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** Quote From Kathleen ** You don't have to do years of therapy to get results. You can start changing what you eat and see the effects very quickly. **********************************************************************
** Testimonial of the Week ** Hi All Today is the two year anniversary of a friend showing me pnp and me starting my RR journey. I thought I would write a few of the things that have changed for me over the two years:
Regards Fiona **********************************************************************
** Radiant Ambassadors ** Did you know that the Store carries free Radiant Recovery business cards? They're really handy to carry in your purse to hand to people or to place somewhere prominent. I've had the business cards for a while now and I thought it would be fun to find out the most inventive place that a business card has been left or handed out. So far I've put them on noticeboards and handed them to people who have expressed an interest (and even to people who haven't, but that didn't work LOL!) I've also put them in books before I sell them on ebay, slipped them into diet books in the library and even left one in Whole Foods! When I last went to a Brit meet in London, a fellow Brit asked for a wad of them so that she could hand them out at her local Health Show! Selena Come join us if you are excited about spreading the news. **********************************************************************
** Radiant Kitchen ** Crisp Potato Crust Ingredients:
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 ** Exciting news on the YLD home front! Milly, who is the Brits liaison, has agreed to team with Vicki in developing the YLD list. She brings wonderful energy. You can read her story in the article this week. What a role model for all of us. And as a result of the information that has come out of the thyroid class, I will be taking that one step further and look at it in light of losing weight. So we will be adding one more super resource to our weight-loss process. I will open this class to YLD members and graduates of the last course. 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. Ok, this week is kids week...let's review what we have for your sweet children!
Please send questions and suggestions. I love hearing from you and truly want to help you do your program better. **********************************************************************
** Our Online Groups **  Radiant Work Study is a group for Radiant Recovery members receiving disability, hardship and scholarship discounts, for guidance and support in doing service and giving back to the Community.Here is a little from Diane, who will be leading the group. When I first came to the community, I was in such a hard place and saw the world much differently than I do now. I was so resentful of my hardship, poverty and was steeped in feelings of deprivation. Though I didn't realize it at the time, I can see now that I felt I deserved anything I could get. Everyone was so generous, and it was hard not to keep wanting more and more. But with eating breakfast and doing the food, a willingness to learn a different way started to emerge, and thankfully Kathleen had the patience to work with me. I have found that with learning to give of myself in doing service in the Community, the help I've received stopped feeling like charity and I've learned how incredibly good it feels to give whatever I can. Being able to offer to others what has been extended to me has really changed how I see and feel about myself. I had no idea just how much I do have to give, despite the things I don't have...which have been becoming less and less important. It is wonderful! While I am still poor in pocket, I am rich in Recovery and with this am able to experience a life with abundance in so many ways. Where I once felt deprivation I now feel joy, and so love that others can have this too. **********************************************************************
