From episode 14: The American Obesity Epidemic is An Addiction Crisis onthe Food Addiction: The Problem and The Solution podcast
Host, Susan Branscome:
Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson is founder and CEO of Bright Line Eating. She's a New York Times bestselling author. She's professor of brain and cognitive sciences. She's written a number of books. I have read several of them! Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free. Her other books are The Official Bright Line Eating Cookbook: Weight Loss Made Simple, Rezoom, The Powerful Reframe to End the Crash-and-Burn Cycle of Food Addiction, On This Bright Day, A Year of Reflections for Lasting Food Freedom.
We're going to talk about your background, your struggle with addiction, your work, the books and the Bright Line Eating approach. Let's start by talking about your books - they're very successful, selling hundreds of thousands of copies, generating over 7,000 reviews and hitting the New York Times bestseller list. The Bright Line Eating movement started in 2014 and has grown tremendously.
Guest, Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson:
The impetus for all this was to write a book. That's what I heard in my morning meditation was, "write a book called Bright Line Eating" in January of 2014. So that first book, Bright Line Eating, in my soul is kind of the point of everything I've done with Bright Line Eating. I feel very proud of that book. It's been translated into a gajillion languages now and I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of copies it's sold, but lots.
There another was book right after that, that also hit the New York Times list. It's the official Bright Line Eating cookbook and there's bogus Bright Line Eating cookbooks that pop up on Amazon all the time. So if it doesn't say the "official Bright Line Eating cookbook," don't get it since it's probably got sugar and flour all over it.
The book Rezoom is about
why we relapse,
how to inoculate yourself against relapse,
what to do when you relapse, and
it's really also about Recovery 2 .0, a more nuanced, deeper take on food addiction recovery.
What I love about that book is it really goes into the reasons why food addiction is the hardest - the hardest to recover from.
I come from a background of drug and alcohol and all kinds of addictions that people think of as being whopper addictions like crack cocaine, for example.
But food is harder.
Food is harder.
I go into the science of why. I also go deeper into the science of food addiction and why there's still controversy about food addiction, which is so silly that there is. I go into the history of it. There's actually a really good and concrete reason for that controversy.
I'm really excited about On This Bright Day. It's a daily meditation reader.
It's the only daily meditation reader for recovering food addicts that is not 12-step based.
So it really fills a gap in what's available literature-wise. It's more scientifically grounded. It's very inspirational and aspirational, motivational.
About Dr. Susan Pierce Thompson
Susan Peirce Thompson, Ph.D.
Susan Peirce Thompson, Ph.D., serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester. With expertise in the field of eating psychology, she holds the position of President at the Institute for Sustainable Weight Loss and is also the Founder and CEO of Bright Line Eating Solutions. This company is devoted to guiding individuals toward attaining lasting weight loss, health, and vitality. Dr. Thompson's program incorporates state-of-the-art research to elucidate the mechanisms by which the brain impedes weight loss, and she imparts this knowledge daily to empower people to reverse such impediments, enabling them to lead lives marked by happiness, thinness, and freedom. Visit her website to learn more!
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