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June 22, 2015 Hi {!firstname_fix} It sure has been hot here! On those days when the temperature climbs up over 90 in the afternoon, I sort of melt. I think it is why people do siesta in warm climates. But morning is exquisite. And I have a cricket in my office who loves to sing. I admit to thinking about my vacation to come up in Maine...fog and sea air sounds wonderful. We are making great strides with the new website and are projecting early August as the great reveal. Prepare your sugar-sensitive brains that hate change that one morning you will go for the site and it will look different. :) Practice at www.thesugaraddictstotalrecovery.com so you won’t be shocked. There will be a fair number of changes and I will walk you through all of them. I love the article I am posting again this week. It is such a part of who I am and what we are doing. I hope you like it. HELP WANTED: We are translating the step page for the new website into a number of different languages. I am looking for someone who is fluent in Spanish who might help. Or if you are fluent in another language and would like to participate, we would welcome your help. So far we are doing it in French, Russian, German, Finnish, Swedish, Italian and Chinese and we are having a blast doing it together through Google docs. This class will begin Wednesday, June 24, 2015. Please click on the name of the class and it will take you to the registration page:
This class will begin Wednesday, July 15, 2015. Please click on the name of the class and it will take you to the registration page:
A number of you have asked me how the classes work. Check the class list page for more information on this. And please go read the questions and answers before you write to me. If you have trouble getting through the process, write the tech forum. Be sure to visit our Radiant Recovery website and Community Forum regularly. Warmly, Kathleen **********************************************************************
**Quote From Kathleen ** The more you are able to just observe and note your food and feelings, the easier it will be for you to make changes in them. **********************************************************************
**Testimonial of the Week ** Hi everyone, I recently turned 40! This coincided with the completion of 6 months on Step 6. Here are some really wonderful and so encouraging things that marked this time for me. I had a party. Six months earlier I would not have had a party. I reasoned that I didn't want one and if I'm honest it's mostly because I'm fat. I didn't want to draw any attention to myself and my appearance and I didn't feel there was anything worth celebrating. It was the best party eva, as my kids would say. I loved every minute of it. My husband and I spent a few weeks beforehand preparing for it and I enjoyed the process a great deal. This was mind boggling in itself as depression has often robbed my joy and motivation. It was fancy dress. The theme was fairytales, myths and legends. I had come to despise fancy dress as I am fat and felt too ugly to wear anything. But...having reduced my fat terror through the Radiant Recovery process and having been to a fancy dress party recently that was really enjoyable, I decided YES, I'm gonna do it! I decided on what my costume could be, leaving out the ideas of "sexy" costumes that I saw when I googled for costumes. I wanted to be a Valkyrie, - and who hasn't seen a depiction of a fat Norse mythology lady! I made my costume. I don't sew. I do some craft, but this was a major undertaking. It really took a long time, probably more than necessary because I didn't know what I was doing. You can find out how to do almost anything on the net!! I could make something that was suitable for a larger woman. And I chose some really glamorous fabric that caused joy to zing through my body every time I looked at it. :) Not especially authentic but gorgeous! The costume was not dowdy but there was still a fat person in it looking fabulous and fun. I had feared how I'd feel with my beautiful, slim friends around, but as these fears arose I called them out as an invitation to misery and an opportunity to return to the joyful process of all the fun I was preparing for them. My sister wore her wedding dress from 16 years ago as part of her Galadriel costume, and for the most part the shame that usually stabs me when I compare myself to her wasn't there, instead I was joy filled and so grateful for everyone efforts in their costumes. I planned for dips and desserts. Food is not my thing. I was able to ask a few friends to do some recipes for me. There were plenty of desserts for people to enjoy and plenty of dips that I also enjoyed. I would not have believed that there could be so many desserts around that I just didn't have any desire to eat. And afterwards, when there were leftovers which can be the most difficult time for me, the ability was there to say "no" and not feel desperate about it due to the healing my body and chemistry have experienced from the program. Much better levels of serotonin and beta