Many of you have asked me to weigh in on an approach to weight loss known as Bright Line Eating. Some people claim that this approach has helped them lose weight when all other methods failed.
The approach was developed by Susan Peirce Thompson, who has a Ph.D. in Brain and Cognitive Science and claims that her approach is grounded in cutting-edge psychology and neuroscience. According to promotional materials, Bright Line Eating is “very structured and takes a liberating stand against moderation.”
Instead of “very structured,” I’d describe it as “extremely rigid.” And if the phrase “a liberating stand against moderation,” sounds a bit Orwellian to you, well, you’re not alone. This zero-tolerance approach could be considered “liberating” in the same way that a maximum-security prison might liberate you from a life of crime.
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There are four so-called Bright Lines:
Bright Line #1: Foods containing any form of sugar, sweeteners, artificial sweeteners, or concentrated fruit juices are strictly forbidden. Forever. Although it’s not mentioned specifically in this rule, elsewhere in the materials, alcohol is equated with sugar and is, therefore, apparently included in this prohibition.
Bright Line #2: Also forbidden are foods containing any type of flour, including whole wheat flour, and flour made from any other grains, seeds, or nuts. Is it your wedding day? Sorry, no cake for you. This is a bright line.
Bright Line #3: You must eat exactly three meals a day, absolutely no snacking, and no exceptions—not even to check the seasoning of something you might be cooking. Helpful tip: Put a piece of tape over your mouth while cooking to prevent accidental breaches of protocol. (No, I’m serious. This is actually recommended.)
Bright Line #4: You must weigh or measure every single thing you eat, forever. Heading to a restaurant? Pack your scale. There are no exceptions to this rule. The type and amount of food at each of your three meals is strictly dictated and adds up to about 1200 calories a day—a bit more if you are a man but otherwise, it’s one size fits all.
And that’s it: Just follow these 4 simple rules to the letter—forever—and you too can be happy, thin, and free!
I’m being facetious, obviously. (Although that is the subtitle of Dr. Thompson’s book: The Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free.)
And I want to acknowledge that one’s willingness to embrace such a draconian approach will probably depend on the degree of suffering you feel that your weight is causing you. If this approach succeeds where everything else has failed, it’s certainly your prerogative to decide that abiding by these constraints is worth it to you.
But if you are simply curious about how this approach might stack up against other options, I think it’s worth taking a closer look at the scientific rationale.
Does Science Support Bright Line Eating?
Bright Line Eating purportedly “works with the brain” in three specific ways:
1. By reducing your reliance on willpower.
Willpower, they claim, is depletable and unreliable. I agree! Relying entirely on willpower is like trying to parallel park a car without power steering. It’s possible, but it’s a lot of work. Creating solid habits and engineering your environment to reduce temptation and to make the healthy choice the easy choice are great strategies for building a healthier lifestyle.
Read More: Why Willpower Isn’t Enough
What I don’t quite see is how these extremely rigid rules reduce your reliance on willpower. It seems to me that maintaining this degree of restriction on an ongoing basis would require quite a bit of willpower.
The authors also claim that exercising “uses up a tremendous amount of willpower and is not effective as a weight-loss tool.” If you do not exercise, you are encouraged not to start. If you already exercise, you’re encouraged to reduce the intensity of your current regimen.
I agree that the primary benefit of exercise is not weight loss. But I don’t agree that it necessarily uses up a lot of willpower, unless, perhaps, you’re forcing yourself to do exercise that you don’t enjoy. But I’d rather encourage you to explore different ways of being active than discourage you from exercising.
2. By bringing leptin “back on board.”
According to the Bright Line Eating website, following the BLE rules will allegedly “bring leptin back on board so you finally feel satisfied.”
The role of leptin in appetite and body weight regulation is still poorly understood by the actual scientists who study it—and grossly oversimplified and wildly misrepresented in the popular press. Leptin levels are directly related to body fat stores. They drop when you lose weight or when food intake is restricted, which in turn stimulates your appetite. If you gain body fat, leptin levels go up, which decreases the desire for food. It’s the body’s way of maintaining the status quo.
