um, and invokes the right sort of sensibility, right sized bodies. The best phrase I’ve found, I don’t know if it’s perfect, but what I mean by that is right for you, like a point where you settle into your skin and you go, okay, I feel alignment here between the food that I’m putting in my mouth, the way my body is metabolizing it and wanting it and needing it and um, you know, and the size that I am, that feels right for me. Um, so I don’t mean right sized from an externally focus point of view. I mean rightsize from an internal sense of what feels good. And you know, in the work that I do, I really encourage people to adjust, um, consider for themselves what feels right size to them.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on was a lot of the foods that cause us to put on and keep weight on are some of the foods that are bad for skin. And, and we, um, there’s a lot of similarities there. So when people are able to often stop the foods that help with their skin or stop the foods that are causing them to hold on to weight, the, you know, it all kind of falls into place. So I wanted to know what are some of the things that you recommend for people to help them make that shift? What are some of the key foods, let’s start with that, that you think are really important to avoid and the ones to eat. What are some of the key things?

Dr. Thompson: Yeah, totally. Well, I noticed it the other way. Like I help people get their food clean and then I hear so many people say, oh my gosh, my skin has cleared up and a lot of people comment on my skin and I’m thinking it’s the Kale. So, yeah. So I have people eliminate sugar and flour completely and with what we call a bright line, which is just a clear boundary. Like if you’re going to quit smoking, right? You don’t dabble, you don’t moderate, you just, you know, you’re throwing out the cigarettes. Um, and in terms of what to eat, um, I, I focus in part on meal timing. I don’t know if you’ve shared that kind of stuff with your tribe, like the importance of having a good fasting window overnight and not snacking all through the evening. Um, so in bright line eating, we do eat, we just eat meals. We don’t snack or graze at all. Um, breakfast, lunch, dinner. There’s so much wisdom in that. And you know, it’s just an interesting additional discussion that it’s not always just what you eat, it’s when you eat it. The cells and your digestive system have their own biological clocks and your whole rhythms of health sort of line up when you eat meals at regular mealtimes and then don’t eat at all the other times. So I focus on that a lot. And then, you know, honestly, primarily I don’t think nutrition is that complicated. I think it’s like don’t eat those processed foods, the sugar and flour and eat way, way, way, way, way more vegetables. Like just way, way more vegetables. Um, and especially if you get, you know, the good leafies in there, the good leafy green vegetables, I think you’re, you’re onto something. And I think the body’s pretty forgiving about proteins and fats and you know, I don’t dip into the, the protein wars and the fat wars. Other people can have those discussions, but I feel like if you’re not eating sugar and flour and you’re eating a ton of vegetables, your body’s pretty forgiving about the rest.

Dr. Cates: Right. And are there certain vegetables that you particularly love?

Dr. Thompson: It’s interesting to me how much I’ve started to really like sauteed Greens. You know, I, I didn’t used to. For sure. Um, I, I like all vegetables a lot.

Dr. Cates: Okay. I didn’t know if there were any that you particularly were trying to get people to eat.

Dr. Thompson: You know in bright line eating, it’s like a, there are no limits on foods or vegetables and not, I don’t mean in terms of quantity. I mean, just in terms of, no, you can eat them all. There’s no like, oh, don’t eat pineapple, it’s too sweet or whatever. If it’s a fresh fruit or a fresh vegetable or a cooked vegetable, you can eat it. And I just let people, you know, choose, I, I’m a fan of variety, you know, both in terms of cooked and raw. Um, I know there’s debates there too, but I think the research is pretty clear that some vegetables or healthy or cooked in summer, healthier, raw and because it would be maddening to try to sort all that out. I’m really a fan of like do you know, mix it up and don’t worry about it, you know. Yeah,

Dr. Cates: Yeah. That’s great. And, and just to comment on what you said about skin and way, um, the, the reason why I started focusing on scan was I was doing a two week weight loss program in spas and that was one of the things that people talk about their skin and the change of that. And I realized, you know this is something that people oftentimes aren’t aware of it. They think that they have a skin issue, then they just need to use a different cream, you know, different moisturizer or they just see, you know, use a topical steroid or something to cover it up instead of really looking at the bodies, you know, giving a signal to, um, yeah,

Dr. Thompson: Totally.

Dr. Cates: So you said that you want, you encourage people to get off sugar and the flours. Um, and that’s oftentimes easier said than done. What are some of the, the, the tips and tricks you tell people to help them really cut them out and, and how long? I mean, is it forever?

