Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson: The Surprising Psychology of Keeping Weight Off Forever

What if the real challenge isn’t losing weight… but keeping it off?

In this powerful interview, Susan Peirce Thompson, PhD—adjunct associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences, bestselling author, and founder of Bright Line Eating—breaks down the surprising psychology of weight loss maintenance and why so many people regain weight even after making progress.

Most programs focus on short-term weight loss. But lasting success comes from learning how to maintain your results without living in constant food obsession, diet mentality, or the exhausting cycle of starting over.

In this episode, we explore the three deep identity shifts that make long-term weight maintenance possible. We also discuss the psychology behind food addiction, why ultra-processed foods hijack the brain, and what it takes to build a sustainable eating plan in today’s modern food environment.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in the dieting merry-go-round, struggled with food noise, or wondered why weight loss doesn’t last—this conversation will change how you see the journey.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
• Why weight loss maintenance is the missing piece of the conversation
• The psychology of keeping weight off long-term
• How to stop the constant mental battle with food
• Why willpower isn’t reliable (and what works instead)
• The identity framework behind lasting transformation
• How to move from dieting → to a sustainable lifestyle
• Practical strategies to maintain weight without obsession

Whether you're still trying to lose weight or you’ve already lost weight and want to keep it off, this episode is about creating a life where you feel free, peaceful, and stable—not constantly gaining and losing.

Chapters

• 0:00 Maintenance As The Real Goal
• 2:08 Introducing Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson
• 3:39 Why Biggest Loser Results Didn’t Last
• 4:57 The Three Identity Shifts Framework
• 8:18 Devotion Explained Through Vegetarian Example
• 10:49 Transitioning To Maintenance: Landing The Plane
• 12:43 Becoming Resourced And Liberated
• 15:20 Reclaiming Mindshare From Food Obsession
• 18:03 Six-Year Outcomes Of Bright Line Eating
• 20:22 GLP-1s: Promise, Limits, And Pitfalls
• 24:17 Using Meds As Tools, Not Silver Bullets
• 27:19 Real-World Patterns On GLP-1s
• 31:05 Weight Loss Strategy: Habit Over Willpower
• 34:16 Planning Meals And No Snacking
• 36:34 High Addiction Brains And Bright Lines
• 39:46 Trauma, Safety, And Weight
• 42:12 Breaking Diet Mentality And Language Shifts
• 45:30 Weighing Food: Resistance To Routine
• 49:42 Culture, Bias, And The Case For Maintenance

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

There's three deep identity shifts that are needed to be someone who can maintain weight loss. Deep psychological shifts. When I used to teach my college course on the psychology of eating and the neuroscience of food addiction, and I would attract, um, well, the course itself would just naturally attract a lot of students who had a lot of food issues. At some point during this course, I would draw a big circle on the board and I would say, hey everybody, check out this big circle. Think of it like a pie chart, okay? Oh, the pie chart represents all of your focus, all of your time, all of your energy, all of your actions, all of your thoughts, your whole life. Like everything you do, think, focus on is this circle. All of it. What proportion of it is made up of your food and your weight and all of the things related to it? What you've eaten or not eaten, whether you're on your plan or off your plan, how many miles, how many calories, how many pounds, you know, how you feel in this dress, whether you've got an outfit to wear to the holiday party, all the stuff related to your food and your weight. And I would have students burst into tears, and some of them were slender and tiny, you know, no weight problem, but but they would burst into tears, and I'd come over and I'd check on them, and and they would just look up at me with this devastated look and they would say, 95%. So I think maintenance is the ground that we can all stand on. Like that's the goal, not thinness, but maintenance, where you're not trying to gain or lose weight anymore. You're devoted, resourced, and liberated. You've got a program that fits for you. It's your way of adapting your brain and your body within our crazy toxic food environment, you know, to a plan of eating, a plan of living, a lifestyle program, and you're devoted to it, and you're you're resourced in your inner self and you're liberated from the food and weight struggle. You're not yo-yo dieting, you're not weight cycling, you're no longer buying into the whole obsession with food and weight, and you've moved past it. And I think that that's the ground where we can all come together.

FLORENCE: 2:08

You're listening to the Kick Sugar Coach podcast, exploring sugar addiction, metabolic health, trauma, and paths to recovery. Glad you're here, hello, everybody, and welcome to an interview today with Susan Pierce Thompson. And I'm really, really excited about this interview today. Let me tell you a little bit about her. She's an adjunct associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, a multiple New York Times bestselling author, an expert in the psychology of eating. She's the president of the Institute for Sustainable Weight Loss and the founder of Bright Line Eating, a global movement that helps people break free from ultra-processed food addiction and lose weight and maintain weight. She has a new book coming out in April next year, in 2026, called Maintain the Surprising Psychology and Simple Practices of Keeping Weight Off Forever. So I'm really excited to spend some time with Dr. Pierce Thompson today to talk about the surprising psychology and simple practices of keeping weight off forever. So welcome, Dr. Pierce Thompson.

SPEAKER_00: 3:16

Thank you so much. It's great to be here, Florence.