endorphins!!! My sister made the most fabulous cake. I could cry every time I look at it. When we were planning for it, I knew it was going to be special so I had asked her to decorate the cake over foam so I could keep it. She made a separate cake for people to eat. I am looking at this beautiful creation and thinking what a fantastic use of sugar. r:) I made a speech. That requires people looking at you. When I look at the photos I see the double chin and the indiscernible waistline. I also remember the joy of being able to look out at the family and friends gathered there, looking so fine in their costumes and thinking how blessed I am and how much I love these people and how rare and delightful it is to look over all of them gathered in this one place, appreciative that they would do so for me. There's more to go on about, but that's enough to paint a picture of the joy and radiance I experienced. This was made possible by following the program and patiently believing there could be change (not that I necessarily felt patient and there was plenty of times of doubt). There is great hope. I'm not done with feeling fat and down, but I am hopeful, I am noticing joys and believing in the possibility of radiance. Please be encouraged to keep going. I also say this to myself. Keep going. It's so worth it. Please borrow hopefulness and belief from this community when you find it hard to muster your own. I'm so grateful to Kathleen, to all here who have made the process possible, for the questions people have asked that I didn't even know I wanted the answer to, and connection that makes the "magic" happen (in a scientifically justifiable way. :) Sarah **********************************************************************
**Notes from the Forum ** Experimenting before Travel Though I haven't been to Italy I have travelled in a fair bit of Europe and browns are often tricky. Markets are often good for finding things rather than supermarkets. Often the only browns available have been potatoes or beans. Beans often in glass jars. Having the villa will be a real boon. In my Spanish and Greek villas I have had great success with microwaving or oven-baking a potato, wrapping it in kitchen paper and carrying it in my bag to a restaurant. One thing I want to try one day (actually planning for next year) is Socca, Italian street food made of chickpea/gram/garbanzo flour like a wrap or pizza base. I do mine in a cast-iron pan in the oven but I really want to try the real thing. How exciting for you. Love your forward planning. Mosaic **********************************************************************
** Radiant Recovery® Store ** So many of you got excited about the magic bowls, I reordered them! So we have enough now if you forgot. They are the secret to knowing how much to eat. No weighing or measuring. Doesn’t matter what country is your residence. BOWLS rule! This week, let’s look our Joint Response products.
Kathleen was first introduced to these a number of years ago at the national Golden Retriever Dog show. I realize that it is a little strange that such miraculous information comes from strange places. One of the vendors had Joint Response and was showing a video about it. It knocked Kathleen’s socks off. At that point in time, I had recently moved to Albuquerque. My 8-year-old rottie, PJ, had severe arthritis and he could barely walk. We gave him Joint Response and in 3 weeks he was acting like a puppy. So we started carry the dog stuff in the store. We kept getting great reports. I asked the company if they were going to carry a human product. They said yes. So now we carry that. And they recently added a cream. Here is the link for those products. As most of you know, Kathleen likes to learn about the things we carry. She started doing a fair amount of research about cetyl myristoleate. Here is a pretty balanced discussion. The article is pretty interesting...here is a clip: The first double blind study followed two years later. Dr. H. Siemandi conducted a double blind study under the auspices of the Joint European Hospital Studies Program. There were 431 patients in the study, 106 who received cetyl myristoleate, 99 who received cetyl myristoleate, and glucosamine, sea cucumber, and hydrolyzed cartilage and 226 who received a placebo. Clinical assessment included radiological tests and other studies. Results were 63% improvement for the cetyl myristoleate group, 87% for the cetyl myristoleate plus glucosamine group and 15% for the placebo group.Anyway, the people who use it from the store report that it is great. The people who use the dog products swear by them. And we even carry some horse formulation if you have a pony or a horse! Call me if you have questions. Please send questions and suggestions. I love hearing from you and truly want to help you do your program better. **********************************************************************
