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September 8, 2014 Hi {!firstname_fix} Now you know that every once in a while I bring my rescue life over here. We have another *special needs* doggaroo named Gabby. Come read her story here. I am just trying to raise $1000 for her surgery. You can post it on your facebook page too if you like. Nothing like a personal charity. There is a donate button at www.grrnm.com. Well, it has been a thoughtful week. A lot of people are going through profound changes - kinda like the healing that has been pushing for a while is starting to break through the surface. It is very moving. And, I am part of this ground swell. This week's article is one of the more personal ones I have done for a while. I think it is a topic that touches all of us. These classes will begin Wednesday, September 10, 2014. Please click on the name of the class and it will take you to the registration page:
This class will begin Wednesday, September 17, 2014. Please click on the name of the class and it will take you to the registration page:
The class schedule is online. Click here to see what is planned. 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 ** Keep thinking about your body and letting it talk to you. **********************************************************************
**Testimonial of the Week ** The food spikes - I have just very recently started to notice how food is related to the spikes throughout the day. Just yesterday I made a conscious decision to lessen the impact of a spike by deciding to wait and have my "sweet fix" until after I had dinner. In the last weeks or so I have slowly been moving sweets into my meals and it has slowly lessened the impact of spikes. I don't feel terrible or super great....I just feel even Steven, if that makes sense. I can start to appreciate what food does for my mood and I am excited! I am getting steady slowly. Raising the natural state of BE - I am noticing that little sweet joys make me glow. I am starting to appreciate this little glow and how it's slowly raising my BE bar. I'm starting to appreciate "quiet time" and its powers and also the power of walking and how that raises my BE. It's like feeling a soft warm light instead of feeling a jolt of electricity when I get a spike from sugar. Diana **********************************************************************
**Technical Tips ** Yahoo is squirrelly or I am completely dense, probably the latter. Anyway,I can't seem to get on the step 1 list to post. I do see individual emails but cannot connect to Yahoo to participate/post. When I click on "respond to group," it circles back to the app menu for Hotmail. I have IE on a laptop. I don't know if I'm making sense or what I need to do. I changed your settings so that your posts are not moderated. I see you just sent a post that went through. Should be fine now. **********************************************************************
**Notes from the Forum ** The dress dilemma - Solved! This is making me feel grateful today. I have an Occasion planned, where the dress code is fairly smart. A few years ago this would have been an alarming thought... I would have been panicking at the last minute and trying to find an outfit, choosing the thing that fitted good enough. Or going in my same-old-thing. A couple of weeks ago I went shopping with this event in mind, and despite trying on most of the shopping centre, there was nothing I really liked. The things that fitted didn't inspire me. But I had a lovely day, and instead of feeling a bit low at 'failure,' it didn't have any charge to it. On Saturday I was out and about and spied just the thing in a shop window. Fairly casual but the sort of dress that can be dressed up or down...I thought it was ideal. And the magic thing was - I bought it - because I will be the same weight when I need it, and so will still fit into it. This has not always been the case. I am remembering how distraught I used to feel about clothes shopping and how unreliable everything always felt, how my weight fluctuated so much I lived in the same few elastic-waisted outfits. Happy Days, Mosaic **********************************************************************
** Radiant Recovery® Store ** David manages the Radiant Recovery® Store. He is also Kathleen's oldest son.
Please send questions and suggestions. I love hearing from you and truly want to help you do your program better. **********************************************************************
**Radiant Kitchen ** I love broccoli! And since we are talking about it in the veggie class, I thought you would like this yummy recipe that is sure to win over your family to eating greens. I adapted this from a real simple magazine recipe. BROCCOLI WITH GARLIC LEMON CRUMBS
For more great program-friendly recipes, check out our cookbook in the store and visit our online Radiant Recipes site. **********************************************************************
**Radiant YLD **  When I first wrote Your Last Diet, I did not know the depth of its power. Over time, as we have been doing the process together, the meaning of the process is clearer. And as the gaps emerged, the classes filled them in like an ever growing mosaic. Now we have a process enriched by your lived experience. And most significantly, we have chats which are like a constantly shifting neural feedback system. You try it, we talk, we share, and the nuance and tips emerge in the dialogue. It is a pretty amazing thing. And way more than about weight loss. I think it is more about body image, sense of self, and finding esteem.
