I asked some of our Bright Lifers to share with us their best tips, tricks, and techniques for making sure they always have Bright Line meals available. In sharing this hard-won wisdom, our community is inviting you to take a peek into our way of life. Come and see how our healed brains organize around food. We hope you’ll find some of these nuggets useful, and others may inspire you to create your own methods.
Some tips are specific to prepping a certain food, but most involve ways to be sure we’ll have our food ready when it’s time to eat. We include ideas on how to travel successfully, as well as planning for meals at home.
My own best tip to you? It’s simple but powerful: Plan. Yup, plan. As the saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. The easiest path to a peaceful brain and automaticity around food is to eliminate food choices made “in the moment” and have your food ready in advance.
When eating at home, Bright Lifers find preparing large batches of food for the week to be helpful as well as economical for their wallets and schedules. If you spend a few hours once or twice a week doing the shopping and chopping, the rest falls into place, and meal prep becomes simple. As Bright Lifer Julia Carol puts it, “I get a big grin and feel my body relax when I open the refrigerator to find neatly stacked containers with all the veggies and protein I’ll need for a few days in a row. I feel held and safe and happy.”
We all develop our own habits in order to accomplish prebatched food. In warmer weather, we might chop all our fresh vegetables (minus greens) and keep them together in one large container, and then add the correct quantity to our greens and protein and fat for a big bowl of salad.
In colder weather, batch cooking may mean making a huge pot of soup or stew for many meals in advance; or roasting, steaming, or sautéing several days’ worth of vegetables to reheat quickly at mealtime.
“I take a piece of graph paper, oriented landscape, and write B (breakfast) L (lunch) D (dinner) evenly spaced down the left side. Across, I write the days of the week. I shop twice a week. On the far right, I write Grocery List. I plan each meal, listing all the components.”
— Molly Doogan
“I could not do BLE without my meal plan shopping list. One day a week I will plan out my meals for the upcoming week. Using my pantry, fridge, and freezer I check to see what I have on hand. From this I make my shopping list. Shopping is much easier now.”
— Lynn Powers
“My weeks are ALWAYS busy, so planning is the key for me. I can’t tell you the number of times I grab my meal from the freezer because my plans have changed, and I need to GO! Glass seems to keep food longest, so I use a lot of Ball jars in both the refrigerator and freezer.”
— Julie Boyd Smith
“I make steel-cut oats to last for four to five days. Each morning, I measure out the cooked oats, add a little water, mix, and heat in the microwave. Then I add my correct quantities of fruit, nuts and seeds for protein, and spices. I also make enough beans in the pressure cooker to last for four to five days. Then I just have to reheat my measured serving and add salsa or another desired condiment. Beans, precut vegetables, and fresh fruit make a tasty, super-easy lunch. I wash, drain, and cut up fresh vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower to have for four to five lunches during the week. I store them in large ziplock bags along with a folded paper towel to absorb some of the moisture. The paper towel makes the vegetables last longer in the refrigerator.”
— Nancy Wolf
“While fresh may be best, I was frustrated by the amount of waste. Frozen vegetable blends and minimally processed beans can be used to quickly prepare a variety of meals. By alternating among three different frozen organic vegetable blends and four different organic beans I can prepare 12 different meals the same way. First, I measure one of the frozen vegetable blends in a bowl, heat it in the microwave, add spices or condiments, and the choice of beans, heat some more, and serve. There is no waste and little to clean up. When focusing on making meals automatic, having easy meals is helpful.”
— Nathan M. Denkin
“Always buy more than one onion, chop them all up, and put most in the freezer in ziplock bags. Then when you want chopped onion, 1 minute in the microwave thaws out the batch just enough so that you can shake out what you need for your recipe.”
— Gaye Welton
“If you use ground meat a lot, always buy more than 1 pound at a time, brown it all at once, and freeze each pound in ziplock bags. It saves a lot of time to have it already browned and ready to go.”
— Beth Syverson
“I keep covered bowls in the fridge for my ‘extras medley,’ the little extra leftover once food is weighed for a meal. I have one bowl of pieces of leftover cooked veggies, one of pieces of leftover raw veggies, and one for pieces of leftover fruit.”
— Evelyn Zoecklein
“I love bagged slaw mix. You can add it to any meat or tofu dish and it works great with Asian spices. My favorite is broccoli slaw steamed with ground turkey and coconut aminos.”