**Radiant Kitchen ** I bought a new gas grill and am having a blast playing around with it! Here are some great marinades from the Radiant Recipes cookbook. Marinate small pieces of whatever you are grilling for 1 - 24 hours. The longer the marinating time, the more intense the flavor. Remove meat, fish or tofu from the marinade and cook as desired. Brush a little marinade onto the protein as it cooks for greater flavor. Do not use the leftover marinade without boiling it first. Boil the marinade until slightly thickened and then you can use it as sauce. Lime Ginger Marinade
Teriyaki Marinade
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**Radiant YLD ** We have been talking about ways we can make the Your Last Diet Program more responsive for those of you who are new and coming in and feeling really pressured about weight loss. I am going to design a couple of tracks - one for beginners, one for middlers and one for people who are on step 7 and set to go. The tracks will include intensive support from me, a sequence of training materials to help you master the knowledge and skills for the weight loss process and daily support. And, of course, everyone will be able to join the chats we do each week. I am pretty excited about it. It is a perfect time to join YLD if you haven’t yet. If you would like to join us in YLD, come find us here **********************************************************************
**Radiant Living ** The Radiant Life Program is a place for people who are confident on the program, *doing the food* pretty skillfully and looking for a place to talk about *life* issues. The key factor here is life issues from a radiant perspective. We talk about how the food affects us, how to catch ourselves if we get wobbly, how to hold *big selves* who dream and want more. It is a pretty exciting process. If you are ready for this, it is a great time for it! If you would like to join us in Radiant Living, come find us here **********************************************************************
**To Get to Hopi ** Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.
This is an article I wrote a few years ago. It is one of my favorites. I happened on it when I was doing some review for the new website. I thought I would share it again. To get to Hopi, I drove west from Gallup. The road passes through huge, high flat plains. I got to the area near the Petrified Forest where they have giant plaster dinosaurs. Then went by the store with the big plaster grey jackrabbit that you can sit on and take your picture. Soon after, it was time to turn north. Hopi is 60 miles up the road. There were no more dinosaurs, no stores, no houses, no cell-phone coverage, nothing but plains and scrub brush for as far as you can see. In the distance stone formations rose from the desert. Once in a while, a car came by, but mostly it was pure silence and solitude stretching as far as I could see. My instructions said, “Go to the cultural center at second mesa.” The map showed a dot for second mesa. After what seemed forever, high mesas appeared in the distance. Yellow rock, sort of a mixture of cream and brown, they are a unique color. Not ocher, not white, but Hopi rock color. The road came to a T. I figured this was second mesa, but I was not on a mesa and nothing was around. No sign of anything, but I counted and figured that the cliffs to the left were number two of three stretching out before me. So I turned left and followed the road. It climbed up and up, around a switchback and then came out on the top. On top were lots of little houses interspersed. They were a combination of concrete block or stone block of the Hopi yellow. There are a number of weathered signs for art and jewelry, but it was not clear where the places were. I kept driving and eventually came to a pink-stuccoed, multi-storied building that said Cultural Center and Restaurant. It was about 5 in the afternoon. I was looking forward to dinner. My brother has been coming out to Hopi for many, many years and gave me an orientation about good food at the restaurant. I parked the car, walked over to the door and the sign said, “closed.” This seemed strange. I walked around in back, and there was another hand-written sign on the door that said, “We are closed, sorry for the inconvenience.” I tried the door, it was open and I went in. The clerk at the front desk asked if she could help me. She gave me the key to the room and explained that the restaurant was closed. Health department had been in a few days before and she had no other comments. I figured I would go to my room and settle down and then do some problem solving. I was just a little concerned. I had not brought any food with me. That was unusual because I generally take my cooler and a well-stocked array of foods for a journey. I went up to the room that was on the second floor, called and left a message for the conference coordinator. My cell phone had no service. I tried hooking up my computer to the phone jack. That didn’t work. I was simply there on second mesa. No food, no restaurant, and myself. About 20 minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Anita is the conference coordinator’s mother. She was wearing navy shorts and white Nike shoes. She said, “Leon called and asked me to check in on you.