Wendy Reynolds wrote in with a great question about diet mentality: “This term is used repeatedly in coaching calls. I have asked several people in my own circle how they would define it. And I'm hearing so many varied explanations. So I decided to search through all the vlogs, all 3 books (minus the cookbook) and I found only one entry, on Feb 13th in "On This Bright Day" which was fantastic. I would love a more in-depth, clear understanding of what diet mentality means in BLE. THANK YOU.”
In essence, diet mentality is an approach to eating that is short-term and focused on weight loss.
Your Bright Transformation happens at the physical level, for sure, but also at mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. If we focus only on the physical, we are missing pieces of the whole picture.
You can focus on weight loss even to the exclusion of health. For example, consider someone who is on a GLP-1 medication like Wegovy. They could be in a state of diet mentality: taking it for weight loss, and not caring about other health benefits or detriments. They might not eat healthy foods, or perhaps they save up points so they can eat desserts. They aren’t trying to stay healthy; they’re trying to lose weight. That's diet mentality.
Diet mentality is common in BLE as well. There are people, for example, who break their Bright Lines occasionally, but still lose weight because they have a strong metabolism and they’re following the plan 90 percent of the time. They might not even notice that they’re not allowing themselves to experience the full mental, spiritual, and emotional benefits. They may think it’s going great and not even know that they are not really doing Bright Line Eating. They’re just using it as a diet.
When we focus on the mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits we have a different experience—sometimes in direct contradiction with diet mentality. Spiritually speaking, surrendering to the Bright Life can lead to tremendous peace and freedom. Emotionally, we can let go of resentments, judgmentalism, and criticism of ourselves and others. We may do deep emotional work. We work our Bright Lines not as a diet, but as a way of life.
What we are talking about here is an issue of identity. Who are you really? Are you fundamentally the person you always were, who is just adopting this food plan to lose weight? Or are you fundamentally someone who does Bright Line forever, as an identity? It’s the difference, when the platter of food is passed, between “Oh, I can’t, I’m in a weight loss program right now,” and “No thanks, I don’t eat sugar.” Do you hear the difference?
The model that I get from James Clear’s book on forging new habits is this: at the core of sustained behavior change is identity. The next level is the system or process you’re following—which for you may be Bright Line Eating.
If you’re here with a diet mentality, you may be less interested in the rest of the system, like getting a buddy, doing Gideon Games, or other support we offer. You might overlook the routines like meditating or starting a gratitude process. You may gloss over anything not directly related to losing weight.
What it comes down to is this: is this a short-term or a long-term thing for you? Any of the popular weight loss plans can be done as a diet or they can be worked on in a deeply identity-rooted way and not just with a diet mentality. It’s not the plan you adopt that identifies it as a diet or an identity shift. It’s your orientation toward it.
So you need to ask yourself: why am I doing this? If you just want to lose weight, it’s a diet mentality. And if it’s a diet, you will regain the weight, because that’s how diets work. They’re short-term things.
If you have a diet mentality, though, don’t beat yourself up. A lot of people “come for the vanity, stay for the sanity,” as the 12 Step saying goes. Just consider working on it a bit. You want to develop a deeper identity as someone who does this long-term, one day at a time. Move from diet to lifestyle mentality. Do some WOOPs—wish, outcome, obstacle, plan. Visualize yourself ten years in the future, still doing this.
Really, truly, ask yourself: Why am I doing this? Think about who you want to be as a person, and what you want your life to mean. Weight loss is always for a reason. Why are you here, really? When you have the answer to that question, you’ve moved beyond diet mentality.
