Introducing Bright Line Eating

I have been overweight for as long as I can remember and recently I decided I had had enough.

I was sitting one day trying to decide what to add to our online grocery and struggling when my husband decided to buy me a copy of a book he had heard about which had helped a friend lose weight, Bright Line Eating.

I have to admit I was dubious, having tried lots of other ‘diets’ before but when I started reading the book I simply couldn’t put it down. Susan Peirce Thompson Ph.D. has used her personal experience and education in Brain and Cognitive Sciences to design a program designed to help people struggling with their weight.

Rooted in cutting-edge neuroscience, psychology, and biology, Bright Line Eating describes how the brain blocks weight loss and shows through many studies how foods affect the brain and therefore our weight.

Bright Line Eating has four simple rules or ‘bright lines’ which participants follow in order to achieve steady weight loss. The lines are:

No Flour

This rule means removing all foods made with flour from the diet. That’s all flour. It is pretty hard especially as our modern diet relies heavily on processed flour products like pasta, bread and baked goods. In her book, Susan describes how flour acts on the brain in the same way that hard drugs do which makes it addictive and hard to give up but ultimately it’s worth it!

No Sugar

Again, this line is hard and again, it means all sugar including sweeteners and natural sugars such as honey and maple syrup etc. This means inspecting labels for pre-prepared foods very carefully! Research has shown that high levels of insulin in the blood due to consuming large amounts of sugar on a regular basis actually blocks the hormone which tells your brain you are full, so you keep eating more.

3 Meals per day

Bright Line Eating is very strict when it comes to its no snacking policy. The program calls for 3 meals a day, around 4-6 hours apart with nothing in between. This can be hard for people who rely on snacks to keep them going energy and hunger wise but learning discipline is what Bright Line Eating is all about!

Weighing and Measuring

In Bright Line Eating we weigh our food which helps us to keep our calorie intake under wraps. The book contains two food plans, one for weight loss and one for maintenance – for when you have met your goal weight. The plans are inclusive of meat eaters, veggies, vegans and whole food plant based. It is clear and simple which makes it easy to understand and implement. It focuses on proteins, grains and vegetables/salad and in decent portions.

I have been on the Bright Light Eating program since the end of October last year and so far I have lost 13kg (28lbs) which is more than any other diet I have tried in the past.

It is hard to start with, especially when you go through detox which for me only lasted 3 or 4 days (thank goodness!). Ultimately, when you give up control over your food by following the Bright Lines you find the freedom to enjoy food and see the pounds melt away.

For more information see the Bright Line Eating website or check out the book, available on Amazon here.