FLORENCE: 3:18

Yeah, I mean, you really taught the world that we can lose weight. And I think this is the piece that's gonna be a whole other kettle of fish, a whole other conversation, a whole other approach. Have you seen the documentary on Netflix right now called Fit for TV? No. Okay. You're gonna want to watch that. And anyone who's listening to this interview, go track it down. It is a follow-up documentary to the 16-year blockbuster TV series known as the Biggest Loser. Okay, yeah, I've heard of that.

SPEAKER_00: 3:50

Yeah, and I've read some of the research studies that have been published on the biggest loser. So I know a little bit about what they found. Yeah.

FLORENCE: 3:57

They found that they could bring them into this ranch and get them to lose the weight, but when that went went home, they gained it back. And some of that was because the approach to losing weight wasn't very sustainable to begin with. It wasn't really smart. There's lots of low calorie eating and that kind of thing. But they also had no support. They didn't know how to maintain weight. They didn't have that piece of the picture. So it's so great that you're coming to talk to us about that today. Do you want to just launch and tell us what inspired you to write this book?

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I have known for a long time that I would write this book. It's what distinguishes my program, I think, from other programs is how much we focus on maintenance. And the backstory to that is we've always focused on maintenance. Sprite line eating has been around for 11 years. And I've been maintaining my weight loss for 22 years. I went from obese to slender 22 years ago. And uh around, when was it? Um 2020, we finally started looking to make a series of courses on maintenance, uh a real curriculum around maintenance. And so what we came up with was three courses: maintenance one, maintenance two, maintenance three. And maintenance one is all about the background psychology of preparing for maintenance. This is a course that someone should take while they're still losing weight. Ideally, when they're not even, you know, thinking about transitioning to maintenance yet. And this is what prepares them for the first identity shift, uh, which, you know, that's the framework of the book maintain is that there's three deep identity shifts that are needed to be someone who can maintain weight loss, deep psychological shifts. And the first one is you've got to become devoted, devoted to your program, devoted to a new way of eating. You can think of this with a, you know, a vegetarian, right? A vegetarian is devoted to not eating meat. And you can tell because at a pig roast, they don't say, oh, I wish I could cheat, you know, I want to be bad, but you know, I'm I'm on a no-pig diet today, right? They don't say that. They say, no, thanks. I don't eat meat, you know, or is there any sweet potato or like, you know, is there any thing, are there any beans? Is there any tofu? Right. So, you know, vegetarians are devoted to a different way of eating. They don't eat meat. And in a similar way, someone who's gonna maintain weight loss has to become devoted. So they're not dieting, they're not on again, off again, their program, you know, in that sense, it shouldn't matter if you start your journey in mid-November and it's like, okay, well, I'm gonna need to be losing weight through the holidays, but that doesn't matter because once I'm doing this, I'm doing it and holidays roll around. It's what they do. You know, weekends come every five days. Like you're gonna need to be doing this for the long term. So before you're devoted, you're thinking every Valentine's Day, every birthday, every cruise is an opportunity to deviate from your plan, or it's a reason why you can't be on your plan, or something like that. Once you're devoted, you just don't think that way. So that's the first identity shift. And that was the first course we created was maintenance one. There was a lot more in that course than that, but that was the gist of it. And then maintenance two was all about the nuts and bolts of actually transitioning to maintenance. And this is where I think a lot of weight loss programs lose the plot, right? They basically say, now go back to eating the way you used to eat, you know, kind of just incorporate what you used to do. And, you know, it's it's kind of crazy, Tan. You know, like how is that supposed to work? Nobody loses their excess weight and then goes back to what they used to do and stays slender, like that doesn't work. So uh maintenance two is all about how do you add a little bit of food so you slow your weight loss and you know, gradually we call it landing the plane, you know. Um, and then maintenance three is all about the life afterwards. So the the two other identity shifts, the first one's becoming devoted, the second one is becoming resourced. You've got to become someone who's not turning to food for every emotion, who's not using food as the primary coping strategy for life. And the third identity shift is becoming liberated. And that's what maintenance three is all about. So becoming liberated is more of a trick than you might think, Florence, because you know, let me tell you an illustration. When I used to teach my college course on the psychology of eating and the neuroscience of food addiction, and I would attract, um, well, the course itself would just naturally attract a lot of students who had a lot of food issues. Um, at some point during this course, I would draw a big circle on the board and I would say, hey, everybody, check out this big circle. Think of it like a pie chart, okay? What proportion of this? Uh oh, the pie chart represents all of your focus, all of your time, all of your energy, all of your actions, all of your thoughts, your whole life. Like everything you do, think, focus on is this circle, all of it. What proportion of it is made up of your food and your weight and all of the things related to it? What you've eaten or not eaten, whether you're on your plan or off your plan, how many miles, how many calories, how many pounds, you know, how you feel in this dress, whether you've got an outfit to wear to the holiday party, all the stuff related to your food and your weight. And I would have students burst into tears. And some of them were slender and tiny, you know, no weight problem, but but they would burst into tears and I'd come over and I'd check on them and they would just look up at me with this devastated look and they would say, 95%. And now most people wouldn't say that, but the chronic dieter, which represents, you know, a third of Americans right now, they're trying four or five new attempts each year. If they're honest, they'll say 50%, 60%, 70%, right? That's that's what that's the real estate that it's taking up for people. Now, in my program, Bright Line Eating, which is rigorous: no sugar, no flour, no snacking, weighted measured meals, um, habit stacks morning and evening. You're meditating in the morning, you're doing a gratitude list at night, you're journaling, you've got meetups and a mastermind group and buddies that you're connecting with, you're um you're absolutely engaged in your program. You're doing food prep, you're that's the whole program, right? There's a lot to it. Someone who really does bright line eating will say 15%, 20%, 25%, maybe some of them say 10%. So that's the differential, right? Let's say the average bright lifer says 15% of their life is devoted to now all the things they do. Now keep in mind they get all almost all the healthy habits of like connection, you know, healthy food, good exercise, good sleep, um, good mindset in the package of that 15% that they're devoting to bright line eating. But the differential is they've just regained 50% of their mind share, you know, 40%. And if they're not prepared for that shift, if they don't have hobbies and relationships and, you know, a buoyed interest in an exciting life that they're ready to let into that space, what will happen is the um the tension between the life they used to live and this new life that's waiting for them that might be scary, the vacuum will suck them back into the food. And what will happen, Florence, is they'll start focusing on the last five or 10 pounds, tinkering with their food plan, going back into the food in little ways to keep the obsession alive. Like they might be maintaining a hundred-pound weight loss, but they're thinking they've got 10 pounds left to lose and they're still focused on it. And maybe they're going from Weight Watchers to Noom, or they're going from this 12-step food program to that 12-step food program, or switching sponsors or what have you, and they're finding ways to keep the obsession alive. So to achieve maintenance, you've got to become devoted, resourced, and liberated. You've actually got to allow yourself to move on finally past the food and the weight struggle.

