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COMMUNITY FORUM
Share with others, ask questions, explore everything and anything about your program.Yes, even topics like chocolate and Fritos.
GROUPS
Work on your steps, get information on what to eat while running a marathon, ask about depression meds, learn how to do life ;) . Groups are free and fun.
JOIN US ON FACEBOOK
CLASSES
I realized that we haven't done a series of the *brain* classes in a really long time. We have all these new people who have read the book but really haven't had a chance to learn about the neurochemistry in depth. We will be finishing up Serotonin before Ranch so we will get ready for Beta Endorphin the week after. We will plan to start on Thursday, May 23rd, so this will give you a chance to. plan ahead.
Beta Endorphin
Beta Endorphin is the brain chemical that helps us cope with physical and emotional pain. Being sugar sensitive means we have less of it.Learn how this chemical affects your self-esteem and why your capacity to cope may be directly related to your beta endorphin levels. A fascinating look at the part of the story that is most crucial to sugar sensitivity.
Sign up for this class
WORKING WITH KATHLEEN
We are restarting Coaching. This is a special offering for people who are serious about enhancing their programs and would like to have ongoing coaching. We will do
individual assessments to sort out exactly where you are in the process. You will be guided in making your own individual plan. You can learn about journaling and adjusting your food for your own life needs – what to do when. You will be given tools and shown how to use them.
Apprentice coaching is geared for people who are on steps one – three.
Skilled Coaching is for people who are steady on step three and ready to move through
four-six. The small groups who stay together as they learn skills.
Signature Coaching is intensive individual coaching geared to your specific situation. You may want to step out of the craziness of sugar addiction, return to steadiness and clarity after slipping away, slow down and focus on your recovery, or deepen a steady rhythm of
recovery.
This is a way to step out of feeling overwhelmed with where to start and what to do. Because it is so individualized, we can work on what is right for you at this point in your
journey. People tell me that coaching helps them feel safe and focused. We work with your style, your rhythm. We address your fear and let go of shame.
Ready to Start?
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"Don't forget the details. They will point the way to healing."
*looking up at just the right moment to see a Swainson's Hawk soaring over my car in the rain
*egrets glowing white in the sunlight
*driving home on a stormy day with lead-grey skies and seeing the valley turn gold from the setting sun peeking under the clouds
*watching a Western Tanager and a pair of Summer Tanagers taking turns eating an orange at our bird feeder (the Summer Tanagers are bigger and so the Western Tanager would leave when they flew in, but he perched nearby and returned as soon as they left)
*so many hummingbirds!
This is the time of year when I spend a lot of time outdoors. I am happiest when I am spending time outdoors.
In late April, DH and I went to Arizona for a week to go birding. We went to lots of beautiful places and saw lots of birds. In the summer, I wear those lightweight pants that dry quickly and can be converted to shorts by unzipping the legs. I actually never turn them into shorts, but I like them because they are cool and comfortable and because they do dry quickly. I'm not sure exactly what
they are made of - maybe it's ripstop nylon? Anyway, I had not worn mine since last fall, and when I put them on the first day, they were tight. I could wear them, but they were not comfortable at all.
While I cannot say I was overjoyed by this, I decided to be practical. We were in Tucson, they have an REI there, and I went there and bought new, more comfortable pants. Even better, I found a different style of the pants that was more comfortable and more flattering - these don't have zip off legs, which is just fine with me. I was able to spend the rest of the trip in comfort, instead of
trying to squish into the other pants and having them dig into my waist the whole time.
We did some hiking on the trip - lots of uphill stuff. My legs didn't get nearly as sore as I expected and it felt good to be able to climb. DH did much better than he expected, too. We had cold cuts and bread in our room, as well as yam cakes and cheese sticks and celery etc. Every day we would make sandwiches and pack cut up celery and carrots, apples, cheese, hard boiled eggs from the
breakfast bar, and yam cakes. That way, I could eat lunch when I needed to and have snacks as needed and we could bird without having to stop and drive back to the main part of town to get a meal.
The other outdoor thing I'm doing is monitoring hawk and owl nests. I have several miles of territory that I monitor. After work and on weekends, I am out walking, checking nests and looking for nests. This year I have 4 hawks on nests, 2 more areas where I expect hawks to be on nests, one owl on a nest, and a mystery owl nest that I need to find. The other night I decided to go out after
work. The sun was out at my office, but as I drove toward the area I was going to check, the sky was very grey. I decided to go anyway, and if it got bad, I would go back to the car.