Dr. Thompson: Yeah, great question. You know, um, I, I tend to work with people to help them lose weight and to get in, you know, get down to goal weight and then live there, you know, longterm. And it can be hard at first. I encourage people to think of it like quitting smoking. Like, yeah, it’s hard at first. Okay. You’re heavily addicted, you know, you have built up a lifetime of cues that you respond to by eating those foods. Whether it’s a time of day cue and now you’re swinging through a coffee shop for a muffin and a Latte, or it’s a, it’s an emotional cue and now you’re heading to the freezer for something. Or it’s like a work related cue and you’re heading into the break room and people have brought stuff in there. There’s all these cues that you have, you know, hardwired days, eating responses to, just like smoking yet it’s hard to go through and break all those cue response behaviors. It’s not trivial. And food is the hardest and my experience, and I’ve been addicted to just about everything. Like I feel, I feel comfortable in weighing in. Food is the hardest. So what works really, Trevor is an integrated sort of all hands on deck kind of system. It’s not like there’s one silver bullet for this. You really have to, if you want to succeed in this area, in this crazy food environment we live in, you got to kind of approach it from lots of directions. And what I mean by that is it matters your community like that you’re getting support. You know, my focus is really around building communities of people, networks of people that support each other in this change because it’s not something that’s done well alone. It matters what your morning and your evening routines are. Meditation really helps to create that pause in your, um, you know, reacting to life by eating. You got to have a little time in there to be able to make a different choice. So meditation helps. Nighttime rituals in terms of like a gratitude list and a tracking system. So you’re tracking the behaviors you want to be doing. I recommend people write down their food the night before, um, so that they know what they’re going to eat the next day. And we talk a lot about planning and preparing foods so that, you know, if you leave the house in the morning and you don’t have any clue what you’re eating that day, you’ve already lost like that, you know, to eat well requires planning and preparation. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So we talk a lot about the rhythms of, of wiring good eating into your life. Like, like you’ve hardwired brushing your teeth, right? You brushed your teeth morning and night, whether you’re traveling, whether you’re grumpy, whether you’ve been out to a New Year’s Eve party, whether you’re fighting with your spouse, whether your kid has an earache that night, you know, you brush your teeth right now I know that’s only true of 95% of the population, but most people can relate to that, like brushing their teeth regardless. And you want to get right eating wired into your life in that same way. So automatic that you’re not even thinking about it. And it takes an integrated system to do that and it takes a lot of regularity over a stretch of time.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, definitely. Community and structure planning, all of that are really key. Right? So this is one of the things that people start off the beginning of the year with New Year’s resolutions. I’m going to lose weight and I’m going to start a new diet and I’m going to get to the gym and, and, and about the time when, you know, we’re talking here, people have given up. I give up. So what are, what are some things to help people at that point? I mean, any, any tips on up?

Dr. Thompson: Well, you know, the irony is when I say this a little tongue in cheek, but my people often haven’t even noticed like, okay, so I just want to ask you, did you have a new year’s resolution? How you doing with it? Like, cause in my experience for all my years battling with my food and my weight, when I look back there was a weird twilight zone kind of time where like I remember with perfect fidelity starting diets and I would get so intense Trevor when I started a diet, like I would read that book and I would make my, you know, write down my intentions about what I was going to weigh by what date. And I would like measure my chest, my hips, my boss to my neck, my right bicep and I left bicep. My thought and my other thigh, I’d write it all down and I, you know, and then like in my memory, Trevor, I don’t remember going off the diets. I don’t remember deciding to end them. All I remember was the next diet I started and where in my thinking it all unraveled. It’s really hard to say. So if you’re listening, I’m just curious, like, did you set a new year’s resolution? Does this relate to you at all? And if so, like how are you doing on it? And what I’ve noticed about resolutions is for me, there’s a pretty strong inverse correlation between how well I’m doing with my food and my weight and my personal journey and my inclination to set a new year’s resolution at all. Which means what I mean by that is, for me, my food is something for me that I have to handle 24, seven, 365 or my life falls apart. Like I don’t function well without my food being handled. So that’s something that I don’t do on January 1st. I do that. If it’s not right, I fix it on March 12th or July 13th or September 28th. Right? Like I got to fix my food when it’s off period. Right. So odds are if I’m doing well, I’m rolling into January 1st already focused on the things I need to be focused on. And if I’m doing well, I’m not inclined to set a new year’s resolution at all cause I’m sort of of the perspective of like this is the, this is who I am, I handle this stuff anyway. It’s an identity thing. So setting a resolution around it doesn’t even occur to me.