FLORENCE: 12:39

Incredible. Incredible. So, with respect, some of the research that you've you've started to publish research and you're starting to show that you're getting as good a result in terms of weight loss as GLP1s. Like, can you talk a bit about your research and your science around weight loss?

SPEAKER_00: 12:56

Yeah. So we published a great study just recently in the journal Um Frontiers and Psychiatry, which is the second um to top journal in the world in the field of psychiatry. And it showed that on bright line eating, six years later, people who are still doing the program, they're still bright lifers, they're maintaining an average 14% weight loss, which is 40% better than Ozempic and Wagovi are achieving at four years out. So two years longer and yet still better. So what GLP1 medications are achieving is about a 15% weight loss. This is for the semaglutide varieties, so Ozempic and Wagovi. Um, so at one and two years, a 15% weight loss, but people stall out in their weight loss between one and two years. They don't keep losing and then they start regaining. So they ultimately regain about a third of the weight they lost and they end up with about a 10% weight loss. And Bright Line Eating at six years out is still at 14% weight loss, so 40% better than GLP ones. Um, yeah, so what our research shows is um astronomically better weight loss than other weight loss programs and even better long-term results than GLP ones.

FLORENCE: 14:16

Incredible. Is there a time when you would recommend GLP ones on someone's weight loss journey? And what would you say are the pros and cons and cautions that you also might share?