— Sondra McNair
“Making things like chili, with everything in one container and multiple portions, allowed me to prep my food on the weekend, and then I didn’t have to worry about keeping my Bright Lines at work. Plus I could freeze some for other weeks and over time I had a nice supply of different meals all ready for me to pop out of the freezer and go!”
— Ellen Eichen Weinman
“At some point over the weekend I cut up zucchini squash, yellow squash, cabbage, carrots—any vegetables that are not too wet. I put them all in a big covered bowl in the fridge and each time I make a salad I just put some greens in a bowl and reach in and grab a handful of vegetables to the measure needed.”
— Michele Mariscal
To keep your Bright Lines bright and your brain humming on automaticity, here is a general rule: the more hectic your schedule is, the more you’ll need to have your meals prepped in advance. Meaning, during the busiest weeks, all three meals weighed out the night before. The more relaxed and spacious your schedule is, the lighter your food prep can be and the more you can succeed by weighing and measuring a meal in the moment.
This is a lesson I learned the hard way. When I started hitting the road to give talks and attend conferences for Bright Line Eating, I found myself struggling to keep my food in order. I’d already been eating this way for 11 years, but the food prep habits I’d built at home, with a predictable schedule, weren’t robust enough to carry me through the craziest days and weeks. Eventually, I learned that prepping all of my food in advance would save the day.
Let us have done the research for you. Having food prep routines that are suited to your schedule and robust enough to carry you through unforeseen emergencies and schedule changes is the linchpin to living a peaceful Bright Line life.
“As a busy mom and career woman, I don’t have time to cook during the week. I keep a document full of my favorite meal ideas and recipes. On Thursday, I choose my meals for the following week. On Friday, I create my grocery list. On Saturday, I shop and prep. Then on Sunday, I bulk cook and divide into meal portions. Through the week, I can simply ‘grab and go’ the prepared items.”
— Kimberly Champion
“I’ve discovered through trial and error which proteins and veggies tend to keep me full longest. If I know that I have a long day planned, or that dinner will be later than usual, I go with the ‘heavier’ choices on the food list. Getting too hungry puts me in the danger zone; a little planning ahead goes a long way toward keeping my Lines bright!”
— LeeAnn Thompson
“I keep small cans of pineapple in the pantry. Drained, they are a perfect serving of fruit. If your planned fruit is over/underripe, or the kids ate it, canned pineapple is a great backup plan.”
— Nikki VanDenHeuvel (Johnson)
“When I have the time, I cruise my local markets for BLE-friendly prepared foods . . . think salad bars, olive bars, prepared foods, roasted chickens. If I need just a small amount of celery, I might buy it from the salad bar! Knowing what is available, and where, is a lifesaver during busy weeks. But do be sure to read ingredient lists, even when it seems unnecessary: I discovered that the chicken in a big-box discount store has sugar in it! I never would have noticed that during my normal busy shopping sprees.”
— Julie Boyd Smith
“I usually make my meals with fresh food, but sometimes I need a fast Bright Line meal. I’ve noticed other Lifers have one or two of these in their tool kit as well. My go-to is canned beans and frozen spinach. I also almost always have some jars of salsa around. I thaw the spinach in the microwave, add the correct amount of pinto or black or garbanzo beans, add some salsa as a condiment, and that plus a fruit is my lunch (or without fruit, it’s my dinner). For a fat, you can dice up half an avocado on top, or just measure half an ounce of nuts. This meal tastes better than it sounds, and because the beans are canned and the spinach is frozen, I know I have the ingredients handy.”
— Julia Carol
Bright Line Eating can definitely be done whether your family is on board or not. Bright Lifers have learned how to get their own meal on the table and cook for a family without making two, three, or four separate meals to cater to everyone’s tastes. For children, what I have found works well is making a Bright Line meal for everyone and then putting a big bowl of pasta or rice on the table as well from which the kids can help themselves.
The wonderful thing is that, when someone in the family starts doing Bright Line Eating, everyone benefits. Mealtimes become more regular, vegetables make a consistent showing on the table, junk food gradually vanishes. Many spouses of our Bright Lifers lose dozens of pounds without even trying. Sanity returns to mealtime, and with it, conversation, connection, and laughter.