It was grey and a bit blustery at times, but I really enjoyed it. Because of the weather, there were fewer other people than usual, so I had periods of time when I had the woods to myself, which I always enjoy. It was cool, and I decided not to take my backpack, just a small bag with my phone and gps unit (the kind people use for camping and geocaching), so I was able to walk fast, which I
always enjoy. I stopped whenever I heard a bird or saw something interesting. I did get back to the car just in time, because it was starting to thunder. It was really windy on the way home, but I got to see the valley turn golden. I never saw golden light like that when I lived on the East Coast, plus I didn't get to see big, open areas like that.
Of course, with all this extra physical activity, I am making sure to be attentive to food. I eat a meal before leaving work, so that my blood sugar is steady when I'm out walking for a couple of hours. Then I eat a small dinner when I get home. When I go out on weekends, I carry yam cakes and cheese sticks in my backpack so I can snack as needed. I think yam cakes are one of my most useful
discoveries. They really help, they are portable, and they taste really good. I keep them in the freezer, and they keep my cheese sticks from getting too warm when I'm out in the field. They are even tasty when they are still partially frozen. I highly recommend them for camping, hiking etc. I use Elaine's recipe, the one with Restore in it.
Allison
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Chloe is being creative. We do the same thing with strawberries or mangoes. The fun thing is you can CHOOSE the fruit of the season. Find the *base* that
works for you and then play with the fruit configurations. It is actually really fun!
I just made some great ice cream
I have a ninja blender
I added some frozen blueberries, frozen bananas and cashews and some unsweetened coconut cream. Blended.
It was wonderful. What a fun treat.
Chloe
Healing is Grand
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This is David, your Radiant Recovery® Concierge
Come visit our STORE. Call 505-345-3737or email David if you have questions.
David, the store manager, is always happy to help.
Each cookbook is$16.95/$15.29 plus shipping and handling (subscribers)
If you are doing the program, this lille book is an incredible resource. Think of it as a how to manual for the day-to-process of learning how to do the steps. And this is especially true in our current culture of no carb living. Here is your guide - clear, useful and easy to use. Lots of info and 120 great
recipes.
- How to build a variety of quick meals with the use of my simple baking mix
- How to use pancakes and waffles as a base for wonderful experimentation
- How to discover the wonderful world of wraps (whole grain tortillas) to make all sorts of nifty, quick menus
- How to use marinades and dressings to dramatically change the taste of a few simple ingredients
- How to understand and use a variety of grains
- The difference between sweet potatoes and yams
- How to use a quiche to create all sorts of healthy alternative meals
- How to make substitutes in your own sugar-filled recipes
- How to use wheat alternatives
- How to set up a vegetarian food plan
- How to convert your daily allotment of protein grams to ounces of food
- Designing Menus that work for you
- How to use protein powders to increase your proteins
Science
A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article about*restricted feeding with scheduled sucrose access.* And we talked about it in chat. I found out that most people really didn't get what it was saying or why I thought it was important.I want to circle on back to this, because I still think it has such a huge lesson for us.
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Restricted feeding with scheduled sucrose access
results in upregulation of the rat dopamine receptor.
Ok, if you want, you can go read the whole thing. But here is what it is saying. If you restrict eating [I would say if you are "dieting"] and then you break the diet with a "slip" of "relapse" you get a bigger charge from it. When you are in the restrictive state, i.e. dieting, your brain adds more dopamine transporters so you are ready and waiting. It is like everything is on high alert, and then when you have
something, the bells go off, the lights blaze, and the money pours into the cup And it is like the skies opened and poured down love. Of course, then it is hard to get back on track.
The point of this is that YOU are not a *bad* person. This is biochemical. And.....why diets won't work because the *better* you diet, the more unregulated you get and the more vulnerable you become. Your *sitting duck for relapse* energy grows stronger b y the day.
If you wonder what we do in YLD, this is it. This is explaining why you are the way you are and what you can do about it. And...it is not a sound bite, LOL.