SPEAKER_00: 14:25

Absolutely. You know, I'm very pro-choice about these medications. I think there's a time and a place for sure. I have no doubt that if I didn't have the degree of peace and freedom I have on my own food journey, I'd be on one. I have no doubt. And the reason is that I've just suffered so much with food and weight, like my cravings and my hunger were so insatiable and torturous. Um, absolutely, I would have sought a medic, you know, a medication to help me with that, without a doubt. I was drowning, I was dying, I was suffering for sure. In the same way that I've, you know, in the past uh been on um, you know, a pro a Prozac or an SSRI type drug, you know, for a period of depression. So I think these drugs have a place. I think that their places if someone, um, I mean, the ideal scenario for them, I think, is for someone who really, really feels like they have tried an abstinence-based program, whether it's a 12-step program or bright line eating, and given it the full college try. And what they find is the cravings and the hunger just overtake them. They just can't seem to stay abstinent to stay bright. Then I think using a GLP1 medication as a tool, as an adjunct assistor to help you stay abstinent, stay bright, um, is a really good idea. I think that that's absolutely indicated. And I think that the side effects are concerning. Um, absolutely. I think that carrying excess weight, though, is also medically concerning. So if you're carrying quite a bit of excess weight, from my perspective, those are just about a wash. People are seeing some side effect challenges, but they're all, you know, on average, people are also seeing health benefits from them, you know, a lot of reduced inflammation, some better cardiac outcomes. So, you know, I think the uh medically speaking, I think the cost-benefit profile for someone who's overweight is probably a wash. Um, and I think that um the the biggest challenge that I see with these drugs is that people are using them as a silver bullet. They're using them as a diet. And what's going on, statistically speaking, is 85% of people are off them within two years. I'm just gonna say that again, because that's mind-blowing. 85% of people are off them within two years. These are not medications that work when you stop taking them. These these are not results that last after you stop taking the medication. It's like going on a, you know, a cholesterol medication and then just going off it, willy-nilly. It's like, well, you're not gonna keep getting the results if you go off the medication. Nothing keeps working if you stop it, right? Like exercise doesn't work if you stop it, right? You gotta keep doing it. So I really think of these medications as a tool that should be incorporated into someone's program long term. I know that's not the way people are thinking about them. Now, I do think that there's a chance that we will start to see a group of people who use the medication as a tool to stay abstinent or to stay bright for a stretch of time, get their footing with it, and then wean off the medication and stay abstinent or stay bright uh without the medication. I'm not sure though, if that's what we're gonna see. I'm curious. I'm open-minded. We have not yet seen large numbers of people try that experiment. Uh, it's still kind of early days. And that I've got my ear to the train tracks on that one. I'm watching my community very closely because in my community, uh, we've got a fair number of people on a GLP1 medication doing bright line eating at the same time. And 76% of them intend to get off that medication at some point. Um, most of the people who are on the medication are not staying bright right now. 13% of them are. 50% are um sloppy bright, but it's working for them because the medication allows them to have a little bit of a piece of bread before dinner and then not overindulge and they're still losing weight and they feel like it's working. But that's not gonna work when they go off the medication. The people I work with are highly food addicted on average, right? Um, and and so um, you know, the rest of the proportion of people, uh, the 50% are not bright on the medication, but it's working for them while they're on the medication. Something like 26% are not bright well on the medication, and and it's not working for them. Even while on the medication, they feel like this is not working, this is unmanageable, this feels out of control, right? And the final percentage is like some combination. They they didn't answer one of those clear categories on the survey. So um, so I think it's mostly a pipe dream to think that you're gonna use the medication, nail your program, follow it faithfully, and use that to then coast you into a lifetime of maintenance without the medication. Very few people seem to be able with boots on the ground to stay faithful to their program while they're on the medication because the medication allows them, they really have a just a different kind. A brain while they're on the medication. They're so not hungry and not interested in food. It just seems harmless to have a bite of this or a bite of that because they forget about it right afterwards and never, it never escalates for them. So I just am not seeing people on average successfully do that. So it's interesting, Florence. Mostly I'm seeing the GLP ones as having created yet another turnstile on the dieting merry-go-round. People are getting on them and getting off them like they diet. And so I personally, as an expert, have put my stake in the ground. These medications are not going to solve our obesity pandemic. There is still the same issue that we've always had, which is people need to wake up to the fact that until they become devoted to a program lifelong, become devoted, resourced, and liberated, nothing is going to change. And that remains true with these medications in the mix as well.

FLORENCE: 20:52

Fascinating. Do you think you might publish that research? Is it robust enough that you might be able to convert that into an article at some point?

SPEAKER_00: 21:00

Um the research I just talked about about the people in my program and what they're doing. You know, I hadn't thought about that. Uh, that's a good idea. I should. I should.

FLORENCE: 21:10

Yeah. Really, really good. Because otherwise, so much just wasted another two years potentially.

SPEAKER_00: 21:16

Yeah, exactly.

FLORENCE: 21:17

Like these people are doing the research. Did it really hold me strong while I got my feet under me? So I fell in love with Whole Foods and I fell in love with the program and I became devote devoted. And if it isn't really doing that for them, it's just good for others to have a heads up.

SPEAKER_00: 21:31

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's where practitioners like you and I need to be aware. And I'm blessed because I have such large numbers of people in my program that I can see larger numbers of things. And so I do get an earlier warning about this is what it's looking like in aggregate. It can take, otherwise, when you're working with people just one-on-one, it can take years and years and years before you realize what the trends are, right?

FLORENCE: 21:58

Absolutely. And I definitely have someone in my practice that uh lost 100 pounds, still had 80 to go, kind of stalled, was doing really good, was abstinent, but was stalling and probably needed to do, you know, pull another lever or something. And she decided to go on a wagovi. Her doctor really pushed her to say, I think this lasts a little bit, this could support you. She got off 16 different medications, like really had come so far, was doing really, really, really well. Decided to go on wagovi. And for her, when she sleps on a CGM, she could see that she can eat carbs and there isn't this diabetic spike that used to happen. There's just a little lift, everything feels normal. So she feels like she's got this ability for the first time in decades, since childhood, really, to be a normal eater and to eat with her family, to have a bite of this and a piece of bread like you described. And for her, the peace she has around food now, she doesn't have the weight loss. But the peace, the mental space of feeling like I am finally free. I have the this much real estate, I'm down to the 10 or 15%. I barely think about it. And it feels like really like a different thing has healed in me because of Wagovi. But when she goes off, will that healing sustain itself?

SPEAKER_00: 23:13

Well, she's No, it definitely doesn't. The question, it I can answer that right already. We know that already. It does not. Her as soon as she goes off it, the food chatter is going to be back and she's gonna be right where she started. What we don't know is whether it will be worse. So, what happens when the brain downregulates because of a medication is the receptors thin out, they become less numerous and less responsive, and they can leave you in a state of being worse afterwards. We don't know yet whether that's the case with these medications. We do see some evidence of adaptation and downregulation in this Wigovi study that came out with four-year data showing that, you know, people lose weight for the first year and three months, then they plateau out, then they regain a bit. That's that regain is the sign of receptor fatigue, receptor downregulation. And that means that when she goes off the medication, those receptors were aren't what they were before, which means whatever natural GLP one she has without the medications got weaker receptors to work with. So it could be worse afterwards. It will at least be as bad as it used to be. So if she's planning to go off the medication, she's got a and she's thinking she's gonna stay healed or fixed or whatever, she's got a rude awakening. So your your, I would say your patient would be a prime example. If she's feeling peaceful in her body, peaceful enough, she's lost a bunch of weight, like this could be maintenance for her. She could just be on Wagovi and it can have solved her problem well enough. She's lost a bunch of weight, she's on a GLP one, she's enjoying being a normal eater, and that could be her solution.

