When you’ve been living in maintenance for a long time, there’s a way to figure out if something you’re doing with your food, whether it’s a specific food, a method of preparation, a restaurant, or something else, is working for you.

As we go along on our life journey, we have an instrument panel in front of us—and we need to know how to read that panel, to fly straight and true. These four questions help with that. 

We used to have these in Boot Camp, but we took them out because we want people to be on their journey for a while before they try them. You can’t ask these questions and get reliable answers if you haven’t been successfully Bright for a long time. If you’re not Bright and peaceful, and ask yourself, Do I have peace around this? You can’t answer that because you don’t yet know what it’s like to live consistently, month after month, at peace with your food and weight. 

If you’ve been on your path for a long time, and want to experiment, or wonder if a food is working for you and you’ve been Bright and peaceful, you can use these questions.

I’ve already given you the first question. It’s: Do I have peace around it? The longer I live Bright, the more certain I am that peace is the goal. Peace with my food, my weight, and peace in my mind. Then I’m available to be of service to the world, to connect with my family and friends, to do and be all that I can. Then I can go days and weeks without thinking about my food and weight.

If I walk out of a restaurant and I don’t think about it a single time that evening, I’m at peace. If, on the other hand, I eat something in the restaurant that crosses my mind five times before I go to bed that night, I do not have peace around it. That’s a sign that it’s not working for me, that it kicks up the obsession. 

The second question is: Is it messing with my weight? I might have peace with a food, but it’s not sustainable if it puts me on a path toward regaining my weight. If it’s not sustainable, then fundamentally it’s not working.

The third question: Is it healthy? Not everyone in Bright Line Eating is aiming for optimal health, which is fine. Our job is to get you free and give you agency over what you eat and don’t eat. You can use that agency to eat for optimal health, or just settle for the general, overall amazing health you get when living Bright. If you add something that is not healthy but passes the other three questions, then you might not care. 

The last question comes back to sustainability: Is it escalating? If you added a food at breakfast and it was fine, but then you did it again, and suddenly now breakfast doesn’t feel right without it, and you have to have it every day, then it’s escalating. That signifies addictive attachment. Building tolerance and escalation are signs of addiction.  

Whenever someone asks me something, like, say, “can I have corn tortillas?” then initially, I’d say no, that’s not on the plan. But if you’ve been Bright for five years, are steady in maintenance, and are an eight on the scale, I’d say use The 4 Questions and try it.

You just need to start from a strong baseline with your program. If not, you won’t be able to get an honest answer to the first question. Use them while in maintenance to find out how something works.

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The 4 Questions | Bright Line Living | The Official Bright Line Eating Podcast