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Chats, chats, chats. Chats are the essence of the program. Chats are the place for us to talk about what your weight loss means. You will learn about fat terror, about the myths of obesity, how how dieting fosters *restriction* and what that means for your long terms success. adding new science to help you understand why do do what you do. We are even going to talk about up regulation of the rat dopamine transporter,
LOL.
I don’t think I understood that this program is much more than weight loss until I got “stable”. Weight loss was the motivating factor for me in the beginning, so I understand why everyone is talking about it. It is so nice to be even-tempered and “radiant” that I would continue the program if I hadn’t lost weight, but it’s nice to know it can do both! One friend commented that I have such
willpower….nope…I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in it. Enjoying the people at a party instead of obsessing over the food, do I look fat, how much can I eat without people noticing…can you imagine? I find that miraculous!
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Chats bring up interesting ideas. One of our new people was concerned that I was not being *structured* enough. She is used to teaching, goals and objectives. She was confused by the laughter. Of course all of us have been there with these feelings, but the goals and objectives part was a wonderful opportunity
for me to share something that I dont always talk about. I thought I would recap it here for all of you.
In 1968 (whew that was a LONG time ago), I read a book by Paulo Freire called Pedagogy of the Opressed. Freire was doing a literacy project. The government had found that people seemed not able to learn to read particularly well. Freires premise was that if people were taught to read things they wanted
to know, that learning would flow. He described traditional learning as one based on a *banking* model by which the ones who owned the money dispersed it to the those who were poor. So teachers were dispensing what they felt was right knowledge to the *poor* illiterates. Freire said, "Let's ask them what they want to learn. Let's engage them in their learning so that they teach us."
He found that the guys who had cars wanted to be able to read the automotive manuals. Funny thing, they had no trouble learning. Freire believed that the learner should drive the learning.
When I went to graduate school, I chose a school that had these same values even though it meant a tradeoff on the *prestige* factor. It meant I could take my passion of addiction and nutrition and do both, and convene a faculty to served what I wanted to learn. It was a life-changing experience as a
result.
I brought this value to Radiant Recovery. It means we dont have *rules* even though many of you have struggled against what you believed to be true about them. We are saying, "Look, here is what works, here is what has worked for thousands and thousands. If you do it this way, we KNOW you will heal. This is why
we urge you to journal, so you learn your own way of knowing. This is why we dont give you *plans* or what to do on day one or day 10. This is why I dont tell you goals and objectives." I want YOU to discover your own story, to define what you want, to choose your own healing, and to become passionate about what happens when you do. I know that in the beginning, when you are used to being told what to do, to having a curriculum, it is disorienting. Sometimes you get mad. Sometimes you feel
cheated. Or sometimes you make up your own rules, say they are from me and then you rebel and dont do them.
There is more...(smile) In the beginning sometimes you get so mad that we (and I especially) keep talking about breakfast. You want to talk about dopamine, and brain stuff. Breakfast seems so mundane, LOL, so ridiculously simple that you really do not need to spend any time on it because you already eat protein
and you know what to do.
You dont quite get yet the level of compassion and tenderness that awaits you. You think the laughter means we do not care about your pain. You havent had anyone treat you this way before. LAUGHING! inviting you to be joyful in the face of pain, in the face of being fat. We laugh with the joy of knowing that we
are valued, heard, seen, understood. We laugh at our connection, at your bravery, the joy of your willingness.
The connection isnt in the manual. It is however in our values. They are what I articulated 21 years ago, and reaffirm today.
These are the values that have guided the development of our community. The primary values of radiantrecovery.com are:
- Simplicity. We will provide solutions to sugar sensitivity that are easy to understand and implement.
- Respect. We will recognize the differences of each person doing the program by reinforcing the individually tailored aspect of the food plans.
- Listening. We will acknowledge that the users of the services and products are the best ones to determine market development and direction.
- Accessibility. We will provide a simple, direct channel for interaction among community members and with the leadership of the company.
- Integrity. Promises made will be delivered.
- Compassion. We will encourage self-awareness and empowerment in users by providing information in a nonjudgmental way.
- Empowerment. We will provide tools that enable sugar-sensitive people to find the way out of chaos, feeling stuck and overwhelmed into a sense of clarity, focus and direction.
- Modeling. We will recruit and promote people who are committed to living the principles outlined in the program.
- Responsibility. We will bring our products and services to a worldwide community in ways that are culturally and linguistically sensitive.
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