“Most of the dinners at my house are served family style with only BLE foods. Our basic family meal plan includes 1 protein, 1 fat, 1 or 2 vegetable options, 1 fruit option, and 1 starch option. For example, last night we had pork chops with baked sweet potatoes (and butter), Southern-style green beans, and pineapple. My kids ate everything offered, while I ate the foods that work for my dinner plan, but not the starch. If I start to crave a food that I don’t eat for dinner, I can always tell myself that I’ll eat it for breakfast. This makes it much easier to resist foods that are ‘my foods’ at breakfast, but ‘not my foods’ at dinner. I also feel good that I’m feeding my kids mostly whole foods.”
— Heidi Stallman
“With boys in the house, my food was getting eaten out of the fridge and cupboards before I could get home, so I’ve sectioned off an area in the fridge and told my boys they can eat anything unless it’s in MY area. It took some time for them to understand I was serious, but now I make extra so there’s a larger container for them to eat!”
— Charlotte Coit
“I’ve learned to use frozen riced cauliflower as an ingredient in soup, which makes it taste like rice to my family. I can also mix beans and riced cauliflower with salsa to mimic beans and rice, and my family is happy to eat it!”
— Lisa Rowe
“I hate throwing food out, but sometimes after I measure I have something left over. I have several bags in the freezer for these bits. Banana and berries in one bag for smoothies for my kids. Veggies in another for soup or stock.”
— Nikki VanDenHeuvel (Johnson)
Eating outside the home definitely requires more planning. Over time, Bright Lifers have learned to anticipate how and when things might go awry and plan ahead so that they’ll be covered. I remember the first time I learned this lesson. Early on in my journey (around 2003), I met friends for coffee midmorning, anticipating that I would be home well before lunchtime. You can guess how the day unfolded. Now I always bring my packed lunch. Better safe than sorry.
If you’ll be eating at a restaurant, look at the menu online and make your plan when you’re full from a Bright Line meal and don’t have any food triggers, like the smells in the restaurant, to awaken your Saboteur. Attending a wedding or other event? Call the banquet director and explain you need a sugar- and flour-free meal with extra vegetables. Remember that you’re not bothering the caterer or chef. So many people have special dietary needs these days. It’s their job and they’re used to it.
At social gatherings, the key is to be clear about your BLE identity. Say, “I don’t eat that,” rather than, “I can’t eat that.” And be prepared with what you’re going to say if people ask questions. This can range from being 100 percent candid and open to just saying, “I’m not eating sugar or flour these days and it’s helping me sleep better,” or whatever feels comfortable to you.
“I will generally call ahead to a formal event and speak with the caterer to inform them of a special dietary restriction on sugar and flour. I have spent most social events looking for someone sitting alone and then conversing with them or helping out with cleanup or refilling any empty dishes or drinks. I stay away from the food table while socializing to keep from mindlessly reaching for NMF. Being of help feels better than eating and drinking NMF/NMD. Also, I’ve found if you walk around with a full glass or cup of something BLE-friendly, most people will not push a drink on you.”
— Kathy Hashley
“I used to think I was confined to a restaurant’s menu when eating out. After three years of Bright Line Eating, I no longer hesitate to ask for something that’s not on the menu. If I see they have a protein I like in another dish, I ask for it as a side order by itself. Restaurants usually have scales in the kitchen, as they need to weigh food for portion consistency. I often ask for a specific number of ounces of vegetables, as a side dish if need be.”
— Julia Carol
“I have learned that restaurant menus are created to trigger my brain, so I look at them as little as possible. I look online before I get to the restaurant as often as possible, and when I end up in an unexpected restaurant I turn to the back page for sides. I can usually find some vegetables there and order protein just the way I want (grilled, with no butter or oil or sauce). I have even ordered a salad ‘with everything on the side’ and received a bowl of lettuce surrounded with about eight little dishes—of which I could eat two!”
— Julie Boyd Smith
“It is easier than most of us think to bring our own food and/or eat ahead of time. When we believe in what we are doing, other people respect it, and there won’t be nearly as many critical comments or glances as we tend to fear. I realized quickly that my own embarrassment and self-doubt were the problem—not others’ criticism. And my own self-sabotaging longing to eat off plan was and still is much more important to keep in check than anyone pushing me to eat off plan.”