If you would like to join, come find us here **********************************************************************
**Radiant Living ** We have a new portal for the Radiant Living program. Come check it out here. Radiant Living started in a discussion at Ranch where some of the more experienced people asked, *Kathleen, where can we go to talk about life things...we have a good sense of the food and doing the steps. How can we work on what these changes mean in our lives?* So this arena is designed for that. If you are new in the program, come on over to listen to the *promises* of recovery. If you are skilled with the food and ready for a turbo-charged edition, this is the place for you. And often we talk about the article from the prior Sunday's newsletter. If you would like to join us, you can do that directly below. Join Radiant Living Now: click here - $99 If you are not a member, come and join us if you want to be a part of the latest and greatest or just have some plain ol' fun! **********************************************************************
**Our Online Groups ** Radiant Eating Enough is a new group geared to those of you who eat less as a way of dealing with life. The key focus is moving from *restriction* to abundance, but we look at all sorts of other things like perfectionism, screening, fretting, and hiding **********************************************************************
**The So Fat Manifesto ** Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.
Last week Mary posted a message on the forum. My name is Mary, I am 49 years old and have been following the program for 13 months now. I am concerned that as I am hoping to lose weight that Kathleen herself is so fat. It seems very dishonest to me. Surely, if you are hoping to help people, you would have lost weight yourself. Since I moderate the forum, my first inclination was to respond to her directly and not post it. I decided to post it and then respond on the forum. I shared a link to the testimonials from all the people who have lost weight. I thought this might comfort her. But I kept thinking, this person has been doing the program for more than a year, but she can't have spent any time in the community. She can't know anything about me or my story. I admit that the phrases *so fat* and *dishonest* kinda threw me since I don't usually get notes that are this abrupt. I surely get lots of stuff from people, but generally not so personal and certainly not challenging whether I am helping people. My first reaction was more along the lines of, *you really don't have any information about my honesty* and that we might agree to disagree about my weight being the determinant of my ability to *help people*, although I don't think I was that kind on the first round. We had a couple of people who have been doing the program for a while respond to the discussion. One of them said, *From the moment I started reading Dr. DesMaisons' books I knew that this was someone who really understood what was going on with me and I had never, ever come across that before (and believe me, I have read almost every diet book, tried every plan, and received advice from many slim people!)* I do think she got to the heart of the issue, which of course was comforting. But you know, over the course of many years, I have learned to listen to things that are uncomfortable in a deeper way. So I set to exploring what truth might be in Mary's concerns. The easier was the *dishonest* part since I am, for better or worse, a rather disarmingly honest Sagittarius, charged more often with speaking truth more directly than some would prefer. I know that dishonesty is not one of my character flaws so I can hear that as a reflection of Mary's concern about whether she will be able to lose weight. And I also know that if she were to join YLD and get involved, she would hear the resounding 'yes" that rings through the halls of Radiant Recovery. So that leaves the *so fat* question. Yes, I am fatter than I was when Potoates not Prozac was published, although I actually don't think of myself as *so fat.* I went through menopause (god help us for that). We might give that 10 pounds. I went on tour twice which added another 20 pounds. Didn't understand why then, but I do now. Then I spent 10 years sitting at the computer 10 hours a day answering every email, posting every forum post and writing a newsletter ever week and writing another 3 books. Sitting rather than being in the gym added another 20 or so. The sum of which could certainly be calculated as *so fat.