Almost as soon as Bright Line Eating was launched there were people who were trying to make recipes that conformed to the Bright Lines technically but were basically stretching the Lines to their thinnest point. I’m looking at you, cauliflower pizza. And you, ricotta pancakes. The issue I have with these foods is that, while they are technically within the Lines, they are approaching food in a way that is antithetical to everything we are trying to accomplish. Spending time trying to solve a “food problem”—How can I make pancakes and stay in my Bright Lines?—is spending too much time on food. It’s simply transferring your food chatter from obsessing about what you’re going to eat to trying to get this new way of eating to hit all your old buttons. We are trying to get rid of the buttons!
Spending time with loved ones or spending time in service can hit your dopamine receptors in healthy ways. Exercise (once you’re at goal weight) or physical intimacy will, too. But we are trying to take excess dopamine OUT of the food equation. If you are still trying to figure out how to get high off vegetables, you are not doing yourself any favors.
Our data shows that the people eating Bright Line food designed to mimic their old food don’t get Happy, Thin, and Free. They report the slowest weight loss, the greatest frequency of cravings, and the most breaks in their Bright Lines of any group.
The reason we have curated the recipes in this book the way we have is that science strongly supports that eating simple foods helps our brains reset our Adiposity Set Point.
The Adiposity Set Point is the scientific name for what our brains think we should weigh. Its evolutionary function was to help us regain weight after illness or lose weight easily after childbirth. But now it serves as an invisible leg iron on the race to health. As an added challenge, it readjusts upward readily but fights tooth and nail against moving downward.
What we know now is that if the body releases significant weight but the Adiposity Set Point is never recalibrated to match, the brain will marshal a half dozen or more hormones—including our dear friend leptin, which it craters, and ghrelin, the hunger hormone, which it elevates—to create relentless hunger and cravings paired with a slowed metabolism . . . until the weight is regained.
In his 2017 book, The Hungry Brain,1 neurobiology and obesity researcher Stephan J. Guyenet, Ph.D., writes about a 1965 experiment in which subjects were exclusively given a bland liquid (think viscous chalk water) to meet all their caloric needs. But they were entirely in charge of how much of it they could choose to drink each day. What researchers found was that the thin participants naturally consumed their typical calories and maintained their weight. However, the obese participants, some of whom voluntarily stayed on the regime as long as 255 days, could only push themselves to consume, at most, 400 calories a day. One person lost 200 pounds, or half his body weight. Most important, they reported no hunger or cravings, ever.
What was happening?
It turns out that a bland liquid diet allows people to shed excess fat without triggering the brain to fight back at all. It completely resets the Adiposity Set Point.
Now it’s important to note this is not one of those commercial diets with a “shake for breakfast, shake for lunch” model. Those shakes are loaded with sugar or sugar substitutes and are in no way bland. What these subjects had was like drinking liquid cardboard.
How can we benefit from this without going on a liquid diet?
What scientists discovered after this study is that “satiety is sensory-specific.” Meaning, we can feel full after the entrée but see the dessert and suddenly feel hungry again. The brain sees the new stimulus and kicks back into wanting. So continuing to switch up what we’re offering ourselves keeps hunger, and accompanying cravings, alive.
Keeping food simple also resets the brain’s expectation of what we should weigh.
My first encounter with this was through the Green Bean Women of Boston. In the 12-step food recovery world there are many programs with different structures and guidelines. I go into greater depth about this in my first book, but for this discussion I’m going to focus on the long-term recovery of those who have kept it simple. Overeaters Anonymous initially had a food plan called the Grey Sheet, named for the paper it was printed on. They distributed this diet to their members until 1986, when they stepped away from making specific food recommendations. But adherents to this diet are still out there today and I can usually pick them out in a meeting because, well into their 70s and 80s, they are still slender. And when conversation turns to the exciting and exotic things to do with eggplant or the latest kitchen gizmo, one of them will quietly pipe up, “I just steam my green beans.” Meaning, they have lasting peace around food by keeping their preparation simple and consistent. They are no longer looking for their food to “excite” them—because that leads down the road of keeping their addiction alive.
How simple is simple enough? Avoid the extremes. At one end, it would be to choose only three foods, eat only those, no salt, no spices, no seasoning of any kind. At the other extreme, it’s mashing butternut squash and sweet potatoes together with pumpkin pie spice to try to evoke Thanksgiving. Find the middle ground. You know you’ve hit the sweet spot when—
Now, there are legitimate times when you’re doing everything “right” and you still don’t have the above. I strongly encourage you to lean into our support network if that happens. Join the online Boot Camp and get on a coaching call. But, in general, finding the sweet spot with simple food will produce calm, peace, and a feeling that healthy eating is getting EASIER.