FLORENCE: 24:58

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00: 24:59

But again, she's likely to regain some weight after a couple of years. It's likely to not work as well as it did a couple of years in. And how will she feel then? So that remains to be seen.

FLORENCE: 25:12

Right, right, right. And I think just to clarify that the peace that she's finding such the peace that she's finding with food is really around the disordered eating. Not necessarily craving. She had none going in. She'd been abstinent for three years. That felt like a done deal. She passed it up. It wasn't that she had cravings or obsessions so much, but she still had some weight to lose. And the piece that she's finding is around the the the decades of deprivation, the decades of like, oh, I can't eat that. Like all of that just seems to have shifted. She she can have it or leave it. She has a choice now. Most of the 99% of the time she's leaving it, but that's the piece that's new for her. That she couldn't run the risk of having a bite, not just because of addiction, but because she didn't ever give herself permission to eat the bite. And now she's giving herself the permission. And I don't, does this make sense? Like that whole sort of deprivation diet mentality piece.

SPEAKER_00: 26:05

Yeah. It does. It does. Yeah, I guess that's interesting because I'm I identify as a food addict. I have had eating disorders in my past, but for me, I don't think of it in those terms. For me, that I don't eat those foods not out of a deprivation mindset, but out of an identity mindset of I do right by myself by not eating those foods. So, but I can see how someone would think of it as have a part of themselves, certainly, that would still orient toward it as deprivation. Absolutely.

FLORENCE: 26:36

I mean, I'm I'm thinking about the ones in childhood where everyone at the table got pizza, but the kid who had to have cottage cheese and salad, right? At the age of seven, the age of nine, right? All of that. All of that. No, you don't get to eat what everyone else is eating because you're the chubby kid in the family and you can't, right? So this is the background that that she's coming from, right? So she gets to sit at the table and she gets to have a piece of pizza.

SPEAKER_00: 26:58

Yeah.

FLORENCE: 26:59

She gets right. And so there's just all these so sweet. So sweet and so many layers of complexity. Yeah. Really, so so so complex. We understand a bit more about weight loss maintenance, those three phases, those three identity shifts. What about the people that are listening to this? Oh, Dr. Pierce Tom's, I'm nowhere near maintenance. Talk to me about weight loss. What do I need to do here to get that far? So I can have the problem of how to navigate maintenance successfully.

