Dieting vs. Lifestyle with Susan Peirce Thompson: “Health Talks”

Video Transcript

Susan Peirce Thompson: ‘Cause the real issue is not what are you gonna eat or not eat, the real issue is how are you still gonna be doing it a year from now. That’s the issue.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Lifestyle. It’s a lifestyle, not just a small change.

Susan: And I talk so much about what that means. When you say you gotta change your lifestyle, it’s not a diet. What does that mean?

TeriAnn: Fully Embracing it. And changing everything. In your house, out of your house, where you’re going, being prepared.

Susan: Here’s what lifestyle means. It’s three things. These are the essentials of a lifestyle change not a diet change. It’s essential as air, A-I-R, that’s the acronym. A is for automaticity. You gotta make your new behaviors and habits so ingrained that they’re automatic like brushing your teeth. And the reason that’s so important is, because willpower will fail you. You cannot rely on your willpower to be executing under stress.

Jonathan Hunsaker: You can for the first three days, right?

Susan: Exactly. Or a couple weeks or whatever. But then when the stuff hits the fan … So think about how you brush your teeth. It’s like you keep brushing your teeth even when your spouse is in the hospital because it’s triggered by a certain time of day, a certain location, a certain … That’s how you gotta be weaving in your eating. Now you leave yourself on your own recognizance to set that up, you’ll fail. But take my hand, I’ll teach you how to set that up so that your eating is happening automatically. The right thing to eat is the easiest thing to eat, is the thing you are eating, no matter the conditions. So automaticity.

Susan: Identity. Like you Jonathon are a non-smoker. Deep. Deep. Doesn’t matter the situation you’re in. You’ve gotta become someone who is a certain kind of eater, Bright Line eater. A bright liner, or whatever, like a healthy eater. However you wanna language it to yourself. It’s not, “No I can’t eat that ’cause it’s not on my diet.” No. It’s like, “No thank you I don’t eat that. I don’t eat that.” Like I don’t smoke, right, identity.

Susan: And then the third one is resume. You have to have a flexibility and a way of getting back on track, because nobody’s perfect. Like perfection is not available for human beings living on planet earth. And anyone who’s naturally slender, like you TeriAnn, you are resuming back to a certain level of healthy eating naturally. Like when you veer, yes, when you veer don’t you kind of get back on track?

TeriAnn: For sure.

Susan: And there’s something in you that says, “I’ve kind of gone too far.”

TeriAnn: And I don’t like it. Yeah. I don’t like it. And it’s nice for me to get back to where my center is. I call it my center. But like my center of where I wanna be. And I love that feeling of coming back.

Susan: And those of us who don’t have a heavy magnetic pull back to a center, we have to create it externally. That’s what the bright lines help to do, and that’s what the community helps to do, that’s what the program helps to do. We’re basically jerry rigging ourselves to be like you. ‘Cause our brains don’t give it to us for free.

TeriAnn: Re-wiring your brain. I think that’s a great way to close this out, talking about the holidays, that AIR. Will you say those three one more time?

Susan: Automaticity. Identity. And resume.

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