Bright Line Living™ - The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

I’ve been waiting to do this vlog for months! 

A few months ago, someone wrote in about the book, ON THIS BRIGHT DAY, to find out what happened after our launch. What about the contest? Did it make the New York Times Bestseller List? 

It’s true—I never did a vlog to sum it up for you. 

Here’s what happened: It sold about 5,000 copies, about half as many as would have been needed to make the New York Times list. But that’s twice as many copies as REZOOM sold. It continues to sell well. 

We had three winners for the contest. They came to Rochester to visit with me, but then life got lifey: I got the flu the day they flew in. I couldn’t meet with them. I took medicine, went to bed, and it didn’t work—I was still sick. 

JoAnn Campbell-Rice, the book’s co-author, had also flown in. She and the contest winners ended up hanging out together. The next day I put on some flannels and met them outside, very separated, and we chatted. But the sweet thing about it is that they all bonded and got very close.

So we planned another trip, timed with the Bright Line Eating anniversary, and they had dinner at my house. That all happened just earlier this month, hence the delayed vlog. 

More updates: We got JoAnn Campbell-Rice listed as a co-author. We worked with Hay House to get a new cover for the Kindle edition and audiobook version—that all happened immediately. We rewrote the author page for the paperback version, which is coming out in October. 

We also have a title page with JoAnn’s name which you can download at OnThisBrightDayBook.com. On that website, we have other fun things, too. If you post on Instagram, for example, and use the hashtag #OnThisBrightDay, your post will get loaded on the website so everyone can see your picture and posting!

Mainly though, I’d like to talk to you about what is so soul-satisfying about this book. It is really helping people to live the Bright Life. It’s a daily reminder with 366 ways to help you break away from the tyranny of addictive eating and live Bright and clear in community with others like you. 

In fact, in the UK, there’s an accountability call each day with 20-30 people, and they begin each call by reading that day’s reading from the book. And every day, someone shares that it was exactly what they needed on their journey. 

JoAnn Campbell-Rice and I shared in a recent conversation that we both read the book every day and we both said that it feels magical to us every morning. The book keeps on giving. 

So was the book a success? What makes a book a success, anyway?

I want to let you in on a publishing house secret. 

I had a private conversation with Reid Tracy before the first book—BRIGHT LINE EATING—was published. I asked him what it takes to make a book launch a success. 

He said that people tend to focus on the launch and forget what’s really important about a successful book. The key, he said, is to write a really good book that impacts people. 

Let some time go by, he told me. A couple of years. And then look on Amazon and see how many reviews it has. No phenomenal book launch of a truly mediocre book will get a thousand reviews on Amazon. The only way to get a thousand reviews is to write a book that truly impacts people. I’ve always carried that with me.

It’s gratifying to me that REZOOM, which we gave the weakest launch ever, has 966 reviews. It’s a good book. People are still discovering it. ON THIS BRIGHT DAY has 356, but it just came out.

So I invite you to reflect on this book. And if you enjoy it, consider writing a review on Amazon. I’d be very appreciative. I suspect that, in the fullness of time, it will creep up to a thousand reviews. 

I am deeply proud of it, and I know JoAnn Campbell-Rice is as well. Thanks for your patience with me during the months it took me to get this vlog out to you. If you’re trying to do anything for yourself other than the standard American diet, this book will support you every day. You will feel ever-better and ever-Brighter because of it.

Get the new title page, read the authors’ bios, and more: https://ble.life/j4wp2z 

FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/exj21s

Behind the Scenes with ON THIS BRIGHT DAY | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

I’ve been sharing a great deal about anniversaries lately, and today I have another one: it’s nine years this month since I began doing the weekly vlog. That’s roughly 270 vlogs. In all that time, I’ve only missed three or four weeks.

Here’s a little insight into how it happens: I usually film each Wednesday’s vlog on the Monday morning before. Then my team does all the processing that needs to happen to have it ready by Wednesday. 

I have an Evernote on my phone titled “future vlog topics,” and it goes back for years. I use it to capture thoughts or add links to articles. The team also keeps track of suggestions you write in—we get about one a day.  

Sometimes I come up with a topic related to something that’s happened to me that week. Sometimes I want to talk about science. Other times I want to share a life lesson. 