SPEAKER_00: 27:27

Yeah, weight loss is a trick. So basically, I would say step one is figure out what kind of brain you have when it comes to addiction. Because I really think it is the X factor. Um, research shows that the average person, just pull anyone off the street, odds are they've got 2.38 symptoms of food addiction out of 11, they've got some symptoms of food addiction. Things like, you know, experiencing cravings, sometimes having a hard time stopping eating once they start to eat, losing control over how much they eat, thinking about food too much, whatever, those types of symptoms. And um, you know, for me personally, at my worst, I had 10 or 11 symptoms out of 11, right? So, what kind of brain do you have? And there's lots of ways to find out. You can take the ill food addiction scale, it's hard to find and hard to score. You can take my quiz, which is at foodaddictionquiz.com, um, which is super easy, and it'll give you a score from one to 10, 10 being high. So I'm a 10. Um, now, if you're struggling with your weight, but you score low on this quiz, one, two, three, what you've got is you've got genetic predispositions to obesity, is what you've got. You've got, and this is it's it just is genetic. Like in the same environment, some bodies will just sock on weight. And you, your ancestors were the ones who lived. Oh my gosh, because that is exactly the type of physiology you want to have in the food environment that we lived in 10,000 years ago. In today's food environment, it's not so adaptive. Um, but addiction is not really your issue. So, for you, what I would say is um really focus on healthy habits. I mean, it really is what people have been telling you, but you've probably known that already. So, I'm not gonna give you the whole eat less and exercise more. I'll give you some additional tips. And this will work for anyone, no matter where on the scale you are. Everyone's gonna need to focus on this. The issue is that in our modern society, willpower can't be relied on. It just can't be. It it willpower is governed by this little part in the brain, it's about two inches back from here. It's called the anterior cingulate cortex, and it fatigues super quickly in modern life because every time you're making decisions or regulating your emotions or tracking your task performance, it it it uh or resisting temptations, it uh fatigues. And you've got about 15 minutes of good juice in that part of the brain at any given time. And so whether you're checking email or trying to keep your cool in traffic or getting your kids through their bedtime routine, you're gonna end up right after that making some stupid choice with your food. The solution to that is that it's kind of comprehensive. I mean, it it's it's a big deal. It means your willpower does not work reliably. And given that weight gain and weight loss are so sensitive. Like, really, if you're eating an extra half a banana a day, it's enough to make you not lose weight. Like you've got to actually be really dialed in to lose weight. The solution is you're gonna need to get on a food plan and then automate it with a using a different part of your brain, the part that if you're one of the 95% of people that brush their teeth regularly morning and night, you will recognize because it's the part of your brain that that achieves that. It's also the part of the brain that drives you to work without thinking about it. It's the part of the brain that just executes easy uh tasks um that are familiar. It's the part of your brain that gets you through your shower routine. Um, I'm just gonna pause here for a second because I see like the Venetian blind lights at this time of day. I get these weird little lights on me. There we go, just moving over here. So um, so here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna start eating meals, never snacking, never grazing. I don't care how many meals you eat. Most people prefer breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And you're gonna write them down the night before. This is for everybody, no matter where you are on the scale, okay? You're gonna write down what you're gonna eat precisely the night before. And then the next day, that's what you're gonna eat. It's gonna be hard at first. You're gonna your brain is gonna say, but I don't know what I'm gonna eat. But it's hard to choose. But what if I want to eat something else in the moment? You're gonna be firm with yourself. If you decide in the moment that you want to eat something else, don't. Tell yourself, I can plan that for tomorrow. I can have that tomorrow. I'm gonna stick with what I committed. As soon as you get into a rhythm with that, you're gonna take the load off of willpower. It'll take a little while to get used to the habit. Now, what if you're higher on the scale? What if you're a nine, uh an eight? What if you're high on the scale? Now, addiction is in play, and we're talking substance addiction. We're talking about little white powders poured into bags, right? Potato chips, um, you know, sugar and flour. We're talking about drugs and take it from an ex cocaine, crack cocaine, crystal meth addict. We're talking about the same types of drugs and the same effects on the brain. You can look at a brain scan, it's the same stuff. So, what you're gonna have to do, I'm afraid to say, is abstain completely from sugar and flour. Um, a bright line, a clear, unambiguous boundary that you just don't cross. It's called a bright line. And um, yeah, that's why my program is called Bright Line Eating. It's no sugar, no flour, three meals a day. So um, yeah, now that plus the tools I just taught you of writing down your food the night before and and then eating only in exactly that, it'll get you there. Now, I wouldn't recommend anybody try this on their own. I'd recommend a 12-step program or bright line eating uh or working with a private coach or something like that um to achieve this. It's not that easy to set up and get going. It takes um some doing and it also takes community to maintain it and it takes um a lot of doing inner work along the way so that you don't default to your old food patterns. I will say that it sounds ridiculous when I describe it. It sounds so intensive, but once you stick to it for a while, it's really not that big a deal. It really becomes quite easy and liberating. And people coming out of my program after just eight weeks show no hunger, no cravings, uh increased peace and serenity with food, increased happiness, increased energy, lowered depression, fewer days of poor mental health, feeling better across the board and really feeling liberated from their food struggles. So um have heart. What you've been taught your whole life, that moderation is the key and intuitive eating is the only answer is not true if you have a more addicted brain. And there is a way to get free and get peaceful and get that weight off.

FLORENCE: 34:44

Amazing. Do you ever find that there's individuals that come up against a resistance that isn't related so much to addiction, but more a fear of losing weight because somewhere along the past the mind has coupled weight with safety from attack or unwanted sexual attention or some of those other more complex layers. What have you discovered in your community around that?

SPEAKER_00: 35:06

Yes, yes, yes, and yes, all of that. Absolutely, absolutely. Um, whole chunks of my book maintain or are dedicated to inventorying those fears and going through them. Absolutely. I know a woman who, you know, keeps eating her way back to 350 pounds because in her mind, if she's light, she'll be abducted and pulled into a van at some point, you know, carried off. Um, absolutely. Um, absolutely. I mean, I mean, you mentioned sexual attention. You know, there's so many fears and different ways around that, you know, fears of people's comments or not comments, fears of people's unwanted attention or lack of wanted attention, or fears that they will start to engage, you know, in ways they wouldn't want to, like they may have, you know, some decades prior, just so many things. It's really helpful to get them out into the light and to really look at them. Um and, you know, I think that trauma is a huge underlying driver for a lot of food issues. I think that working with someone to work on that trauma using EMDR, using, you know, good evidence-based complex trauma healing techniques is a great idea. Um, and what I want to say is it's not unsurmountable. You know, like a lot of us have all kinds of, I had so many fears. I had fears of success, I had fears of failure, I had fears that I might leave my husband if I lost my weight. I had fears that, oh God, what were some of I had a lot of fears. Um, and you know, slowly as the weight melted off, um, I acclimated. And you can too, you know, you can too. Little by slow, you just address it all.

FLORENCE: 36:56

You can teach the body that you're still safe. You're still safe, you're safe at this way. Look, we're safe, right? You can you can hold its hand and reassure it every step of the way. Yeah. In terms of, so your your your focus really is ultra-processed food addiction, but the the thing that typically brings people to bright line eating is a desire to lose weight. So they get to bright line eating and you say, Okay, uh, sure, I know, I know your heart's desires to lose weight. I I honor that, I respect that, I'm gonna help you lose weight. But then you say to them, but we can't do this through diet mentality. This can't be a diet. Yeah. How do people, it's so ingrained in us as women, especially. So, how do you break diet mentality?