But because it’s popularly known as the “satiety” hormone, people imagine that leptin turns your appetite on and off on a meal-by-meal basis. But in reality, leptin works to regulate appetite and body weight over a longer time frame, not in response to individual meals.
You might also be led to conclude that higher leptin levels would be a good thing. More leptin, less appetite. But people who suffer from obesity tend to have very high leptin levels (because they have high amounts of body fat). The problem is not that their leptin levels are too low but that the body becomes resistant to the appetite-suppressing effects of leptin.
My point is simply that the relationships between leptin, body fat, and appetite are complex and—despite what you read online—not easily manipulated by diet.
In a paper published in Current Developments in Nutrition, Thompson reports that her program’s participants (95% of whom are white women of high socioeconomic status) rate their hunger and cravings lower after following the program for 8 weeks. However, it’s unclear whether this has anything to do with leptin, or how long this effect might persist.
3. By “rewiring and healing the addictive centers of the brain.”
The entire Bright Line Eating philosophy leans hard on the concept of food addiction. The idea that people can become literally addicted to food is highly controversial. Just because the taste of something sweet activates the same area of the brain that lights up in response to cocaine, it does not follow that this creates psychological or physiological dependence. However, telling people that they are chemically addicted to food and therefore powerless to control themselves can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Read More: Sugar and the Science of Addiction
Thompson has even invented a quiz that allegedly measures your vulnerability to food addiction. A high score on her “Susceptibility Scale” supposedly suggests that you are unable to exercise restraint and will only be safe by “liberating” yourself from any form of moderation.
Diet or Disordered Eating?
In the end, I find it somewhat ironic that this approach was developed by a psychologist. Because to my eye, it reinforces such psychologically unhelpful—even damaging—beliefs. For example:
- In order to be happy, you must be thin.
- Being thin is more important than anything else, therefore whatever you have to do to achieve this is worth it.
- You are incapable of exercising judgment and self-control.
- You cannot be trusted.
- Certain foods are more powerful than you are.
In my own work as a weight loss coach, we spend a lot of time dismantling many of the beliefs that Bright Line Eating seems determined to instill.
If you buy into the idea that you have some sort of defect that makes it impossible for you to control yourself, this take-no-prisoners approach might seem like your only hope. And, apparently, many people who embrace it succeed in losing weight. But as one former adherent of Bright Line Eating wrote on her blog:
“I was thin but I was far from happy and definitely not free…I [had been] 100% sold on BLE as my forever way of eating [but] I reached a point where peace was more important than pounds.”
If someone came to me for nutrition counseling and described some of the behaviors endorsed in this program (such as taking a scale to restaurants to measure your food or putting a piece of tape over your mouth to prevent yourself from eating), I would probably refer them for evaluation for an eating disorder. Thompson discloses that she herself has a history of eating disorders including bulimia and binge eating. But the solution that she advocates still has many of the hallmarks of disordered eating, such as extreme inflexibility and black-and-white thinking.
Read More: A Dietitian’s Review of Bright Line Eating
As anyone trained in the treatment of eating disorders knows, achieving a healthy weight does not necessarily mean that you have recovered from disordered thoughts about food (or about your body).
That’s my take on Bright Line Eating. No doubt, it will rub some people the wrong way. It’s certainly not my intention to undermine anyone who feels that Bright Line Eating is making their life better. But, if you’d like to experiment with a (really) different approach, check out the Weighless Mindset Reset, a free 7-day minicourse that I developed with Brock Armstrong, in which we investigate some of those underlying beliefs.
Originally published at QuickanddirtyTips.com
I have not done bright line but I do follow Kay Sheppard’s food plan. It includes all of these “rules”
It is the only food plan in which I have no physical cravings. And I have proven over and over that if I eat something not on the plan – the cravings come back and bingeing is the result. Mentally obsessive thoughts take over and I’m right back in the disease of food addiction. When you used the example of prison that instead of freedom- that is so untrue of a food addict. Putting those foods in my body puts me in the prison on being controlled by food. The reason that being on the plan brings me freedom is that cravings leave and my mind stabilizes. Your statement of FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
shows that you don’t understand addiction.
If you are addicted to a substance than it would be advisable that you don’t put it in your body for the rest of your life! This is the solution that works for me.
I agree Brenda. I have on on BLE for a couple of months. After being on diets my whole life (I’m 50 yrs old), I KNOW that I am addicted to sugar or even food in general. I have more freedom when I do not eat sugar and flour. Now I have a lot to work on as far as my mind is concerned but I know that I am better off without sugar and flour. I mean we all know there is no nutritional value in sugar anyways so not sure why we should try to allow it in our diet when we know ourselves well enough to avoid it. I don’t bring a scale into a restaurant or tape my mouth and there are other rules that I don’t follow either. But overall, it’s a great program to follow without following every bit of it.
Of course the author of this article is against BLE–Once someone embraces it there is no longer a need for someone like her. Weight loss is a billion dollar industry. Monica is only referring to the BLE way of life. There is no reference to Susan’s book where she actually DOES explain everything that goes on in your brain when you are trying to diet. There is a REASON regular “diets” never work; or if they do they are short-lived. I have not met many people who have lost weight and kept it off on any other diet. This is a way of life, not a diet. As Brenda mentioned, if you have an addiction you don’t partake in that thing that you gave up. I have a type 1 diabetic son who can no longer eat the way he did before his diagnosis. HE HAS TO EAT THIS WAY FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE. If you get your life back is it such a big deal that you can’t eat wedding cake?
I’m a stickler for words and could agree with “is it such a big deal that you CHOOSE to not eat your wedding cake?” I practice BLE. It works! One thing that has helped is not can vs can’t but choosing to eat foods that fuel my body and make me feel good. There are so many foods that do this. And a few (with flour and sugar) that don’t. It’s worth it to me.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion on, well, everything. I’m a recovering alcoholic and SPT resonates with me, she walked my walk and is a doctor who has done research. As a scholar, those credentials mean something to me, and apparently all the others that BLE has helped. Stop trying to influence people and instead invite those struggling with food addiction to read her books and make up their own mind instead of peddling your stuff at the end of your critique.
I agree. She has a vested interest in convincing people that BLE has “ dangerous” thought patterns. I’ve been doing bright line eating for about eight months now, and I’ve lost 50 pounds. And I do feel happy, thin, and free. I think, having the thought patterns of self loathing, and the inability to change my situation was far worse than knowing I can’t put sugar in my body. I eat healthier than I have ever eaten in my life. More veggies, fruit, proteins and whole grains instead of processed foods. Any dietitian worth her degree would agree that that is a far better way to eat then Twinkies and candy! Also, it’s easy for most people to have alcohol in moderation. But to an alcoholic, nobody would ever advocate a “moderation in alcohol” lifestyle. “Just one drink” wouldn’t work for them. Essentially, that is what she seems to be advocating here. And she is mocking those of us who have truly found freedom from cravings saying that we are extreme and mentally deranged. All to pimp her program for “recovery” from those thought. SMH
None of us want anyone to suffer and if you have found relief, I’m happy for you. I hope it is a long term solution. As I write above:
“One’s willingness to embrace such a draconian approach will probably depend on the degree of suffering you feel that your weight is causing you. If this approach succeeds where everything else has failed, it’s certainly your prerogative to decide that abiding by these constraints is worth it to you.”
However, I think you would find that the vast majority of nutrition professionals who are “worth their degrees” would recognize that this approach endorses behaviors which meet diagnostic criteria for disordered eating. That doesn’t mean that everyone who follows this approach has an eating disorder. But for those who are struggling with binge eating or other eating disorders, please know that actual treatment (with health professionals trained in the treatment of eating disorders) is available. [More information can be found at the National Eating Disorder Association.]
The program that I offer is not appropriate for those with active binge eating or other eating disorders–although it can be an appropriate next step for those whose eating disorders are in remission.