Dr. Cates: Right, right. So that may take me back to that question about timing of, cause a lot of times people think they have, they do a diet for a period of time. Right. So what do you think about as far as giving up foods, you know, like the sugar and the, and the flowers. Is that forever or is it for a period of time? Do people diet for a period of time? Is it an ongoing thing? I think, I know the answer to that.

Dr. Thompson: Yeah, totally. I really take the 12 step approach to this, which is, um, it’s one day at a time forever. But the thing is, the part that isn’t really tongue in cheek about that is that I really don’t think it’s necessary to ever, ever, ever feel comfortable with the notion of doing it forever. It’s okay if that thought is horrifying and completely unacceptable. And you know, the reality is that it’s, it’s always just today, like I’ll give you the ice cream and the pizza next week. You can have them, don’t eat them today. Right. Um, I’ll give you the future all day. You like go ahead in the future, eat that stuff. Or just say like, I don’t know if I’m going to do this forever. I don’t know if I’m even going to do it tomorrow, but it’s working for me today. So I sort of beat the drum really hard to my people of like keep it in today. Keep it in today. It’s all right if, I guess there’s one more thing I want to say about this. I talked a lot about having a sabatour in my mind that tries to whisper to me to like eat those foods again to indulge in food, whatever you can call it. A sabatour or a savvy or a food indulger or whatever. Right? It’s not a bad part. It’s really trying to make my day better and more comfortable by giving me some peace and happiness with a treat. Right? It’s like the Winnie the pooh voice, like a little something something would be nice right here. Like you’ve had a hard day honey. Right? Um, and the first thing it’ll go to is you can’t do this forever. Like this is seriously, that’s extreme. That’s, and it’s like the most rookie move to fall for that. Like the answer to that is, thanks for sharing. I probably won’t do this forever, but just for today, I’m going to get my comfort and my support in a healthier way and I’m not eating that stuff today. Right. Like don’t fall for it. That’s just a voice trying to get you, you know, face down in the food again where you don’t want to be.

Dr. Cates: Right. And, and some of those things, those re the replacement for that are the things that you talked about, like meditation, gratitude, that can help kind of shift that. What are some of the other things that people can do in place of that?

Dr. Thompson: Totally. I, you know, often the wanting to eat those foods, it really is about comfort, you know, um, or numbing or soothing or something like getting out of stress and anxiety. So I like to ask people what is true comfort to you because it’s probably not overindulging in food, right? What is true comfort? Is it a cup of herbal tea and a good book? Uh, for me, you know, I live in the northeast where it gets cold a lot, you know, is it a hot water bottle and a teddy bear and a bubble bath? You know, what, like a good walk with a friend, like just to really ponder, you know, because food is, I wouldn’t say even for people who don’t suffer with food and aren’t addicted, I would say, overeating or eating unhealthy foods, um, is a pretty poor coping mechanism. Right? That’s not high on the list of like great options for real self comfort. So oftentimes people haven’t thought deeply enough about what’s truly comforting deeply.

Dr. Cates: Right. And I think, uh, a lot of them that goes back to childhood and how we’re given sweets and treats and food when, when we’re uncomfortable, we’re sad or, um, and you know, so I often times encourage people, don’t do that with your kids. You know, like, let’s try and break that pattern of, of using food as a reward or taking it away as a punishment or any of that kind of thing. But it happens all the time.