SPEAKER_00: 37:34

Uh, well, sometimes we can't. Lots of people just stick around with bright line eating with diet mentality, but the whole community in bright line eating is starting to become ever more educated about it, about hearing it and noticing it. Really, I think I did a lot of things in the early days that fostered diet mentality and I didn't even realize it. You know, I talked a lot about goal weight, you know, because I knew people were coming to lose weight, and I was stoked to be living at my goal weight. You know, when you've lived with obesity and just wanted that weight off suddenly to be slender, is it's a miracle. It feels amazing. So I talked a lot about goal weight, and then years passed and I noticed these folks who'd lost 130 pounds and felt like failures and were still perseverating about the five pounds that they felt like they had left to lose. And and it I heard that something, some version of that story often enough that I thought, what am I doing wrong to set these people up to be so fixated on a number? I mean, now we don't talk about a number, we talk about a range, and we also don't talk about goal weight. We talk about um, we talk about our bright bodies as opposed to, you know, uh, I don't know, there's different terms for, you know, what happens when you lose weight, but we talk about a bright body almost uh, there's no definition for that in the dictionary, right? So we get to, you know, define that how we want to, a body that can move, a body that can ride a bicycle, a body that can, you know, take deep breaths and sit in meditation in the morning, you know, define a bright body how you want to. But um I can hear diet mentality in people. Um, when I coach them, I can hear that um they're often during the weight loss phase, they're really concerned about their rate of weight loss, you know? And someone who doesn't have diet mentality has kind of, it's already dawned on them that nothing's gonna change really when they're in maintenance, that there's no rush to get anywhere. They're gonna keep not eating sugar, they're gonna keep not eating flour, they're gonna keep putting their food on the scale. And and really, once you have a few bright meals in a row, you have a bright body. You know, like you're there, sweetheart. You're there. Now it's all journey. Just enjoy. And um, you can hear it in people that have had. Had that realization and they realize there's nowhere to rush to. It doesn't matter if they're losing, you know, a quarter of a pound a week or four pounds a week. It's all the same. It doesn't matter, you know. So uh I guess long story short, it is hard and not everybody's ready to let go of diet mentality. And that's okay too. You know, you're not kicked out of bright line eating if you're there to lose weight and it's a diet for you, you know. Um, but it is wonderful to watch people wake up to the reality of, oh, this is all about my life. This is all about how I feel in my skin. This is about a deep level of joy that I've never had before. This is so not about a diet.

FLORENCE: 40:42

Amazing. Thank you. And what about um people who really struggle with the weighing and the measuring? There's just something in them that there's a there's a there's an endless uh bucking bronco inside them about having to do that every meal, every day, all the time for the rest of their lives. Well, how would you help people make peace with that? Or is there a way around it?

SPEAKER_00: 41:05

You know, I don't encounter that very much, to be honest. I um, and it might be that what I say to that up front, I mean, people certainly might feel that way coming in the door. And what I say is just try it for a little while because people resist it because it sounds um fanatical and way too intense and restrictive. The reality is that the quantities are ample. We're not weighing and measuring our food to eat tiny quantities. You might actually find that the quantities feel too voluminous. And wink wink, we're actually mostly making you weigh your food so that you eat enough vegetables. Um and also what I say is I want you to try it, give it the college try through the boot camp, and then write me a letter. And what you're gonna say is, I love my digital food scale so much. If my house were burning down, I would grab my cat and my digital food scale and run out the door because I really don't want to live without my digital food scale. And I think what happens, Florence, is when people go through the boot camp within eight weeks, it doesn't feel obtrusive or annoying. It feels freeing. That is the truth of how it feels. And it also becomes automatic. So you stop noticing that you're doing it. I mean, weighing food is just a process of getting the food from the container, you know, into the onto the plate or into the bowl. And just like you wouldn't notice if you had a spoon versus a paddle versus a, I don't know, a pitchfork versus a whatever to like shovel it from one place to the next. The process is you you acclimate to it. You don't notice anymore. I mean, I come down in the morning and my hand puts the digital food scale in the middle of my counter while I'm grabbing a bowl. I do that if I have company over and I'm weighing their food. And at some point I realize, oh, they don't, they don't weigh food, so I don't need to do this. But the bowl's already on the scale, it it becomes automatic. So really, I have to say, I work with thousands of people and I almost never hear that. Very few people.

FLORENCE: 43:19

Okay. Okay, interesting. Well, I think that's all I have for questions. Is there anything more you would like to share before we wrap up today?