** Milly's Dress ** Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.
Recently, one of my best girlfriends asked me to be her bridesmaid for her in January 2010. Of course, I said yes! We are both from New Zealand, so the wedding will be there, but I live in the UK, and she lives in Bermuda, and the other bridesmaids are in NZ, so we have done a lot of work online trying to pick out dresses and colours and other important bridal things! The three bridesmaids are all very different shapes. I am the biggest and curviest by far, but we also have one thin and boyish and one very tall, so finding a dress to suit all of us has proved quite challenging! Thankfully, the bride and I (since we are the only two in the same time zone we have done the most of the work) agree in taste so it hasn’t been too painful. The theme for the wedding is an elegant garden party, and because the bride and groom love the ocean, we bridesmaids will be wearing 3 shades of turquoise to tie in with the colours of the sea. After much deliberating, we did find a dress we both love online. It is really elegant, and not at all bridesmaidy. But of course we need to figure out how we can see what it looks like on since it looks amazing on the model in the picture, but she doesn’t exactly represent me! The bride has a trip to NYC booked to look at both wedding dresses and bridal party stuff, but there are also UK stockists for the same range, so, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try on the dress here too to make sure it suits me. It has a slightly higher neckline than I would normally wear so I really just wanted to make sure it didn’t make my large bust look dowdy. After calling a number of stockists, it turns out no one in London has our particular dress in stock, which I thought was a bit strange. I was speaking to the manager of one store who told me it is difficult to get the new lines from the US even though they’re already on their website, it can take 3 months! But she assured me that she could help me, and suggested I make an appointment to try on some other dresses in the same range, to gauge size, and to have a back up in case we can’t get the first dress. I told her I was a big girl, and would they have anything to fit, and she assured me that they had samples in every size, and they pin the dresses onto you anyway so it didn’t matter a bit. So, the appointment was made for a Saturday afternoon, and required a trip into central London. But since the manager, Claire, was so helpful, I trusted she wouldn’t be wasting my time. However, when I arrived at the store for my appointment, I wasn’t greeted by Claire, but by one of her assistants. We did not get off to the best start. I tried to explain that I’d been talking to the manager and I needed to find out what dress number 2750 was like. Ms Unhelpful proceeded to tell me that they didn’t have that dress in stock. I said, I know, I just need to find out what it might be like and to see if you have any alternatives. She pointed to the rows of dresses and said, well we have all these, but we won’t have many that will fit you and gave me this look of disdain. I said, right, well then can I see the Dessy colour swatches and she showed me some, but the colours I wanted were not there. Then Ms Unhelpful shoved some blue rings at me, like I was supposed to know what to do with them when I asked if I could try something on to see what size I should order. "Well," she says, "we would measure you to see what size you need." "Ok," I say,"can you measure me then please?" "No, we can only do that when you place an order!" Now I am exasperated! Ok, so this isn’t a complete waste of time, "what can I try on," I ask? She gets me out an enormous long blue dress with a neckline nothing like what I need, but I put it on anyway rather than waste my whole trip. Sensing my frustration, Ms Unhelpful came up to me and said she understood, since she was big too (she wasn’t) and nothing ever fit her either!! She just did not get it. She really made me feel like there was something wrong with me, but it was subtle. There is nothing wrong with me! By this time, my friend who had come with me had had enough and had her best stern face on (she is a teacher!). She sat down to wait for me, and the manager happened to come by, and, seeing the look on her face, asked her if everything was ok? My friend told her I had been told to come in to figure out what to do about a certain dress, and I was not getting any help at all. The next thing I know, Manager Claire is in my dressing room, dismissing Ms Unhelpful to some other poor customer (in fact, I think she ended up tidying up!) and I think my relief was palpable!! "Ok," Claire says, "now, what can we do for you?" I reminded her that we had talked on the phone about dress 2750 and how she couldn’t get it yet but she was going to show me similar cut dresses. Finally the penny dropped! So, we’re in business. The only one they had with a similar neckline was huge and dark green, but actually looked pretty good on me, so I was reassured about the higher/halter neckline. Then she found another dress made of the same fabric as ours and the same length, and when she pinned me tightly into this two-sizes-too-small dress with a sash, I was standing there, with my imperfect, too-fat, UK 18 sized body and looking in the mirror thinking, "oh, I actually have a great hourglass shape, I am really lucky, this dress is really flattering and I do not feel bad knowing that I will be 2-3 sizes bigger than the other two bridesmaids." My size just didn’t look bad to me, no matter what the sales assistant thought, and I don’t think she could have convinced me it did! And that’s all thanks to steady and healed BE levels! It still knocks my socks off that I can feel this way, especially when someone says to me, "oh we don’t have anything big enough for you," and instead of feeling inadequate for being too fat, I think, "er, excuse me? Why on earth not?! " And after spending so many years hating myself for being fat, and feeling less-than everyone else because of it, that is quite an amazing change, and certainly not one I bargained for when I started the program, but long may it continue. 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. |