* And to my horror, I discovered that what had worked pre PNP when I lost 60 pounds in 6 months did not work now. Now I was living in the grief, pain and shame of being *so fat* and you can be sure that it connected me to the the depth and complexity of being *so fat* in a way that only those who live it can imagine...and if you are an international leader talking about such things, and having written about a solution that came *before,* you also have to deal with the very same pain that every fat person in our culture has to deal with...PLUS being judged as being a fraud or inadequate. The lived experience of having everything about who you are being dismissed because of your looks was pretty real for me. And pretty painful. Thankfully, I mostly didn't hear from the Marys of the world, I heard from the people who wanted to get well, and listened to the message. Anyone can diet, but if you are sugar sensitive a *diet* does not work. One has to HEAL what causes the weight in the first place (and the self loathing attached to it). And the healing task is both the biochemistry and the pain and shame of the internalized cultural message. So there I have been, down in the trenches with you, shovel in hand. *Let's learn about the Obesity Myth, let's do emotional healing, let's discover how insulin resistance works, let's look at inflammation and reactivity. We know we HAVE to heal the addiction. We know how to do that, but let's work through the rest.* The traditional solution is restrict (diet) and aerobic exercise (which is often addictive exercise), both of which add to the problem and do not solve it. And, if one is post menopausal and insulin resistant, then the task gets a little more tricky. We covered omega 3's, and veggies, and potassium, and stress and meditation, and dear god, I was right there with you. And some of you started losing weight right then. I didn't. I was still *so fat,* albeit way less troubled by it. I no longer felt as if I was somehow to blame for this turn of events, clearly it was biochemical and clearly we didn't have the total answer yet. So we kept digging. Science was putting billions into the War on Obesity, but we, here without research or funding, just kept digging away at one variable after another. We got to the exercise part. It wasn't about doing *more* and burning calories for sure, but it was about fitness. Off to the gym I went. Of course this was one more discovery since old and *so fat* are not exactly the criteria most gyms know what to do with, LOL. But I was game and determined. I grabbed that TRX, I did planks and high intensity interval training. Started getting quite buff but not losing weight. The good news is that by now, I found it fascinating and actually part of a spiritual journey. How was it possible to eat so well, exercise so efficiently and stay *so fat*...the good part as well was that I no longer felt *so fat.* it was more like feeling strong and physically competent with a fat coat on. My trainer got sick, I had to rest, so of course I starting reading. And even though *fat,* my brain remained agile, curious and rather rigorous. So off I went into the joys of obscure articles about obesity in C57-BL6 mice. Things started to emerge...a different kind of fitness..liver insulin resistance, strength training. I found a new trainer, and got muscles. And my weight started shifting. But man I was hungry, LOL, because now those muscles were burning for food. All this time, we were talking in chat. We were sharing our experience, strength and hope. Talking about training style, talking about the edge between productive and healing exercise and addictive exercise, talking about snacks to build muscle. So the last couple of years have been spent on learning fitness for the fat and fitness for the sugar sensitive. And of course, I have been getting fit myself, which is no small feat for a tubby old broad.  Now we are at the hard part. Maintaining muscles means eating enough. Maintaining recovery means having enough carbs to keep serotonin flowing. Trying to *reduce portions* or take out too much carb, too soon, just made us cranky and took us back to how we used to be. But these are the questions we are asking and looking at together. I don't think anyone in YLD thinks I am *so fat*...I am more inclined to think they feel, as I do, that my *so fat* is a gift for all of us...it gives us the cellular knowing, the compassion for the story and the struggle that cannot be imagined by someone who has not done it. I read an article in the New York Times about the trillions of dollars being spent on the *war on obesity* and they still don't have a clue.  We here, all of us who are in YLD, not only have a clue, we have an answer and we are living into it. I imagine sometime soon I will be less *so fat* and those who are new who come in to that picture of me will not quite get the power of the journey.But you will. My story and my honesty will guide you, give you hope and lead you in a way that the war on obesity never can. And you will know that you have lived into an answer that is not out there yet. It is being woven right here in our homey little program, our community of radiance. And you get to be a part of it. Thanks for reading! If you know someone who could benefit from this, feel free to forward it to them. Not a subscriber yet? Like what you have read? Sign up to get future issues delivered straight to you: http://www.radiantrecovery.com Until next time!
Here are the folks who are helping put the newsletter together:
Gretel, our webmaster, puts it all together. David runs the Radiant Recovery® Store. mosaic contributes to the Notes from the Forum column. ©2014 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 |
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