Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free

What amazed me most about this book is the author. Dr. Susan Pierce Thompson has truly started a healthy lifestyle revolution which can be maintained and followed for life!Her life story, knowledge and educational background are impressive. A Professor at Rochester University (Brain and Cognitive Sciences). Direct background in neuroscience and addiction research. What compelled me to give it a try – was Susan. Loved hearing the story of all the challenges as a food addict and how she achieved success and handles it on a daily basis. The secret of how she has kept her goal weight for 10 years. Wow! Reading and understanding that food addiction- sugar and flour were my issue too- that I had never addressed! I was so excited and started program and never looked back. It has been the best LIFE CHANGING and HEALTH DECISION I have ever made!Like many of us have tried so many diets and exercise programs and lost weight- only to gain it back! This is the only time in my life that I have been without sugar and flour for months and have stayed with a program and been successful. Since adopting this lifestyle, I have lost weight, fat and inches and best of all – my blood levels are now normal without medication! I am Happy and Free and on my way to Thin!What I loved most about the book -Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin & Free is how it was so well written! I was able to visualize her and it was like she was talking to me directly as a well-intentioned friend! It is simple and easy to read and follow book.Beware! This is not a diet book- but a lifestyle change based on creating healthy daily habits for success- one day at a time. Dr. Thompson provides in great detail in part one – the scientific knowledge and research provided on why eating sugar and flour can cause food addiction and food triggers in the brain. How not eating it- provides better focus/clarity and ability to lose weight. The science behind why so many are not able to stop eating even when full- sugar and or flour.Part two outlines the background and solution of program, a method of 4 bright lines and eating 3 daily meals. By utilizing these in conjunction with core principles that work to change the daily mindset and form new habits with food.Part three clearly details a specific focused daily plan to follow for success-actions to follow and tools needed. In part four- Simple steps and advice to follow to stay the course, tips for social events, eating out and travel.The last section explains getting to a healthy normal weight and most importantly – how to do the “maintenance dance” and stay there! How to live, happy, thin and free for life! Thru-out the book detailed personal cases are provided to better understand and relate to bright line eating lifestyle.I highly recommend this book- it is a must read as an invaluable investment in your health! Read the book and change your life! You are worth it!

This book. THIS BOOK! Wow. It's a game-changer. It changes everything. Not only is Susan Peirce Thompson's approach to getting control of your food and your weight powerful and compelling and based on brain science, she also presents it in a clear, convincing, wonderfully readable way.Thompson overturns so much -- so much! -- of what is standard, unquestioned, deeply ingrained thinking about weight loss (the old canards like "you can eat anything, just in moderation," "exercise promotes weight loss," "sugar, eaten in moderation, can be part of a healthy diet.") No, no, and no. At least, not for the majority of us.In her compelling argument, people struggling with their weight aren't lazy or lacking in willpower. They don't need to get off their lazy butts and get to the gym. They don't need to just stop eating so much. No. Their brains have been high-jacked. And the substances doing the high-jacking are NOT fat, salt, or simply an excessive consumption of calories. The substances are sugar and flour. Period. Fat people aren't sloths -- their brains are addicted to these substances and practicing moderation can be as much a no-win solution as practicing moderation in drug use would be to a brain addicted to heroin.There are two things I especially love about Thompson's approach. One, that it's based on science. She's not guessing here. She's not making things up based on what seems reasonable. She's looking at the science. And what the science suggests is pretty persuasive: Sugar is addictive to your brain. And flour might very well be too. We live in a toxic food environment where sugar and flour are everywhere and in everything. As with other addictions (in varying ways depending on your own brain susceptibility), the way forward is to remove these substances from your diet.The bright lines are simple, clear, and unambiguous: no sugar, no flour, three meals a day, and weighing all your food.The second thing I love is that her style is so wonderfully loving, supportive, and inspiring. Thompson writes in a way that is never condescending or dryly scientific. She tells stories, she shares her own experiences, she makes academic scientific studies easily comprehensible. The whole book is highly readable and accessible. Her warmth and love and understanding shine through her words. Writing this way is not easy to do and I am wildly impressed at her ability to do this.My only singular concern, which she does address, is that for all that this approach is simple, it's not easy. It's no easier than quitting cigarettes would be for a cigarette addict. Or quitting alcohol for an alcoholic. This is hard to do. And she does say so, when she notes that (I'm paraphrasing here), if a food plan is all it took to lose weight, everyone who wanted to get thin would be thin.Still, I worry that readers might fall in love with her wonderfully supportive, upbeat tone and think that simply deciding to follow the bright lines is all it takes. Make no mistake, this is hard to do, and it requires a TON of support and self-love-and structure and help (the bright-line eating approach provides that, but you have to be diligent about seeking it out and getting it).Bottom line -- this approach works. It simply works. And no other program for addressing the general public's weight and food issues does. Not in terms of long-term, sustainable weight loss. There's a reason why commercial weight-loss programs, all of them, are vague about how many people who sign up achieve and maintain their weight-loss goals.I wasn't 1/4 way into her book before it all was making SO MUCH SENSE. There's a reason why major weight-loss organizations don't publish their success rates. There's a reason why I've failed SO often on SO many diet programs.It's not often that a book comes along that has the potential to cause a seismic shift in our thinking, but this book does that. Bright Line Eating should have as profound an impact on our thinking about weight loss and the obesity epidemic as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring had on our thinking about pesticides and the environmental movement.I really hope that everyone struggling with weight and food issues, whether they have a modest problem or a serious food challenge, gives themselves the tremendous gift of reading this book.Like so many other reviewers, all I can say is thank you thank you thank you Susan Peirce Thompson. My deepest wish isn't that this book will help me (although I hope it does); my wish is that this book changes the world.