Sometimes, like today, I come to the vlog in an emotional state that makes it hard to talk about anything. The vlog feels to me like truth serum. I look into the red dot above the camera lens and I feel all of you—thousands of you—there with me. What I have to say has to come from a genuine place.

I’m an emotional creature. My astrology chart is loaded with water: Sun, rising sign, Mercury, and Saturn all in Cancer; Moon in Scorpio, and Jupiter in Pisces. If I’m affected by life, it’s hard not to bring that to the vlog. 

I spent this past weekend with a dear friend who is dying. Though she’s very dear to me, we just met for the first time. We became close online. She drove up from Appalachia, where she lives. She’s dying, and isn’t yet at peace with that. She has less than a year. 

Then this morning, I got a call from someone who was affected by something I had said to them about their weight. She was feeling comfortable in her body, so what I said sent her reeling. I’ll shoot a vlog about it sometime, as I will on my friend who is dying, with their permission.

I can’t shoot those topics yet. I only shoot a vlog topic once, so I have to make sure I’m ready to say everything that needs to be said. I thought I was going to shoot today’s vlog on the book, On This Bright Day, but I’m not ready for that, either. 

All these things were in my head and on my heart when I was getting ready. I sat down and cried after my shower, and scrolled through my Evernote document. I scrolled through pages and pages of ideas that were nowhere near anything I could remotely face talking about today. 

And then I found something way back at the end, that I must have written down years ago, and it’s something I can talk about today.

It’s a bunch of bunny slipper mantras. Here they are:

When I have an extra hard day,
I will take extra good care of myself.

When I am under a lot of stress,
I will treat myself with a lot of kindness.

When I feel more overwhelmed than usual,
I will take more time to rest than usual.

When my emotions are strong, 
My self-compassion will also be strong.

When I am feeling additional tension,
I will make space for additional relaxation.

When I am feeling deeply, 
I will also practice accepting my emotions deeply.

When I am really tired,
I will be really gentle with myself.

—Unknown 

That’s all I could resonate with this morning, and I’m giving myself permission to do a vlog that is pieced together with duct tape and chicken wire. And it’s okay. 

We have such a sensitive community, and we’re all—myself included—just showing up for each Bright Day. And sometimes that day is vlog day. So, on this day I made space for an unusual topic. 

I hope that, if you are the one who sent these to me years ago, or posted them on Facebook, you’ll make yourself known so we can give you credit.

FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/0dq3yw
Bunny Slipper Mantras | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

I have a new love in my life: swimming. And I’ve learned three things while swimming that I want to share.

Some background: I can hold my own in the water, but I’ve never been a regular swimmer—or even, frankly, a regular exerciser.

I have friends who ache to be moving. They can’t wait to get to the gym, or get outside and move their body. That’s not me. But in the past, during the stretches of time when I would get myself exercising, my cardiovascular exercise of choice was always slow jogging. But… I’m about to turn 50, and my knees won’t tolerate jogging anymore. So then I tried incline hiking on the treadmill, and in short order, that bothered my knees. Biking, too. 

Finally, I tried swimming, and the minute I got into the water and swam a few laps I thought: I love this. It felt amazing. 

So the first lesson is this: sometimes, when it feels like something is happening to us beyond our control, it is all in service of a good end. All my challenges with my knees, which were so frustrating, resulted in me finally getting into a pool. 

There’s a wonderful saying: think not about how this is happening to you, but for you. 

And there’s a sweet story with this same moral in the Baha’i writings. A man was tortured with missing his beloved. She was gone, and he couldn’t find her. One day, he went out to the marketplace to distract himself. Suddenly, a Watchman started following him. Then another. The Watchmen chased him until he came upon a big brick wall. In a panic, he scaled the brick wall, cutting his hands and arms. He tumbled over the wall and fell down into a meadow… where he found himself at the feet of his beloved. She was looking for a ring she had lost in the grass. The man dropped to his knees and cried out, “God, give thanks to the Watchmen, and long life, and love! I thought they were persecuting me, but actually they were my Angel Gabriel, leading me to my beloved.”

That’s how I felt about swimming. I was feeling persecuted by knee pain, and that’s the only reason I tried it—and it turned out to be a huge blessing.

Here’s the second lesson: I didn’t know if my shoulders would tolerate swimming, so the first day I swam eight minutes, and that was enough. The next day, I did the same—all week, three times. The next week I did nine minutes. The next: ten. I increased by just one minute a week. For months. 

