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** Quote From Kathleen ** Doing the food will balance you, and you will know exactly what to do to heal yourself. **********************************************************************
** Testimonial of the Week ** I have one tiny suggestion for you. My young teens have been slipping into a very bad pattern this summer. My daughter was choosing to forget to eat in the absence of school and the school lunch schedule. And my son couldn't figure out what to eat for lunch every day, so he'd just go with unbalanced snacks. Many days I was getting calls at work, hearing hungry, spacy voices ask, "What should I have for lunch?" There was good food in the house, but they weren't eating it. I went out and bought a white board, and I simply wrote all of the things my kids could choose for lunch on it, including everything they could find in the refrigerator, freezer, and on the shelves, plus the things they can easily fix for themselves. It made an instant change for my son. I was actually surprised at how relieved he was to not have to think about what to eat. Still a bit of a challenge getting my daughter to eat on time when I'm not home, but the "menu" I made has definitely helped for those moments when she's starting to get over the edge and can't figure out how to get food. So - my idea is to figure out some kind of non-verbal way to remind your son of the things your son needs to do. Maybe a note on his bathroom mirror? Maybe ask him what would help? Becca in CA **********************************************************************
** Radiant Ambassadors ** I've been having a bit of a rummage in the Files section of the Ambassadors list this week. I didn't realise quite how many resources we'd accumulated! So, what do you want to know? How about how to give a talk about Radiant Recovery in 5 minutes or less? What about a 10-minute version? Fancy having a look at copies of press releases, printed articles, letters to celebrities, book reviews and even a sugar sensitivity powerpoint made by Kathleen herself? Well, come on over :) Selena Come join us if you are excited about spreading the news. **********************************************************************
** Radiant Kitchen ** Oh, I'm sorry...I just can't let this go, lol. We have pizza every Friday night. My family will not let me slide, even when the weather gets unbearably hot here. In fact, this summer I will probably "bite the bullet" and experiment on the grill with wood chips. (smile) Last week, we had salami/pepperoni deep dish (I usually skip this) and my favorite mozz/fresh basil/tom and I experimented with a chicken, bacon, onion, ranch (homemade ranch dressing). I make 4 pizzas each week so there are leftovers...funny to watch teenagers get up early on a Saturday morning for "first dibs", lol. You CAN have pizza on program...just with a little bit of effort. Sorry, folks, you were just all making me laugh...can you tell I love, love, love to cook RR meals??? PE 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 ** Hi all, I'm addressing here those people who have thought about joining YLD but haven't. I held back from doing so for nearly a year. I was partly skeptical, because in the past I had tried Dr. Phil's diet and found he was very interested in selling me pills, etc. I saw the store and decided to see what I could get out of the program for free. I took all the free classes, one by one. By that time I was sold and began to take paid classes. Finally I have joined YLD. In three weeks, I have definitely gotten my money's worth just from information gained during the weekly chats. And there is a great deal more to it than that. If you have the money, I do encourage you to join now. Sue 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. We have been making phone calls to our subscribers to update information. Kathleen has been encouraging me to start a little newsletter for the folks who love to hear what's going on with our products. I am getting brave and will be setting that up shortly.
Please send questions and suggestions. I love hearing from you and truly want to help you do your program better. **********************************************************************
** Our Online Groups ** A "BigOne" is a person who has 100 or more pounds to lose. The Radiantbigones list is unique in that we don't just focus on food challenges but we also share information and support for issues that non-BigOnes may not even realize are an issue in day-to-day life. The interaction on this list is great because everyone is so supportive of everyone else and we learn so much from each other. We have people on the list who are in various stages of the 7 Steps, so if you're a BigOne, you'll fit right in! **********************************************************************
** Addiction to Misery ** Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.
I have often reflected on why some people stay stuck in being miserable. No matter what life presented them, they would pick out certain variables to show that once again life was against them. This pattern went beyond your basic garden negativity. It was more like "I will continue my attachment to misery no matter what. It doesn’t matter what good comes to me, I know it is not real." This pattern defied logic to me. Why would perfectly thoughtful, intelligent people want to live this way? My first clue in sorting this out came when I noticed my own physical response. I withdrew energy, disengaged and did not want to hang with misery or the miserable. When I realized that nothing I did or said changed anything, I just backed off. One day, in the shower, I had an incredible thought. My body was responding to les miserables just the way it does around active alcoholics and addicts. If someone commits to change, asks for help, listens and moves, I am there in a flash. But stay stuck, go round and round, whine, stay miserable no matter what, I just don’t want to spend time on the boat with it. The more I have healed my own codependency the less I can do rescuing. As I was rinsing the shampoo, I thought, "What if we can be addicted to misery?" As soon as that thought passed through, I knew it was true. It would explain the tenacious holding on, the energy, the devotion to it. So then I trundled off to do some research on this. My books, google and PubMed all gave clues. Yep, misery evokes beta-endorphin. Misery evokes the same brain chemical activated by alcohol, heroin, morphine and sugar. When we are miserable, our brains release BE so we feel better. It soothes us until it wears off and then we have to go back for more. We become attached to it. We get romantic and intense about all the bad things that have happened to us. We do “woe is me!”. And…significantly, we become tolerant to it, just like with any drug. Then we need bigger misery. More, more. We amp up the feeling of less than, not good enough, poor, not smart enough, not rich enough, not educated enough. And if life does not cooperate by offering enough brutal events, we create them in our minds. We need to feel worse to feel ok. We create catastrophe in our minds, we exaggerate, we munch to create drama and perpetuate the BE feelings. The increasing tolerance creates immunity to the little negatives, so we need more misery. We then take neutral events and shape them into desperate drama. For example. Perhaps you live on little money. You feel bad because you are poor. And you have low BE because you are sugar sensitive. So you overdraft your account, you pay late, you skip your taxes. And your tolerance grows so things get worse and worse. And when you try to change this pattern, you actually go into withdrawal. So you need to find other misery to grow. You stay in a horrible job, an abusive marriage, a bad apartment. You go round and round and misery becomes your way to being in the world. When you first hear this, it may be confusing. You don’t feel you are seeking it; you aren’t looking for a "high”. But think of it another way. BE is a painkiller. When life is hard, your natural tendency is to look for ways to soothe the pain. You unconsciously turn to things that do that, and then you get hooked. You didn’t know. Just like you didn’t know sugar was a drug until you were way in. Les miserables is a hard one to face. You might feel shame at first and think, “oh dear gawd, not more!” But the joy of healing is that now you understand. Now you have a name for what you thought was just circumstance. Now you can make sense and take action. You start to laugh at yourself. You get amazed at the skill your little inside addict has…it can find ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to make you feel ok. It has a good heart, it is trying its best to have you not feel pain. It is just a little misguided and now, in your recovery, you will do something a little different. You will kiss it on its little black nose, and say “ah, nice try, baby, but we aren’t doing that anymore…..” You will see that you do not want a life of les miserables. You are ready for something different. You can go to school, you can find ways to work with little money, you can leave abusive relationships, you can find a life of joy. This is what recovery is about. When you do the food, you do way more than give up sugar. You are HEALING addiction on a cellular level. Healing is real and it is yours for the doing. 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. |
