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November 29. 2010 Hi {!firstname_fix} A funny thing happened today. About 3 PM, the wind blew in and it felt like WINTER. It is funny how that works. Same thing happened in August when one day at one moment, the energy shifted to Fall. Time for gloves and heavy coats here. Dogs are in the winter curl which means they totally curl up rather than stretch out on the couch. I roasted a pork roast in the oven this afternoon. It was stuffed with apples, so the house smelled wonderful. Now everything is still and I am looking forward to reading a new novel I just got at the bookstore. A number of you have asked me about when it is a good idea to do a consult with me. Here are some ideas to help you know when you plan for it:
These classes will begin December 1, 2010.  Radiant Play (2 weeks) - the material that came out of our discussions about the amygdala in chat. I learned that play has a huge impact on our ability to handle emotional change, and to make sense of the world. It was mind boggling to me. We will be talking about the neurochemistry of play. Why it is especially important for ss people and why even more so for those of us who have committed to recovery.This class is not about the psychology of play. It is about the the neurochemistry of it and why it is so crucial for us. And because we have been talking about play in chats, we will incorporate these ideas as well - what kind of play works for *you*...how can you nurture it? So come take it for you, or if you are a parent or grandparent, for your children. You know I get excited when I design a new class. Radiant Store Tour (2 weeks) is a free guided tour of the store. David will be leading this class so if you want to get to know the guy that makes it all work, come sign up and show your support for the work he does to keep you happy. Handling the Holidays: Christmas (2 weeks) is our annual discussion of how to transform eggnog and green tree sugar cookies. This will be about families and expectations and food is love and all those sorts of things that come up for many of us this time of year. This classes will begin Wednesday, December 7, 2010. Please click on the name of the class and it will take you to the registration page: Using Radiant Resources (4 weeks) is a free orientation for those of you who are brand new and would like to find your way around town. Come sit on the top of our double-decker bus for a guided tour. And even if you are not brand new, this is a really fun class to reconnect with all the treats of the community. The class schedule is online. Click here to see what is planned. Please wait to sign up for classes until a week or two before, and do not sign up for classes that are not yet scheduled. 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 ** There is a miracle lurking in breakfast. Are you willing to tease it out? **********************************************************************
** Testimonial of the Week ** Hi everyone, I wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone here. One of the things that I am grateful for today is that each and every one of you is here, sharing on this list. I love that we learn, laugh, cry, love, grieve and celebrate together here, 365 days a year. This is where recovery began for me over 6 years ago, this is my heart place in the RR community. But without you all, it would not exist. and for that, I am grateful. I am having DP's family here today, I am so excited that I get to cook for us, that we get to open our house and share with people whom we love. It just doesn't get any better. Right now I am sitting in the quiet, eating breakfast like I do every morning, remembering how many things I am thankful for. I hope you all are blessed in countless ways today as well. Elaine in CO **********************************************************************
** Radiant Ambassadors ** 
Radiant Recovery's social media is expanding!In addition to the Radiant Recovery International Facebook page there is now a Twitter account too. If you already use Twitter or just wonder what all the fuss is about, why not wander on over to Twitter and look out for tweets from @radiantrecovery? Selena selenas@blueyonder.co.uk Come join us if you are excited about spreading the news. **********************************************************************
** How I Found Radiant Recovery ** Hi Everybody! My name is Char, I'm from Oklahoma City, OK. I read about this years ago, and just found the website recently. You're right, I hate eating breakfast, coffee w/cream has been my only breakfast for a long time, and my weight has steadily climbed. I'm very aware of all the sugar in our foods (it's how they get us addicted) and have been for some time, but I have also learned that WE POWER is much more effective than "me power", so that's why I joined. I have been off soda pop for 2 days now and taking one step at a time, breakfast is my first step for the first week. **********************************************************************
** Radiant Recovery® Store ** David manages the Radiant Recovery® Store. He is also Kathleen's oldest son. So, this is a great time of year to be thinking about how you can gift special friends with a personalized package. Books, CDs, blender bottles, Restore, or even a journal. We can pack it, gift wrap it and enclose a special greeting from you. You choose, include instructions in your order and we are AT YOUR SERVICE! Please send questions and suggestions. I love hearing from you and truly want to help you do your program better. **********************************************************************
** Radiant Kitchen **  A friend of mine made this on Thanksgiving. It was the best pumpkin pie I have ever had, so I asked her for the recipe. And my sister in law, who is French and a very discerning pastry chef, thinks that Whole Foods Gluten Free pie crusts are fabulous. You probably could make it with canned pumpkin, but my hunch is the fresh makes all the difference.We served it with unsweetened whipped cream.
For more great program-friendly recipes, check out our cookbook in the store. **********************************************************************
** Radiant Conversations ** I love how the chat discussion are moving. It makes me feel very settled to hear you take the topics and enrich them with your life experience. It feels as if the collective reflection deepens each topic and then it comes back around to make the next discussion even more fun. And I have to admit that our virtual Thanksgiving dinner was just YUMMY! Thank you so much. If you are not a YLD member, come and join us. Click here if you want to be a part of the latest and greatest or just have some plain ol' fun! **********************************************************************
** Our Online Groups ** On our Radiant Fitness group we talk about how doing the food can support our fitness program and vice versa. Some favorite topics are what to eat when doing intensive exercise when all that's out there commercially are sugar filled products. We also talk about what to eat before and after morning workouts, and what to do for those folks whose training program requires a twice a day workout. We have runners walkers, bikers, dancers, aerobicizers, yogis, and many more types of exercise enthusiasts on the list. One of the neat things on the list is people who are recovering from exercise addiction who are learning how to work exercise back in their life in a healthy way. If any of this fits you, well, come on over and join in. **********************************************************************
**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. Emily shares a recipe. Tina tells us what's happening on Facebook. ©2010 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/ |