I couldn’t have done this years ago. I like to go from zero to 60 right away. Moderation is not in my vocabulary. But from weighing and measuring my food, I’ve learned to weigh and measure my life, and, in this case, my exercise. Slow and steady wins the race. It’s amazing how productive we can be when we weigh and measure our output. 

Here’s the third lesson: this week in the pool I had an experience that was torture. Last week, I had become aware that 30 minutes wasn’t seeming like enough. So, this week, while in the middle of my swim, I started thinking about it: what if I swam more? Maybe 35 minutes? How about 40? And then I thought, why not go all the way to 45 minutes? I tried to do the math in my head for timing all the various options: what time would my swim end? I thought about how my shoulders were feeling, what my day would look like if I swam more… and on and on. It became an obsession. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was the way I used to obsess over food.

I finally got out of the pool at 30 minutes, just to shut my head up. It was my first bad swim. I wasn’t comfortable in my head because of the “Will I? Won’t I? Should I? Shouldn’t I?” thoughts.

I committed to my husband that I would swim 35 minutes the next time I was in the pool and not second-guess myself, and still I was surprised at how hard it was not to get caught up in the whirlwind of internal thoughts and questions. 

The lesson? Thinking, “Will I? Won’t I? Should I? Shouldn’t I?” is sheer torture, in swimming, with food, with anything. This is why we write down our food in BLE the night before. Not after we’ve eaten it, but BEFORE. It is a mercy and a blessing to take that action. And yes, it takes more than one day to train ourselves to eat only that without second guessing it mentally, but when we stay persistent, that practice silences the internal chatter. The mental peace we get with Bright Line Eating is the number one gift of the program. 

Those are my three lessons on swimming. I don’t know how I became this person, but suddenly I find myself feeling motivated to do whatever it takes to get in my three weekly swims. It’s taken me years to be someone who can exercise consistently. So that’s a fourth Bonus Lesson: sometimes big gifts come even decades after starting this way of living. Stick with it. It’s worth it.

FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/cs86de
Swimming Lessons | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

It’s been an exciting year for Bright Line Eating. We did a lot of listening to our community and responded in a big way. We’ve made things so much simpler and more streamlined for our Members. This week, I talk about the changes that we’ve made. And that includes the most exciting development… we have an app! Yes, finally! Listen to this week’s podcast to hear all about it.

FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/u9KtBd
Episode: Introducing the SIMPLER BLE with all App! | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

Sometimes rest is not only necessary but is actually the best thing that you can do for your own productivity and success. How does ignoring your to-do list help you to get more done? It’s all about knowing your own cycles and how to implement harm reduction. In this week’s vlog, I talk about how to simply HOLD.

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Episode: HOLD | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

There's a shift that happens when one is fully invested in their Bright Line Eating identity. It’s the difference between “I can’t eat that” and “I don’t eat that.” But there’s another identity shift that takes place. It’s a crucial one. In this week’s vlog, you’ll get a special sneak peek into one of the lessons from our course, Maintenance I: The Psychology of Maintenance, in which I explain this identity shift and why it’s so important.

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Episode: The Second Identity Shift | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

This week, I discuss a pattern that a lot of us fall into here in Bright Line Eating. It's common enough experience that we've recently coined a term for it. Listen to the episode to hear my thoughts.

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https://ble.life/J9Jr9m

Episode: Maintenance by Exception | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

I read a blog article recently that really stuck with me because it covered a topic that has been coming up a lot in Bright Line Eating. Listen to this week's episode to hear all about it.

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Episode: Tinkering | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

Life can be very difficult. Sometimes it can feel like we're getting hit with one thing after another. In this week's episode, I discuss an important perspective shift that serves me well on my Bright Line Eating journey. I think you might find it helpful, too. Listen to hear my thoughts. FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/ri5oNS Episode: Choose Your Hard | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast

I'm in the San Francisco area right now to be with my family as my aunt passes. I heard a couple of days ago that she had taken a turn for the worse, so I decided to drop everything to fly across the country and be with them. Listen to this week's episode to hear how this experience relates to recovery and the Bright Line Eating journey.   FOR THIS EPISODE and MORE: https://ble.life/nCg4EO (https://ble.life/nCg4EO) Episode: Showing Up for Family When It Matters | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast