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** Quote From Kathleen ** This is a process. You do not have a 'sobriety date' to mark that sugars are gone forever. You simply move more and more into a healthy relationship with your body. **********************************************************************
** Testimonial of the Week ** June was eventful. Did some remembering. Discovered many things. What doesn't work. Ate many cherries. Got really grumpy. Now fruit free. Wow, major steady! Not missing fruit. Big surprise, that! Learned big lessons. I am graduated. Love that group! Enjoying rice cooker. Yummy rice everyday. Easy, easy, easy. Wild, black, brown, Short, medium, long. Worth every penny. Life is good. Food is good. Sleep is good. Work is good. Big shift there! Really big shift. I am grateful. Ray came over. He brought spud. Better than flowers! We are good. June was challenging. June was good! Love to all. Janice (in Maryland) **********************************************************************
** Radiant Ambassadors ** After discovering a YouTube video from someone who was recommending Potatoes Not Prozac the other day, Kathleen went into creative mode and produced a fabulous Radiant Recovery video. Have you seen it yet? Click here to check it out. I found it to be very powerful when I watched it the first time. It now seems that well over 300 people have seen it - yay! So it got me thinking, who fancies telling their Radiant Recovery story on YouTube? Or somewhere else for that matter? If you want to join in the fun, come on over to the Ambassadors list :) Selena Come join us if you are excited about spreading the news. **********************************************************************
** Radiant Kitchen ** I am having a contest...Whoever sends in the best recipe for sugar free ice cream will get a special gift. Send them to the creative cooking list. For more great program-friendly recipes, check out these great cookbooks in the store.
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** Your Last Diet - More Than What You Think ** As many of you know, I am just doing the thyroid class. As part of doing the research for that class, I have stumbled on some extraordinary information about thyroid and gaining weight. I have always wondered what the connection is and could never find an answer that made sense. I am very excited to be sharing this with you in YLD. We will start the discussion in chat, have a dialogue and then I will be writing more. And then as it is all framed out, I will most likely do a whole class for members on just this topic. If you are not a YLD member, come and join us. Click here if you are ready to change your life or just have some plain ol' fun! **********************************************************************
** Radiant Recovery® Store ** David manages the Radiant Recovery® Store. He is also Kathleen's oldest son. Summer time, what a great time to learn more about how to do the program. Get the famous CD set, download it to your ipod and LISTEN. It will change your brain.. Please send questions and suggestions. I love hearing from you and truly want to help you do your program better. **********************************************************************
** Our Online Groups ** Hi Everyone, Well, I am going to have a houseful of people this weekend for the 4th of July celebration. Part of the attraction is that fireworks are still legal here in our neck of the woods, so folks from the Bay Area make the drive to the "country" for the backyard show. Our nieces are also coming for their now-annual stay for the summer, so my mind has been turning this morning to what I will feed the masses. Everything I make I can eat...none of them have stopped coming, lol. Most of them were here for my graduation party last month, and I even had some requests for food they ate to be present this weekend. This morning, I have been looking through recipes for ideas. This is what I do, because I really believe that most recipes can be adapted to fit the program and it also just gets the creative juices flowing. I have a few new "sides" that I am going to experiment on folks (they'll never know they were guinea pigs, lol), but I will probably stick with "stand-bys" for the main course. I am also searching for the recipe for dessert...why I think I hate cooking from recipes, because once I find something I like (and this one was a hit), I lose the recipe and then can't replicate it...maybe I should address my organizational skills. (smile) So, do any of you have plans, big or small, for this weekend? Any family favorites you'd like to share for when you have picnics or parties or gatherings? (I'm thinking of our "non-American" friends who aren't celebrating the 4th.) We are supposed to head to the lake for a picnic dinner on Friday, so I am having to think "portable" dinner, too, for that day. Actually...I love doing this kind of stuff, because it lets me expand my cooking base and to have fun! My family is pretty forgiving and will eat pretty much anything I put in front of them. I like meeting the challenge of bringing my cooking game to a new level among folks who don't normally "do the food". Come on over and join us on the creativecooking list. PE **********************************************************************
** A Small Roadmap for Your Process ** Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.
A number of people have asked me if there is an expected path for going through the steps. Is it developmental or random? Over the years, I have come to see that it is very developmental and very predictable. If you do the steps, things will change. And they will change in a way that you can expect. So nothing scary, nothing complicated. Here are the stages: Chaos Regularity and Structure Stability Detox Practice Success Chaos Chaos is the starting place for most of you. You may be way out there, or you may be high functioning chaos artists. But the tone is always the same. You feel hopeless, out of control, desperate, inadequate, and impatient. You can’t remember instructions, you want to get started and people don’t understand what is going on for you. You feel the “problem” is the sugar. Or the problem is your weight. Or the problem is the stress in your life. And the feelings are so bad, you have to do something RIGHT NOW!!!! You are a true drama pup and feel like you can’t start, can’t stop, and you are crazy. You eat irregular meals, lots of sugars and carbohydrates, you may binge, drink little water and either exercise rarely or exercise compulsively. You have tried a thousand diets. You have lost weight and gained it back – a lot. You are tired and terrified. You hold your breath at even the idea something might work. You want to do it all, and you keep putting it off. You are in the right place. The program can help you. Regularity and Structure You start the program. You work on breakfast. Breakfast becomes habitual. You like the feelings it brings. You write your journal. Sometimes you forget, but mostly you remember. You don’t yet use the journal as a detective, but you are gathering the information and resisting the idea less. You manage to eat three meals a day. You have protein at each meal. You have a potato every night. You take the three vitamins every day. You are still having sweets, but eat them with your meals. You eat whatever fruits you like but notice them and write them down. You have started increasing your water and find you rather like it. You are thinking about the idea of exercising. Stability You have started to feel the routine of regular meals. You have breakfast every day and find that if you miss it, you notice right away. You like how you are feeling. You are sleeping better. You are resisting the idea of the program less. Things start working. You notice how much caffeine and/or aspartame you use. You begin to reduce them slowly without being impulsive or reactive along the way. You are still writing diligently in your journal. You are now getting interested in what your journal says. What can it teach you? What is the connection between food and feelings anyway? You start eating brown things rather than white refined flour products. Whole grains, brown rice and oatmeal creep in and you find you actually like them. You still have fruit, but find it is becoming more and more of a normal part of your diet rather than a desperate alternative to the sweets you think you should be eating. While you haven’t really focused on the sugars, you find that the bag of M&M’s you used to have instead of lunch doesn’t have the same charm when eaten after dinner. You are less frantic about searching for your stash in the evening. Mr. Spud is a friend by now. And you are starting to think that the idea of going off sugar may not be so scary after all. Detox You pick a date and know that you are ready to just go for it. The day arrives and you don’t have sugar, you don’t have alcohol. You feel excited. You feel that maybe this time you can do it. You still have breakfast; you guard yourself a little more tightly. You are using your food journal as a valuable aid in your process. It alerts you to danger or slipping. But your focus is on the SUGAR. Finally, the bogey man is going to go. Day four comes; you are cranky but intrigued. It’s a day and you are ready. And then, and then day five. You wake up and realize you just passed through the sugar barrier. You are on your way. You hold this place now for a while. Part of you is itching to go with losing weight. You actually may have started losing. Or you may have gained some. This makes you a little nervous, but you trust the process. Something is happening here. You aren’t quite sure what or how it is working so powerfully, but you are hooked. Your food is steady. Your energy is up. Your sleep is working. You are pleased and excited. And if you are not, you know what to do. Back to the journal. Back to the forum. Let’s figure it out. It’s not overwhelming; it’s just functional. You are in charge and you know what to do. You have been sugar free for a few weeks. Yes, yes, that is weeks, not days. And now you are ready to start your diet plan. But you are willing to listen. Wait for six months on steady we say. You no longer fret. You know it makes sense. Get skill, get stable. You are no longer frantic and are starting to enjoy this. You have some goals. You have a sense that you can start the things to get you ready for weight loss. Practice You are reducing the amount of fruit you have. Browns are steady. You start increasing the greens. Veggies become your friend – and if not your friend, at least you have learned how to cook them. You eat them regularly. You have increased your water to the ounces that equal 1/2 your body weight. The potato is a regular part of your routine. Steady, you are steady. And you have started exploring your other options from that steady place. You go into the support modules regularly and work on the “extras” like defining your style, reflecting on feelings, getting your support network refined, exercising, and looking at what will help you hold the diet. A funny thing is happening. You kinda like this process. You are less impatient. You like how things are unfolding. You are ready now for the weight loss. Success After all this time, you are ready. Not frantic, but ready. At the base, you understand what you are doing. This is not hit or miss or desperate. It is informed and intentional. You understand the biochemistry of it all. You don’t throw away the spud because it is too glycemic. You aren’t counting calories. You have a good relationship to your scale. You are doing some exercise every day. You are on your way! 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. |