SPEAKER_00: 43:28

Oh, goodness. Um, let me think about that. Well, I I just want to say that um since I've been working on the book Maintain, it really does dawn on me. I did a literature search and there's almost no books on weight loss maintenance. There's a couple, but there's very few, and there's none on the deep psychology of weight loss maintenance. And there's probably 10,000 books on weight loss. And so I just think it's really interesting that our society has not really come around to this, you know, uh aspect of the conversation. And I guess what I want to say about that is it feels to me like maintenance is the ground we can all stand on together, right? If you think about where our society's been when it comes to food and weight, you know, 1970s, um, you know, the farm bill changed in the United States and high fructose corn syrup became super cheap and snack foods started to really proliferate. And, you know, weight had already been increasing a little bit, but it really started to skyrocket. 1980s, you've got diet culture and fat-free obsession creeping in, right? And now you've got bulimia and anorexia as diagnoses, and you've got diet culture and eating disorder culture, and then you've got a huge backlash that happens. And now in this century, you've got the body positivity movement and the health at every size movement, the fat acceptance movement, um, which are at the same time trying to say that being fat's not unhealthy or it's not that unhealthy, right? And and sort of ignoring a little bit the mountain of evidence that shows that actually excess adipose tissue really does release a lot of inflammatory stuff and is correlated with, you know, all kinds of ill health. Not that size is the same thing as health. It's not, but but you're blind if you don't know that there's a massive correlation there. And so what we've got now is a world where, yes, we know weight cycling is not healthy. We know that body obsession is not healthy. Absolutely, our society has a ridiculous obsession within this. And absolutely we've we've not done enough to overcome that. I mean, Harvard's implicit uh association test is showing that every form of bias has been going down for the last 20 years, except anti-fat bias.

FLORENCE: 45:54

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 45:54

Every other form of bias, anti, you know, you know, bias based on race or age or gender or sexual orientation or gender identity or uh, you know, ability, or pick a demographic and they do they test for you know well over a dozen of them. Anti-fat bias is the only one that's still going up. Every other one is going down. Still going up. It's still going. It's still going up. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Body positivity, bigger mannequins. It's done nothing.

unknown: 46:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 46:25

It's still going up. Now I don't want to say it's done nothing, actually, because I have three daughters, and I feel like I did have to put, you know, nip a nip in the bud there on no fat talk in this house when they started to say my stomach is big, or they were getting that from their friends a little bit. I stopped it. And I have three girls, 17, 17, and 14, and no talk about our bodies in our house, like in any pejorative or any way, really, you know, like just none. And so, and I think that there is a culture in their generation to not um buy in to the anti-fat bias as much. I think. I don't know what I mean. I'm curious if we gave them the IAT test, whether that would show out. But across society as a whole, anti-fat bias is still going up. And you can just see in terms of realities, right? People carrying excess weight don't get as good medical care. There still aren't airplane seats for them, right? Like if you need a wheelchair, the air, the airline will pay for someone to wheel you to your gate, but they won't make a seat that fits you if you're if you're big enough, right? So, and and nobody is uh noticing or lobbying, right? Like, what's that about, right? Like, why aren't there some seats that are bigger? Um, it's just not okay that if you're a certain size, you just don't get to fly anywhere. Like what? So, um, so we have a lot of work to do on that, right? But at the same time, on the other side of the equation, it's like, thank goodness weight loss drugs gave us our language back that we could talk about weight loss again. Like it wasn't okay to talk about five years ago. You couldn't, you know, someone couldn't say, I'm trying to lose some weight in polite society without it it sort of being, you know, not okay. Like, like it's it's okay to try to lose some weight if you feel like you've got extra weight on your body for you, right? And there are a lot of healthy, not diet-obsessed reasons to want to get some weight off, right? So I think maintenance is the ground that we can all stand on. Like that's the goal, not thinness, but maintenance, where you're not trying to gain or lose weight anymore. You're devoted, resourced, and liberated. You've got a program that fits for you. It's your way of adapting your brain and your body within our crazy toxic food environment, you know, to a plan of eating, a plan of living, a lifestyle program. And you're devoted to it and you're you're resourced in your inner self and you're liberated from the food and weight struggle. You're not yo-yo dieting, you're not weight cycling, you're no longer buying into the whole obsession with food and weight, and you've moved past it. And I think that that's the ground where we can all come together. Um, and so anyway, that's what I support. We're setting up a maintenance database. We want to get a million people in maintenance by 2040. And once the wait, once the website, I don't know when you're oh, your thing is going live soon. So though it won't be set up yet. But um, yeah, it'll be at one millioninmaintenance.com. And uh, we want to get a million people living in maintenance. And I hope that's just the beginning. It's not about doing bright line eating or doing this program or that program, it's about getting off the dieting merry-go round and be owning that you're liberated, you're no longer enmeshed in that struggle. So yeah.

FLORENCE: 50:01

Beautiful, call, beautiful, amazing. How can people find you and anything else you'd like to add?

SPEAKER_00: 50:08

Yeah, I just want to remind people, um, it really is a good first step to find out what kind of brain you have. So consider taking the quiz at foodadictionquiz.com. You can always find me at brightlineeating.com. And uh wherever you're at with your food, your weight, your life, I just I just love you. I hope that you get all the tools and resources and support that you need. And yeah, thanks for tuning in.

FLORENCE: 50:32

Thanks, everybody. Thanks so much, Susan. Yeah, thanks, Florence. Bye-bye. Thanks for tuning in this week. If you would like more interviews, more information, and more inspiration on how to break up with sugar, go to my YouTube channel, Kick Sugar Coach, or my website, kicksugarcoach.com. See you next week.