Dr. Thompson: All the time. Yeah. I have a story in my book about this where, this was maybe four years ago now. Um, my daughter Maya was like three years old, my youngest and we driven to Niagara Falls for a road trip. Me and a woman who was visiting from Australia who does bright line eating and had lost like a hundred pounds or whatever. And just me and her and my daughter Maya, the other, my two twins who are older were in kindergarten and we’re driving to Niagara Falls. We enjoyed the falls. We’re about to drive back. I’m trying to click my into her car seat and she doesn’t want to go. She doesn’t want to leave. She’s having fun. She doesn’t want to leave. And she’s throwing one of those two to three year old temper tantrums, right? Screeching back, arching, flipping out hysterical. Totally typical behavior for that age. My friend doesn’t have any kids. She’s really uncomfortable because this is kind of going on and on and I’m like trying to manhandle her into this car seat. We got to go and my friend rummages in our lunch bag and throws me a bag of crackers and raisins for her and I threw it to the ground and forced her into the carseat, clicked it, and we started driving away. She calmed down, everything was fine and I, I said like a little centering prayer and I thought, do I bring this up? And I decided to and I said, you do see what you just did. Like she wasn’t hungry, she was angry, right? She didn’t want to leave. She was frustrated, angry and didn’t want to go. And your solution was to feed her some food. You do that often enough and you’ll teach a kid that the solution to negative emotions is to eat. And like her eyes bugged out of her face. And I don’t think she’s ever forgotten that lesson. And I haven’t either because that moment was so poignant with that. Right. Even when we’re educated, right. And we think we should know better.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And so, and then as an adult realizing that that’s probably been programmed into us, right. Part of normal behavior. And so in a way we have to reprogram that how, what is the way that we comfort ourselves beyond food? Right,

Dr. Thompson: Exactly. And it might sound like, you know, pseudoscience or something, but it is about rewiring the brain. I mean, we’re talking about creating different neural pathways based on certain cues that pop up. And people often say, what about emotional eating? To which I say, well, it’s really just a sub category of cue based eating and there’s other types, right? Based on time of day or location or whatever. And it’s not just based on negative emotions either. There’s a lot of eating around like cue-based eating based on celebration and warmth and family. Like, we’re programmed to eat, you know, foods that we don’t really need to be eating during those times too. And so I often get the question, how do you celebrate then? And so forth. I mean, all of that comes into the mix. Food food is a tough one. You know, no one at the family table is trying to get you to snort some crystal Meth, you know, or even smoke a cigarette usually these days, but boy, they’re trying to get you to eat.

Dr. Cates: They certainly are. And I, you know, eating is fantastic, right? As long as you’re eating the right foods at the right times for the right reasons. Right.

Dr. Thompson: Totally. And you know, there’s wiggle room in that for everyone, less so if you’re more addicted, right. But I just want to say for anyone who feels bleak at everything we’re talking about, which I promise is a fair number of people, I just want to say, um, I, I’ve been doing this for a long time and I love my food. I love my food. It’s so delicious and nourishing and satisfying. And in the last 16 years, periodically I’ve gone back to old ways of eating. And what I’ve found is I don’t enjoy my food as much that way. I really don’t because there’s something, a little dark and a little self harming and also not as satisfying to the tongue because it’s all kind of fake and the same. And it turns to cardboard and ash in my mouth after the first few bites, which are always crazy good. And then it’s just like, what am I doing? You know? The right foods are satisfying more deeply and all the way through. And your taste buds change over, by the way, every two weeks they’re some of the fastest regenerating cells, um, in the whole body. Every two weeks you have a full compliment of new taste bud cells. That’s how fast your taste buds change. When you change how you eat. So don’t think you’re going to hate the way it tastes forever. It’s actually the opposite. It’ll start to taste even better than you ever imagined.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, that’s absolutely what people say. And my two week program is two weeks. They start to try and eat those foods again. I’m like, you know what, I don’t even really like it anymore. And so like, okay, well then you don’t need it. So it’s, it’s nice for people to be able to, to really see that. So I know one thing that people oftentimes talk about is, you know, we all slip up, we all make mistakes, right? So I just, I had a weak moment and I ate that candy bar. What do you say that, you know, what happens then? Because then like, oftentimes for people it becomes a spiral of like, well, you know, I screwed up. So now I’m just going to go back to eating the way I used to eat.

