I was introduced to Susan Pierce Thompson’s work through my Focusing buddy, who came across her through the Crappy Childhood Fairy.
Bright Line Eating Book explains why people who are desperate to lose weight fail again and again: it’s because the brain blocks weight loss.
Pros
- De-shaming around food addiction
- Provides rigorous structure for people who need to be told exactly what to do, and don’t want to make any choices for themselves
Neutral
- Abstinence-based
- More focused on Weight Loss than Food Addiction
Cons
- Encourages eating disorder behaviour
- Abolishes empowerment & choice
- Requires lifelong commitment to her program “or else”
- A more expensive way to do Twelve Steps
In a nutshell…
At its core, BLE is based on the twelve steps, minus the rigorous spirituality and with the addition of some neuroscience that explains how food addiction works.
It’s worth noting that Susan was in her early 20’s when she recovered from her flour & sugar addiction, which she acquired after getting sober from meth and narcotics in Twelve Steps. So in my opinion, her addiction was never that engrained – compared to someone who’s been addicted to junk food for 40+ years.
De-shaming
What I do love about the BLE approach is the de-shaming that comes from understanding the neurobiology of addiction. I use this in my own work, because it was tremendously liberating to learn that my brain was behaving totally normally for the food environment it’ living in.
Rigorous structure
BLE consists of a Boot Camp where she goes into depth about her strategies and approaches, which are outlined briefly in her book.
The approach basically tells people they’re enslaved to food, and they have to give over total control of their eating to her program.
She provides a food plan, because she felt she needed that when she was in OA herself. My problem with her food plan is that it’s not tailored for the individual. The only variation is “men vs women”. If you’re vegetarian, you have to figure out substitutions yourself.
It’s a no-flour-no-sugar abstinence strategy; but then she includes potato chips as “flour” so the whole thing is a bit hap hazard.
The food plan is in two stages: the weight loss stage, and the maintenance stage. The weight loss stage is designed for rapid weight loss, contrary to what literally every nutritionist believes is optimal for sustained change. (She’s a psychologist, not a nutritionist or dietician).
As far as I’m concerned, her whole system is a diet that calls itself a lifestyle. And research has shown time and time again that diets don’t work.
She claims to have 70% success rate, but then reading deeper, we learn that’s based on self-reported surveys from people who complete her program and write in a year later. You don’t need a PhD in Statistical Methods to know that self-selected populations are not representative, and that people for whom the program fails miserably are in no rush to respond.
Abstinence
My own recovery is abstinence-based, and I do believe that’s going to be the case for most people who have been addicted to junk food long enough to have formed biochemical dependency on the substances in them – especially refined carbohydrates, added fats, and flavour enhancers.
That said, I think each person needs to define their own abstinence based on where they’re suffering. Some people will be able to eat home made cookies from time to time, others won’t. Some people can eat chips but not candy.
From BLE’s perspective, the hard lines she draws are a feature not a bug. She’s working with people who want to turn their recovery over to someone else, to make the decisions for them because they don’t want to.
And as far as I’m concerned, if that works for them, then power to them. However, I’m far too independent and rebellious for that!
Weight-loss is primary focus
BLE is an abstinence-based approach that is primarily focused on weight loss, and names food addiction being the reason people can’t lose weight. So far so good.
In my case, weight loss is a secondary symptom to the obsession and emotional suffering my food addiction has caused; but I’d be lying if I said I was totally cool with my weight.
That said, I think her writing puts too much emphasis on “being slim” and – worse – how being slim will make you happy (which, by itself, it won’t).
Eating Disorder Behaviour
One of her principles is “No licks, bites, or tastes while preparing food” and “Never ever snack between meals”. These are both pulled directly from the more extreme versions of Twelve Steps, such as Grey Sheet and HOW. Neither has a high success rate for long-term recovery.
More than anything though, it’s the general message that you’re unhappy because you’re fat, and that getting slim will make you happy. That’s body dysmorphia in a nutshell, and it’s simply not true.
Her weight loss stage meal plan is extremely calorie restrictive; and while there’s no evidence that abstaining from addictive foods leads to increased binging later, there’s tons of evidence that severe calorie restricting does. This is precisely why yo-yo dieting is a thing.
Disempowering
Twelve Steps is disempowering because it requires you to turn your life and choices over to a higher power. I tried that, and I found that it gave me free license to eat like crap, because I had offloaded any kind of personal responsibility.
BLE is disempowering because it says over and over that you’re doomed unless you follow her plan, to the letter, for the rest of your life.
Look – food addiction recovery is really hard. Many people do feel powerless. So this message might resonate with them, and it might resonate with you. It doesn’t resonate with me, and that’s why my work is all about empowering people to take control of their own lives instead of submitting to yet other authority.
Lifelong Commitment
This is another BLE carryover from the Twelve Step paradigm. You get to have recovery from your drug of choice (in this case, flour & sugar & overeating) as long as you stay in the program.
In the case of Twelve Steps, I think this gets in the way of actual recovery from the addiction, and transfers that addiction to meetings and the fellowship. Twelve Steppers argue that they’re totally fine with that, and hey, power to them. Personally, I’m not.
In the case of BLE, I think this is a great business move: it guarantees ongoing revenue from her membership.
This is reinforced by people who leave, regain the weight, and come back in with their tails between their legs. These people become warnings for the rest of them.
In my not-so-humble opinion, true recovery from addiction means you don’t have to keep working on it for the rest of your life. You get comfortable with your abstinence or moderation, where it’s not effortful or even conscious really. And the rest of the time, you’re just living your life, with all the usual slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. You’ve learned healthier ways to cope with stress and process emotions, and you make choices that are in alignment with your values.
Since I personally align with a need for abstinence from certain processed food-like substances, I resonate with that part of her message.
Twelve Steps
I’ve touched on this above, but just to make it clear – BLE doesn’t mask its attempt to re-create the benefits of Twelve Steps, but in a different way: by using “science” and “psychology” instead of the actual twelve steps.
I suppose that’s a step in the right direction: Twelve Steps has about a 4% success rate, so really anything is an improvement (aside: 40% of people recover spontaneously from drug and alcohol addiction, so 4% is abjectly low).
But for something that’s effectively a repackaging of something that’s basically free, the whole thing sits poorly with me. If you wanted to go this route, you could join Grey Sheet or OA-HOW for essentially free, and use the rest of your money for 1-1 addictions therapy, and you’d be much further ahead.
Conslusion
If it’s not obvious by now, I don’t recommend Bright Line Eating. Some people swear by it, and it’s worth hearing their perspective because obviously they’ve experienced something I haven’t.
I think it does have a place for people who are just desperate to lose weight, and are willing to do whatever it takes. In that sense, I think it’s a better weight loss approach that Weight Watchers or surgery.
But I think it puts the cart before the horse in recommending abstinence too early in the process. I believe we need to unravel the shame spiral first, and get in touch with our inner parts and untangle the needs being met by food in addition to withdrawal avoidance. Only then does it make sense to start enacting abstinence, if at all.