Susan Peirce Thompson Ph.D. - Rezoom: The Powerful Reframe to End the Crash-and-Burn Cycle of Food Addiction

PRAISE FOR

REZOOM

Nobody gives people the tools to transform their food from a health liability to a longevity asset like Susan Peirce Thompson. Bright Line Eating is truly life-saving for people who have struggled for years to unshackle themselves from the scourge of processed-food addiction.

Mark Hyman, M.D., New York Times best-selling author of The Pegan Diet

I urge every doctor, therapist, health care practitioner, and most importantly every patient to read this book. Rezoom concisely and compassionately explains the emotional overlay that is a part of every persons interaction with food, and provides tools and skills that are game-changing for the occasional emotional eater clear to the raging food addict.

Wayne Dysinger, M.D., Board Chair, American Board of Lifestyle Medicine

Therapists, social workers, eating disorders experts, and clinicians are unwittingly harming their patients when they spread the notion that food addiction is controversial. The neuroscience is clear: food addiction is real. This book contains the best, scientifically based path to healing that I have seen.

Dr. Joy Jacobs, J.D., Ph.D., eating disorders specialist and clinical faculty in Psychiatry, University of California San Diego School of Medicine

From the founding of Bright Line Eating, I have witnessed firsthand the astounding results for people in our community struggling with tenacious food addiction. They are healing their bodies and minds at extraordinary rates never before documented, while turning away from the toxic industrial processed food complex and healing our planet.

John Robbins, best-selling author of Diet for a New America and President, Food Revolution Network

If you suffer from a food addiction, this is the book that will set you free. It is brilliant, beautifully written, and desperately needed. Dr. Thompsons program not only works for weight loss, but it also works for optimal nutrition and health.

Brenda Davis, RD, plant-based pioneer, speaker, and co-author of Nourish

As a pediatrician with three decades of experience, the increasing rate of intractable obesity among my adolescent patients is nothing short of heartbreaking. I am so grateful to Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson and Bright Line Eating for this material contribution to saving me and the lives of my patients. She has changed my life and my practice, and she can change our world.

Judi A. Krogstad, M.D., Pediatric Medical Advisor, Fresno Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Program

ALSO BY
SUSAN PEIRCE THOMPSON, PH.D.

Both of the above are available at
your local bookstore, or may be ordered by visiting:

Hay House USA: www.hayhouse.com
Hay House Australia: www.hayhouse.com.au
Hay House UK: www.hayhouse.co.uk
Hay House India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Copyright 2021 by Susan Peirce Thompson

Excerpt from A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings by Coleman Barks.

Copyright 2006 by Coleman Barks. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Published in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com

Published in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au

Published in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk

Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Indexer: Joan Shapiro

Cover design: Julie Davison

Interior design: Bryn Starr Best

Brain scan illustration: Cinzia Damonte

All other graphs and illustrations: Angela Denby at Bright Line Eating

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-5907-4

E-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-5908-1

Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-4019-5909-8

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1st edition, December 2021

Printed in the United States of America

For my Mastermind Group members, the Magnificent Mavens:
Cathy Cox, Linden Morris Delrio, and Marianne Marsh.
And for Christine (Chris) Gimeno Davis.

I learned to rezoom the hard way, and you were there.
And then some.

As of the writing of this book, I have been clean and sober from drugs and alcohol for 27 consecutive years. Prior to getting clean, I was a 20-year-old high school dropout addicted to crack cocaine and selling my body to stay high. After committing to recovery, I was able to complete my Ph.D. in brain and cognitive sciences, get married, and become the mother of three incredible kids. I know that everything I have in my life is dependent on one consistent, mandatory commitment: I have to stay clean and sober. But it isnt just a commitment. It is a practice. It is the application of a series of habits I have and choices I make every day that support my recovery.

I have also been abstinent from sugar and flour for 18 years. But not 100 percent perfectly. I estimate that for 94 percent of those days, my food recovery has been intact; some of the stretches have lasted for years and years. And then there were times when I was white-knuckling to string two abstinent days together. But my commitment to living free from the stranglehold of sugar and flour has allowed me to live the last 17 years in a slender body. To move through the world with energy and freedom. Then to lose that freedom and watch myself win it back. To return to a place where every day I am making life-affirming choices about how I care for myself with food.

I see myriad ways food recovery parallels drug and alcohol recovery, and important ways that they are qualitatively different. Frankly, food is uniquely wily and relapse more likely, for a host of reasons, so effective food recovery requires the dedication of a Special Forces squadron commander. When I put the two experiences side by side and compare them, it can feel like, once its solidly established, drug and alcohol recovery practically runs on autopilot. As someone who has experienced the gamuthope-to-die drug addiction, decades of clean time, more relapse with food than I would wish on any breathing soul, years of consecutive abstinence from sugar and flour, decades of coaching people to achieve lasting recovery of all sorts, and years of teaching the neuroscience of food addiction in college coursesI offer this book as an instruction manual from a battle-tested expert in the field. I invite you to use it as a guidebook, keeping top of mind that food recovery isnt a one-and-done decision to lose weight and/or eat better. As with abstaining from drugs and alcohol, its first a commitment and then a lifelong practice. And because your drug of choice must continue to be a part of your life multiple times a day, that practice involves a level of self-examination, grit, and vigilance unparalleled in the addiction-recovery landscape.