— Dina Grossman
“Soup was my workplace go-to and I wanted to figure out how to do it in a BLE-compliant way. It can be a bit of a challenge when you want to weigh and measure the individual ingredients for one person. I found a mini Crock-Pot, which is designed to allow you to bring hot foods to work. I take cut-up cooked meat I already have on hand, like chicken, plus one of the small containers of broth; weigh out and sauté onions, carrots, and other veggies in oil or butter; and put all these ingredients in the mini Crock with some spices and salsa to round out the flavors. I take it with me to the office and plug it in at my desk. That way I have a wonderful, delicious meal that takes me no time when I’m in the middle of my workday.”
— Kallie Kendle
“Social gatherings seem to be difficult for me, especially potlucks. I have learned to overcome this by a) being open to people asking about what I eat and sharing my journey, b) bringing a food item to contribute that is a fairly balanced meal in itself (with both protein and veggies in the recipe), and c) eating only that in appropriate portions so I am following the plan and also feeling included and satisfied.”
— Chris Southwick
“Balsamic vinegar makes a great salad dressing! In many restaurants you can ask for some in place of or in addition to their regular dressings.”
— Julie Boyd Smith
When we hit the road we put our BLE program to the test. For that reason, if at all possible, it’s best not to attempt it too early in your journey. But if you have to travel, generally speaking, the more you control your own food, the better off you’ll be.
Of course, there are two kinds of travel—pleasure and work. Vacationing while doing BLE might be very antithetical to your past approach to travel, when seeing something new and tasting something new might have been conflated in your mind. I have been traveling around the globe with Bright Lines for 16 years now and enjoyed myself thoroughly without planning my trips around “food rewards.” I focus on what I will see (the ocean, the mountains, the art) and whose company I will enjoy (my children, my family, my friends)—not on what the local treat is. So first I want to reassure you that it is possible.
I cover how to take your Bright Lines on the road in depth in the Boot Camp and in my first book. In brief here I will say that there are several ways to approach it, ranging from packing every single meal for the entire trip in a big cooler if it’s a road trip, to not packing anything and trusting your eyeballs in restaurants. In between are people like me, who bring their travel scale with them, even into restaurants. I also always try to stay in a home, instead of a hotel, whenever possible. It is so much easier to stay automatized if you have a kitchen. Cities where Airbnb is legal have been a godsend for me. But the linchpin is always your deep commitment to stick to your plan.
Also keep in mind to clear your schedule for one to two days when you get back for “reentry.” Coming home, getting settled in, unpacking, clearing out the email inbox, doing laundry, filling up the fridge from the grocery store, doing some food prep, and getting a good night’s sleep in your own time zone all require time. Give yourself the gift of NOT arriving home at 9 P.M. and having to go to work the next morning.
“I do a large commit covering every day of my trip in advance. I use it to plan my breakfasts and eat most of those with my own premeasured packets of grains, nuts, and seeds. I get a source of whole fruits, a fridge, and I pack shelf-safe almond milk in a ziplock in my checked bag. Thirty-three percent of my meals are automated and it saves me money, too. A few times I may eat out with a veggie omelet, potatoes, and fruit. Depending on where I’m staying, I may preplan lunches and dinners too, and leave myself open to changes as needed.”
— Susan Cook
“I’ve found it’s easy to take food on the plane. Nuts or roasted edamame for protein, and an apple for fruit. Plus cucumber for veggies or a mixture of raw veggies: carrots, cucumber, and grape tomatoes.”
— Amelia Jordan
“All I can say about travel is plan, plan, plan. I say it three times on purpose because I always have plans A, B, and C! Plan A equals what, if any, food is provided as part of the trip. Is it a conference, cruise, or resort with meals included? If so, what are they serving? Don’t be afraid to call and speak with the catering manager. They want to accommodate you! Plan B equals what else is available nearby? Are there restaurants or grocery stores in the vicinity? Plan C equals bringing some food with you in case plans A and B fall through. Bring roasted chickpeas or edamame. In my checked luggage I bring cans of beans, a box of almond milk, seeds for fat, all preweighed and measured. But also bring your travel food scale.”
