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** Quote From Kathleen ** One of the real markers for your recovery is to begin to think about your food needs before you get into trouble. **********************************************************************
** Testimonial of the Week ** I think you answered your own question there (smile). Every time we get up and try again we add to our experience, and the whole comes together. I remember so clearly when my daughter was learning to walk, she must have flopped back down again after only a wobbly few steps umpteen times. And then one day she managed to make it to the nearest coffee table before plopping back down. And before I knew it she was cruising across the room to the couch. Her successes built on themselves and soon she was tearing around the place without having to think about it! I often think of my step journey like that, and step three in particular because it does take a while to knit all our nanos together. How lovely that you can see it all happening. Warmly, Lucy **********************************************************************
** Radiant Ambassadors ** Well, it looks like the Radiant Recovery group on Facebook is really taking off now! There are 123 members now which is just fabulous! Are there any features that you think the RR Facebook group should have? Do you have any ideas for how to make it stand out from the crowd? Then come on over and talk to us about it and tell us what you would like to see! Selena Come join us if you are excited about spreading the news. **********************************************************************
** Radiant Kitchen ** My girls favorite at the moment is PB&J (on whole wheat bread, heavy on the P, light on the J - all fruit spread). However, we do lots of others. Cheese and crackers is a regular standby. Cereal with power milk. My girls also like to have dry cereal for their brown for a snack. Meatballs, quesadilla, nachos, turkey slices, english muffin pizzas, leftover cottage cheese pancakes/waffles, muffins with PP added, shake, apples & PB, hardboiled eggs (although the girls always seem excited about this, but then leave most of the yolk), egg salad or tuna salad on crackers. Hopefully, that will give you some ideas even though all of those aren't toddler friendly. Emily For more great program-friendly recipes, check out these great cookbooks in the store.
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** Radiant Recovery® Store ** David manages the Radiant Recovery® Store. He is also Kathleen's oldest son.
Please send questions and suggestions. I love hearing from you and truly want to help you do your program better. **********************************************************************
** Our Online Groups ** Step five is all about browning. It supports you in making a transition from refined carbohydrates (white things) to whole grains (brown things). The Step Five list is set up to help you identify the whole grains that best work for you. For many years that has primarily focused on making a seamless transition. In the last few months, a number of people on step 7 began exploring a further edge of the brown story. We began to see that perhaps wheat, and even whole grain wheat, was causing some problems for some of us. We are thinking there may be a connection between wheat intolerance and sugar sensitivity. When Kathleen ran the Wheat Free Living Class a few months ago, she saw that pushing the edge a little further would have us look at the idea of gluten-free browning. Out of all these discussions, it seemed like more and more people were helped by factoring this into their program. We have decided to expand the conversations on the step five list to include going wheat- or gluten-free while maintaining a solid brown program. Jaki, who has been leading the Introduction to Cooking list, found that this was a major concern for her. She has been doing a lot of exploration with it. She has agreed to take on the liaison work for the Browns list as well. I think it will be a nice combination. We want you all to feel as if we can expand your choices rather than limit them. Come and join us if you have some niggling symptoms like digestive problems, stuffy noses, and muscle and joint pain. This might be another piece of your puzzle. **********************************************************************