“Simple food” can become an obsession too . . . don’t feel guilty for using salt and pepper or some mustard sometimes. Really. But if you’re needing 25 ingredients to make a meal, something’s off.
In each chapter of this cookbook you will find that the recipes begin with the simplest ones people rely on in their weight-loss phase. Toward the end of each chapter, you will find more complex recipes with more ingredients. In addition to this progression from simple to more complex, each recipe has a trigger level rating—one bell, two bells, or three bells. One-bell recipes are safe, simple, and encouraged for newly initiated Bright Line Eaters. Once you have a few months of these new habits hardwired into your healing brain, you can experiment with some two-bell recipes. Once you’re at goal weight, you may want to try the three-bell recipes. But know that if you ever try any recipe and find that sticking to your Lines in the hours or days after becomes harder, that is not a recipe for you. One person’s neutral is another person’s trigger. As you will see, we come back to this strongly around the subject of nut butter.
Most of us who were once obese and are now effortlessly maintaining slender bodies eat very simply. For example, most nights I eat a 14-ounce salad made up of the veggies I have in the house, plus either 4 ounces of tofu or 6 ounces of beans, plus ½ ounce of extra-virgin olive oil and some balsamic vinegar. It’s super simple, and super consistent. But I love that salad. I enjoy it as much as, if not more than, what I used to put in my mouth before Bright Line Eating because it has the added benefit of not only tasting delicious but being good for me on every level.
When I vlogged about the role of simple food in resetting the brain’s Adiposity Set Point a year ago it set off an interesting furor in the Bright Line Eating community. Half of my viewers wrote to me in the weeks following to say, “Thank you. I just made my food simpler and I got FREE again!” About 40 percent of my responders said, “Amen. I keep my food simple already. It works.” But then 10 percent said, “No, that messed me up. I tried to make my food simpler, as per your advice, and it threw me in the other direction. It became rapidly too restrictive and I found myself now wondering, Is this simple enough? It made me second-guess myself, when I had finally stopped doing that.” Some people even broke their Bright Lines because they felt so destabilized or demoralized.
Obviously, then I would say, “Go back to whatever you were doing that was working. Do what gives you peace.” This is the part where you need to be a scientist. Within your Bright Lines, if you are on weight loss, I encourage you to make your food simple enough to be NEUTRAL. That is always the ultimate goal for people who are high on the Susceptibility Scale: neutrality around food. We are trying to take the charge and the pull out of it completely. Science is showing that for a vast majority of people, eating simply supports that endeavor. But if you are in the 10 or so percent for whom that is not true, let it go.
The bottom line is this: Make your food simple enough to get free. You decide what that is. But trust us, it’s simpler than the cauliflower pizza.
And finally, before we launch into the recipes themselves, I just want to mention one word: SURRENDER. Yup, surrender. Trust this plan. It’s a whole new framework. A different kind of path. Instead of trying to keep your old relationship with food and force BLE into that framework, let go entirely and let us show you a new way. It may well feel scary, foreign, strange, and uncomfortable at first. But ultimately it’s freeing, and I promise it will get easier.
STARTING DATE July 9, 2017
HEAVIEST WEIGHT 191 pounds
STARTING WEIGHT 187 pounds
GOAL WEIGHT ACHIEVED May 24, 2018
CURRENT WEIGHT 130 pounds
HEIGHT 5'2"
Before BLE I cycled between bingeing and depriving myself. There were many healthy foods that I liked but could not work into my eating habits because I didn’t have a clue about planning. So produce would rot in the fridge, and if I made beans, I didn’t know how to manage large batches without eating them all at one time. When I hit bottom, I had stopped cooking and hated the thought of eating, which by that point brought very little genuine pleasure. In addition to periodically bingeing on addictive foods, at meals I gobbled very large quantities because it was my body screaming for real food after trying to starve myself. Finally, my wife had to do all the shopping and cooking—and we ate mindlessly in front of the TV.
The structure and massive support of Bright Line Eating have allowed me, at the age of 69, to become accomplished in basic adult self-care. I enjoy feeling competent. For the most part I enjoy my food and eat mindfully, meaning practically always at a table with cutlery. I even cut my fruit and eat it with a fork or spoon. If I find myself gobbling, I know I am on a slippery slope and strengthen my program with meditation, appreciation, and more careful planning.
After reaching my goal of 127 pounds, a series of binges pushed me a bit over. I am now learning to navigate maintenance more skillfully to better manage how and when I eat grains. Most important, the program has taught me that I have to avoid the exhaustion that can trigger crazy behavior. That is the difference in Bright Line Eating: I think. I am looking at not just what I eat now, but when and how I’m eating it. And I have a support community to hold me accountable.