I had the opportunity to meet with some Bright Lifers this week, members of our Bright Line Eating community. Among them was Dr. Betty Rabinowitz, a retired physician from the University of Rochester. As we chatted over lunch, she shared a concept with me. 

In Bright Line Eating, we talk about food chatter: what have you eaten or not eaten, are you on your plan or off, whether you’ve eaten too many calories or not enough, can I eat my next meal yet…or how about now…or how about now….and on, and on, and on.

And Betty said that the chatter is not just food chatter; there’s also scale chatter. I countered that it was weight chatter. Then I thought about it more and realized she was right—it most definitely is scale chatter. Measuring my waist has a different effect than obsessing about the number on the scale. That number does something in our heads and creates chatter. And it’s corrosive.

The whole purpose of Bright Line Eating is to eliminate the chatter. This is the freedom that we talk about. 

Scale chatter robs us of the ultimate feeling of success in Bright Line Eating. To succeed, you need to land, to arrive, to solve the food and weight problem. Scale chatter causes us to overly fixate on that last little bit of weight. And we forget, temporarily, all the weight we have lost so far and magnify those last few pounds. 

I’ve coached folks who’ve lost more than 100 pounds but then do themselves a disservice by not framing that as successful. And the scale chatter keeps us from feeling successful. We need to find a way to let go, to get out of it. Part of the identity we need to adopt in Bright Line Eating is that of someone who has arrived, someone who has solved the food and the weight problem. Someone who has let go of all that chatter.

I want to hear what your experience has been. How is food chatter different from scale chatter? How have they both impacted you? In your journey, how have you learned to stop fixating on the numbers on the scale?