Dr. Thompson: Yeah. Which in psychology, in published papers it’s called the what the hell effect, which I think is, you know, what the hell, I had a piece of pizza, so now I’ll eat the whole pizza and I’ll start again on Monday. Right. That’s the what the hell effect. So Trevor, not only do I have something to say about this, but I just want to, before I say anything, say that I think this is the thing. And um, we have a phrase, I have a phrase that I use it simply resume and I spelled resume r e z o o m just to indicate fast, right? Like we resume and uh, someone in my tribe came up with that a few years ago, which I think is really cute. And um, oh, there’s much to say about that. I have a whole course that I just rolled out called reboot resume. And, um, probably my, my next book will be called resume. And I think this is the thing, our society conceptualize as a food journey as being like, well, do this program and this one will work. Right? And of course I talk about my program in that way too, right? Um, but the reality of what a long term journey looks like is it’s not a straight line. I talk about it as a sign wave and it’s really important to develop tools to notice when you’re on the down slope of that, of that sign wave. Um, how things unravel a little bit. Guaranteed. They will, even if your food hasn’t been impacted yet, let’s say you’re still eating right according to plan, but other things will fall off. You’re not getting to bed on time, right? Oh, the meditation practice slipped up, phone calls to good friends not happening so much. Right? And if you look around and those other things are slipping, you can guess that the food is coming, right? Pretty soon you’re going to be eaten something that you feel like you shouldn’t be eating, which is like, okay, right. But we do want to keep the system humming so that you’re not plunging into that danger and destruction zone that you mentioned of like, okay, well forget it. You know, I’m just eating now. Like, that’s what I have always done is like fairly long periods of unrestrained eating, leading to regaining all my weight, until I, you know, feel disgusted enough that I’m willing finally to start another program and start the weight loss cycle all over again. And I’m really committed to keeping people out of that relapsed resume version of the cycle. Cycles are always going to happen though. It’s just important to raise the bar up on that sign wave so that it’s on the downslope you’re not all the way into the danger and destruction zone and you have enough self compassion. That’s really the key enough self compassion to notice, um, that a very natural phenomenon of lapsing for a bit. Relapse lapse, again, always going to happen just a little lapse. Um, and again, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to impact your food if you catch it soon enough, you can go on the upswing without it impacting your food. But either way, the learning how to manage the relapse resume sine wave is, uh, it’s the most Ninja skill and I teach my people, you don’t have to be perfect, but I need you to be unstoppable. I needed to be unstoppable.

Dr. Cates: Right. Well that’s, those are great tips and great information. We’ll see as it tell everybody where they can find to learn more about, more about you.

Dr. Thompson: Sure. I think the easiest, it’s just got a brightlineeating.com and that’s B, r, I, g, H, t, l, I n, e like a bright line, a clear boundary that you just don’t cross. Um, bright line eating.com. The quiz is right there where you can find out how susceptible you are to food addiction that’s a scale from 1 to 10. I’m what we call affectionately at 10 plus. Plus. Not a great time to be a perfect 10, but there I am. So, you know, I help people who are generally higher on that scale to finally get what we call happy, thin and free. Yeah. And that you can check it out at brightlineeating.com.

Dr. Cates: Great. Thank you. I love this idea of a bright line. I mean, I think that’s a, it’s just such a brilliant name for it because it’s, I mean there’s so much meaning behind that. I think in the, in the words that you chose tourism for that and, and really does help keep it simple but clear for people and in a way that they, that that’s doable. Right?

Dr. Thompson: Yeah. And Trevor, thanks for pointing that out because it’s one of my missions. I, you know, my big mission is to help a million people get into a right size body by 2030. Um, but, but along the way we’re going to have to educate people from all walks of food life. Right. And it’s, it’s really important to me that people understand that bright lines are helpful and necessary and freedom producing for some people, if you’re lower on the scale that’s not you, you know, a program of sort of moderation and compassion and like, you know, let’s not freak out cause we had a little that really is important and works if you’re lower on that scale from like one to five, let’s say, but if you’re on the high end of that scale, um, trying to dabble across that bright line and like test it out is the equivalent of having quit smoking three packs a day and thinking that it’s, it’s a good idea for you to allow yourself a cigarette on a Friday night because otherwise you’re being too extreme. And boy, our society needs to understand we’re all suffering pretty badly. All of us, if only for the financial global impact, right. Um, of our obesity epidemic, we need to understand that there are people who will not get free and healthy unless they adopt bright lines for some of these foods that are in our environment. It’s a really important concept for us to get through our collective, um, perspective. Yeah.

Dr. Cates: Great. All right, well thank you again, Susan, for coming on today and sharing all your information. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Thompson: You’re so welcome, Trevor. It’s been really nice getting to know you. Thanks so much for having me on.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson. To learn more about her and her books, her program, you can go to the spa Dr Com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. And while you’re there, I invite you to join the spa doctor community so you don’t miss any upcoming shows and have you taken the skin quiz yet. It’s a great tool for helping you find out what messages your skin is trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. And this skin is connected to your weight so that if you can address those root causes. You’re going to be able to help improve both of those. So just go to theskinquiz.com to take this free online quiz and get some recommendations for you. And you can also join me on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, youtube, Pinterest. Join the conversation and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.