Hi Everybody:

After reading today's newsletter I was compelled to write and tell my tale. I started with Radiant Recovery some 15 or so years ago when I first picked up Potatoes Not Prozac. Kathleen's information and generous soul gave me back my life. I have lifelong gratitude for all her gracious knowledge and support.

But even after "doing the food" and being a 7th Stepper for many years, I remained over 100 pounds overweight. Even with continuous exercise.

At 63 years old, I had completely given up the notion of ever losing weight but I gave it one more try. I went to a eating disorder nutritionist/therapist who showed me a book called, "Eating Less - Say Goodbye to Overeating" by Gillian Riley. Although this book came out a couple of decades ago, I had never heard of it.

By reading this book I realized I was addicted to food QUANTITY. In short I was eating way too much food to lose weight. But when I limited my food intake, I felt hungry and deprived, even right after a full meal. This was not carbohydrate craving from blood sugar or brain chemistry, which I knew well. "Eating Less" explains this is caused by a neurological pathway from the "survival" part of your brain (hindbrain and medulla) sent to your "decision making" part of your brain (frontal cortex) saying "You must eat or else you will starve to death". Or it may be hunger triggered by a sensory memory. Either way, it is basically a "habit" of brain thinking you are hungry when you are not. I call it Phantom Hunger. It took a while to be able to distinguish my hunger signals as just a habitual thought. Not only did they FEEL real, I experienced REAL physical hunger, REAL gnawing in my stomach - even after completing a full meal. But I learned to realize it was not true hunger and did not ignore it or try make it go away - I just breathed deeply and sat with it and realizing, "this is uncomfortable, but in time it will go away." And slowly but surely, it did. I continue to reset my neurological pathways not to inundate my thoughts with Phantom Hunger. As such, I eat far less food, have far more energy and at last, after all these years, the weight is coming off.

I would be SO interested in your thoughts, Kathleen!!

With much love and gratitude,
Barbara Rosenberg