— Kimberly Champion
“This is a tip for driving long distance or staying somewhere unfamiliar. I always have prepackaged oatmeal, snack baggies of measured nuts and seeds, snack baggies of dry cereal and flour-free crackers, prepackaged tuna, hummus, guacamole, olives, salad dressing, and peanut butter. Then, if there’s a cooler available, bagged veggies, fruit and yogurt, and hard-boiled eggs. These are all portable in a lunch bag to go on quick trips out the door or in the car. For air travel I have taken the same items in a lunch bag in my purse, minus the yogurt.”
— Kathy Hashley
“I have purchased two plastic food containers that collapse. They were a bit expensive but are super for travel. One is just big enough to hold my breakfast or lunch. The other larger one I use for lunches or dinners. I have no trouble getting them through TSA at airports. If they do pull them out, they say, ‘This looks good.’ I have another plastic container for salad dressing with a snap lid. I put in only 2 ounces, which is allowed through TSA. So after eating a meal, I go into the bathroom, rinse out the containers, collapse them, and I am done. They take up very little space in my carry-on.”
— Maitreyi Margie Wilsman
In aggregate, Bright Lifers have decades of collective experience doing Bright Line Eating. And what we, as a community, have learned is that often something that seems like it’s working in the short term turns out to be a poor foundation for living Happy, Thin, and Free lifelong. Here are some of the nuggets of wisdom our Bright Lifers wish they’d known when they started.
“Don’t overthink breakfast.”
— Cindy Rinaman Marsch
“To simplify food prep, premake everything, weigh out portions, and store each serving in a separate container. No weighing in the moment.”
— Julie Boyd Smith
“I have found that making the shift to thinking about each meal as self-care has been a huge help. I do everything in my power to sit down at every meal without any of my old distractions—like books or TV. Then I try to arrange my food to make it appealing (not ‘sexy’) using the colors of my vegetables to make a beautiful plate. I also pick bags or containers and napkins that are pleasing to the eye and touch.”
— Dina Grossman
“It took me a long time to realize that I could split my servings and have part nuts and part almond milk at breakfast.”
— Julie Boyd Smith
“I found nuts triggering but didn’t want to eliminate them because they’re so healthy! To keep nuts from calling my name, I bought a Kitchen Safe, which will lock up a food for as many hours as you select. Once in the safe, they magically stop calling to me!”
— Julia Carol
“If, like me, you eat too fast, try eating with a baby spoon! By eating with a baby spoon I find I slow down, enjoy my meal, and become full. Total win! Obviously, only do this at home.”
— Mary Reisz
“At the beginning I made a lot of measuring mistakes. Now I always measure things in separate containers and then combine them.”
— Lisa Rowe
“When my weight loss slowed the first time, I adopted a set of techniques to lighten my plan instead of cutting my portions. This has served me well from Boot Camp through Maintenance: #1–Use almond milk for part of my breakfast protein. #2–Reduce use of nuts and nut butters. #3–Have more days in the week when I eat entirely plant-based (three days minimum). #4–Eat more raw and steamed veggies (one salad per day). #5–Eat more beans instead of meats. #6–Eat more leafy greens instead of starchy veggies.”
— Susan Cook
STARTING DATE April 26, 2017
HEAVIEST WEIGHT 343.9 pounds
STARTING WEIGHT 302 pounds
GOAL WEIGHT ACHIEVED October 11, 2018
CURRENT WEIGHT 182.9 pounds
HEIGHT 6'2"
I was obese for 30 years. I tried everything, but nothing gave me complete information about what to eat, what not to eat, how much to eat, how many times a day, or how to search for support—which I never had, because I didn’t know I needed it.
In Serbia, where I’m from, nobody knows that obesity is an addiction problem, so there is no program like BLE. I was desperate, feeling like I lived in a jail, not able to be the “real me,” and isolated from other people, because I felt so much body shame.
Since my first BLE day till now, I don’t want to eat flour or sugar. Sometimes when I feel sad, fearful, or lonely, I think of food as an “emotional first aid,” like it used to be. But now I know that food won’t help me long term, so I don’t act on it.
Now, after this miracle of coming back to a right-sized body, everything is easier. Problems in life come and go, but I finally feel powerful. Before now I felt pretty powerless: powerless to take back control of my weight and my body. And that feeling of powerlessness covered all the other parts of my life.
I thought I was lazy and unlovable, but the truth that I know now is that it’s not my fault. I count myself very lucky to have found Bright Line Eating.