“ She decided to take me on a little food hunt, so we hopped in her pickup truck, put on the seat belts and away we went. We did a little tour first. Hopi sits on 3 mesas. They have been here for more than 1000 years. Some folks are living in the same stone houses on the edge of the cliff that were built that long ago. Many of the houses have satellite TV dishes and some have solar panels. She told me the stories of the clans and the families and the villages. I was taught in school that “Columbus discovered America”...what nonsense that was. The Hopi people were here long before white guys set sail. They were planting corn and beans and squash, the three sisters. They were grinding and making bread. And they carried a profound and deep spiritual tradition that lives on today in ceremony and teaching. But on this night, I was more interested in my stomach growling. We went back to the hotel to see if Leon had called. He had but now was out for a walk. On our excursion, we had learned that the health inspector had shut down all the eating establishments on the reservations. At 6:45, Leon and Mom decided to get me a submarine sandwich from the gas station. “What did I want?” I responded, “Whatever you get is fine.” Leon called the store; Mom drove me down the backside of the mesa, off into the plain to another little town. A store, a gas pump and lots of new pickup trucks. It was 7:06, the store closes at 7. Anita knocked on the door and the owner brought my sandwich out. We drove back in late light. Yellow over yellow rock, heat shimmering still from afternoon sun. I went to return to my little room and Anita says, “Why don’t you plan to come down to my house for breakfast. Leon will come for you.” I said I would like that a lot. I ate the sandwich, drank bottled water from the stash in my car and read three chapters from The Book of The Hopi and went to sleep dreaming of Spider Woman and the Twins holding the world. It was light about 4:30, the sky red from the fires in Sedona. Leon came later in the pickup and led me down and then up and then out to one of the more remote villages. The houses were clumped in a central area, but we drove out and around, out a dirt road with ruts around the edge of the mesa, and then turned back up to his house facing out to the south. He parked on the left; I found a place in the sand on the right. Two rez dogs came to greet us, one with polar blue eyes, sniffing me and knowing that I smelled of NM dog. Two girls were playing outside, one hanging laundry on the line. “My nieces. Come inside,” said Leon. His mom was making breakfast – eggs, bacon, oatmeal, toast, juice. It felt like a feast. It wasn’t quite ready so I went out back to watch David boiling hominy on a huge kettle over a fire. He was starting the process of making a feast for the attendees at the seminar. The dogs were in the back now, guarding the perimeter. A dog walked too close and the house dogs were off in a flash, making it very clear that this place was off limits. Breakfast was delicious. Afterwards, Leon went off to work on seminar things and I drove his mom down to her job at the Department of Education. At noon, I went over to the heath center; a multimillion-dollar new building that houses all the health services for the reservation. Doctors, dentists, physical therapists, WIC, maternity, the pharmacy, all of it. I met with the substance abuse staff. They were excited to hear about the biochemistry. We had a great conversation. Then I went back to the hotel. The guys had figured out that the presenters needed food, so they had put together a great dinner. We sat in the conference room and started to get to know one another. The conference was on sustainability and food, so the people there were fascinating. After dinner I walked back to the second floor, over the roof to my room. The sky was black – no street lights. And a billion stars, stars that we never see in the city. I read more that night, more about kachinas, and farming and water and living in a place for a 1000 years. I wondered what it would be like to live where my family had been for 1000 years. I wondered how that experience would be stored in my cells... **********************************************************************
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Here are the folks who are helping put the newsletter together:
Gretel, our webmaster, puts it all together. David runs the Radiant Recovery® Store. mosaic contributes to the Notes from the Forum column. ©2015 Kathleen DesMaisons. All rights reserved. You are free to use or transmit this article to your ezine or website as long as you leave the content unaltered, use this attribution: "By Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D. of Radiant Recovery®", and notify kathleen@radiantrecovery.com of the location. Please visit the Radiant Recovery® website at http://www.radiantrecovery.com for additional resources on sugar sensitivity and healing addiction. You are getting the weekly newsletter from Radiant Recovery® in response to your signup. A copy of this newsletter may also be found posted on the web at http://www. radiantrecovery.com/weeklynewsletter |