** The Secret of Self-Esteem ** Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.
Optimism and self-confidence result from our body chemistry, not our mental attitude. Sometimes we are ready to take on the world. Other times the bag lady sits at our feet clucking her disapproval of our lives. Enduring and consistent confidence is a thousand times better than those few moments stolen on the back of a sugar high. I have been fascinated with the beta-endorphin story for years. As you may recall from Potatoes Not Prozac, beta-endorphin is the brain chemical that enables us to tolerate pain. So when I first learned that sugar evokes beta-endorphin, it made perfect sense to me. Sugar as a pain-killer seemed to resonate with what my body already knew. But I hadn’t thought of sugar as an emotional pain-killer. Reading that first scientific article about sugar reducing 'isolation distress' knocked my socks off. When baby mice were given sugar, they didn’t cry as much when they were taken away from their mothers. This wasn’t about physical pain, this was a whole different story. I wanted to piece it together. We know that children of alcoholics have naturally lower levels of beta-endorphin. What does this mean in real life? Beta-endorphin cuts pain. Therefore, lower levels of beta-endorphin mean we feel pain more deeply. We may be more distressed by going to the dentist. We may hurt more if we get banged up in a backyard game of football. We may cry more at the movies. Because we naturally have less of the brain chemical that protects us from pain, we are naturally more 'sensitive.' Because we are more sensitive, we feel more deeply. I suspect that lower levels of beta-endorphin make us more aware, more tuned in to the subtlety of what we are experiencing, and perhaps more vulnerable emotionally. Beta-endorphin also affects self-esteem. Confidence, optimism, a sense of connection, and a sense of elation all come with high levels of beta-endorphin. The euphoria of the 'runner’s high' is very real. That sense of being on top of the world is a byproduct of the beta-endorphin flood. By the same token, low beta-endorphin can have a profoundly negative effect on our feelings. Self-esteem eludes us — even though it seems we should feel terrific, we don’t. We are successful, we have enough money, we have love and support in our lives — but inside we are convinced it all will soon disappear and we will end up as a bag lady. We feel disconnected from those around us. Even though our mind tells us that we have a loving partner, an attentive husband, devoted children, caring parents, or loving friends, we still feel isolated and alone. Sometimes we shake our heads in disbelief. 'How can this be?' we ask. It makes no sense. What is even stranger is that we don’t feel this way all of the time. Sometimes we are ready to take on the world. Other times the bag lady sits at our feet clucking her disapproval of our lives. Having our confidence and self-esteem be so elusive, so unpredictable can be crazy-making. It makes no sense until we begin to see our life through the filter of beta-endorphin. When we have naturally low levels of beta-endorphin, our brains try to compensate by increasing the number of beta-endorphin receptors in order to catch as much beta-endorphin as possible. If something (like drugs, alcohol, or a large helping of sugary food) causes a big hit of beta-endorphin (also called a spike), the extra receptor sites will grab it and cause us to have a 'WOW!' reaction, a 'rush.' Let’s focus on the sugar effect. We start out with low beta-endorphin, we eat sugar, our beta-endorphin spikes, and we feel really good. We are confident, hopeful, and excited about our lives. We banish the bag lady with a flash of the hand and pronounce our enthusiasm for life and its demands. We feel great! For a little while. But then, in the middle of a conversation, at a board meeting, or on a date, our sense of possibility slips away. Doom descends and we are back to square one. The flood of beta-endorphin has receded and we are left with all those extra receptors sitting empty, forlorn — and craving for more. So how do we handle this situation? Can we raise our beta-endorphin levels by doing healthy things instead of using sugar and drugs? And what’s wrong with that 'rush?' If our beta-endorphin is low, don’t we want to do things that get us more? Here’s the key: We don’t want the rush because when it recedes, we end up feeling terrible. Instead we want a steady stream of beta-endorphin, which keeps us in a steady state of optimism, higher self-esteem, confidence, and connectedness. We want to enhance the natural production of beta-endorphin without the dramatic up and downs that have been a big part of our lives. In some ways, this may be hard to get used to. We may not want to give up the rush that sugar evokes. To use my own words from early recovery, life without the rush may seem 'boring.' It was almost as if I was willing to endure the pain of the down side in order to have the thrill of the up side. This, in a nutshell, is the seduction of addiction. We forget the down side and only remember those few moments of glory. We will seek forever and endure anything to return to the state of WOW! Trust me on this one, though. Many years later, my body, my mind, and my heart all know that a steady state of clarity and self-esteem is so much better than the illusion I carried around so long. Enduring and consistent confidence is a thousand times better than those few moments stolen on the back of a sugar high. I didn’t know this until I did the food plan — and kept doing it over time. But I do now, and there is nothing better in the world than living from this place. Here are the folks who are helping put the newsletter together:
Gretel, our webmaster, puts it all together. David runs the Radiant Recovery® Store. Selena provides the weekly Ambassadors column. The banner photograph is by Patti Holden. ©2009 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.htm. |
