Kathleen's '53 Chevy Truck
Welcome to Radiant Recovery®
July 15, 2018,

Hi {!firstname_fix},

I got up very early this morning. The sun was just slipping over the edge of the mountain. It was cool. It felt like fall this morning. Just a whisper of it. I went out for a drive, got my coffee and the paper and went down by the nature center to sit for a while. The field was covered in dew so the sun shining through it made everything sparkle.

I sat and watched the mountain, I drove along the field and watched the light on the new growth in the woods. I watched the light shine on the stucco of the condos against the blue, blue of the sky. I watched a tortoise shell cat sitting in the middle of a field, waiting for the momma peacock to bring her babies out into the open. I watched the road runner watch me. Then I drove home and my truck was shining in the morning light. I took a picture of it for you. I think it is very beautiful. It was a nice morning. This is the *getting a life* part of step 7.

Our Heart Health class is wonderful. We are learning helpful things, feeling empowered about choices and what things can enhance our programs to support our hearts.

I will be offering an in-depth course on the subject of screen addiction starting in August. I want to work with you to understand the neurochemistry of screen addiction. The focus will be on removing the shame generally associated with this and helping you to be functional and proactive (or helping someone else). We will also look at how *doing the food* helps healing screen addiction. This class will last for 4 weeks and be another in the series of *in depth* explorations. Email me if you would like to attend.

We have been talking in chat about ebooks and MP4s. I am on it, I promise.

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Support for Your Program
COMMUNITY FORUM
Share with others, ask questions, explore everything and anything about your program without a charge.
Visit the Forum
GROUPS
Learn the steps, get fit safely, learn creative program cooking, learn about depression, learn with parents, share in local areas. There is no charge for joining community groups.​​​​​​​

COMMUNITY CLASSES​​​​​​​

YLD: The Introduction to Your Last Class is on pause on the Your Last Diet list. Charlotte is vacationing in Turkey by the sea so we are just having fun while she is playing.


The community classes are without charge.


NEW CLASS: Healing Screen Addiction
The class will work on the neurochemistry of screen addiction. We will also cover subtypes of Internet addiction including Internet pornography, chat rooms, Internet gaming, and Internet gambling. The focus will be on removing the shame generally associated with this and helping you to be functional and proactive (or helping someone else. We will also look at how *doing the food* helps healing screen addiction. The class will run for 4 weeks and will be $99.
Email Kathleen if you are interested.

WORKING WITH KATHLEEN
I feel very strongly about offering you a way to work with me directly. I have set up a whole range of options for you to do that - going from private coaching to being involved in small groups. This link will show you all the choices. Please note that

Coaching Apprentice is open to people starting or restarting. Apprentice coaching is more structured and skills oriented.
Coaching Skilled is for people who are settled with their steps and want to look at other issues more in-depth.
Signature Coaching is for those who want to work individually with Kathleen in a 90-day process. Signature is the top of the line. All who have done it talk about their lives being changed. The trick is to have someone who truly knows what you need for your brain. If you want to heal unbalanced sugar sensitivity, call me at 505-345-3737 and ask me about how each one works.

Sign up​​​​​​​
"The fun thing will be to see your feelings emerge as you do the program."
Testimonial of the Week

Doretta found how her food can support her through a harrowing experience:


I was involved in a multiple vehicle accident on the Cimarron turnpike about 40 miles outside of Tulsa. A truck pulling a trailer ahead of me sheared off the lug nuts on two wheels. The wheels came into my lane and I hit one of them dead on. Two cars behind me hit the same wheel.

Miraculously, no injuries to anyone!!!!! So four vehicles and two Oklahoma Highway Patrol officers spent the next two hours on the side of the road in the Oklahoma darkness (a beautiful starry night with 5 healthy people) while three flatbed tow trucks came to get us and an industrial tow truck came to get the trailer.

I called Bob and told him I planned to have the vehicle towed to a Saturn dealer in Tulsa and take a taxi to my first day of work in the morning. But I was pretty shaken up. We just got the vehicle in May. He immediately left his job and started out for Tulsa so I could use his truck to go to work in the morning.

On my way into Tulsa with the tow truck driver, the tow truck ran out of gas. He called a coworker who brought us enough fuel to get to the service station.

The new alarm clock I bought for the apartment didn't work correctly and went off too early. I went to my new job with 4 hours of sleep.

I was thinking the whole time how horrible the experience could have been if I wasn't in this program. I was so calm and clear thinking, even thought I was tired and cold. And I knew there would be solutions to the problems.

The morning after, I got up and ate my radiant breakfast and even though I was exhausted and worn out, I knew I had the skills to cope with whatever the day brought. That's something I've NEVER had before this and it's changed my whole life.

I'm so grateful to all of you and to Kathleen for this!
Radiant Recovery Store
George's Restore
Buy Now

We mostly carry things you put in your mouth in the store. But honestly, this cream is so amazing I make sure we have it is stock. If your hands hurt, try this.


All-natural CM Response® Topical Cream provides fast relief from joint pain and discomfort, tendonitis, muscle cramps and soreness from injury. This amazing topical cream contains two of the most effective joint - health ingredients on the market - a patented vegetable source of Cetyl Myristoleate and Glucosamine-HCL - combined with soothing Aloe Vera for easy application and comfort.


CM Response® Topical Cream contains only natural ingredients and acts as an anti-inflammatory agent, an analgesic and a joint lubricant. CM Response® Topical Cream is very effective in relieving neck and back pain and pain from arthritis, including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and fibromyalgia.


Come visit our STORE. Call 505-345-3737 if you have questions.
Diane's Baked Beans
Wonderful Tofu

I love this recipe. It is quick, easy and delicious. I grew up in New England and franks and beans were part of Saturday night traditions. To be able to have *program friendly* alternatives is wonderful.

And yes, you can get good franks. Don't scare yourself about franks, just read the labels.

Try these beans, they are so good.
Check out the Recipe section
Radiant Living
Radiant Living is geared to looking at Step 7 issues. This is where you go if you want to talk about "life" things. It is open to people who are on Step 7 or people who have been on Step 7, got lost and want to come back to what they know is best for them. As many of you may know, we shifted the YLD chats to have a designated topic each week. Radiant Living remains *on demand* so we can respond to issues that are coming up for the chatters. It sure is fun!
Find Radiant Living here
Your Last Diet!
Your Last Diet Book Cover

This week's article will give you a sense of what we are really doing in Your Last Diet. HEALING fat terror, healing shame, stopping the awful, awful angst and then if you want to lose weight, we will guide you in your step by step plan.


If you are not a member yet, come and join us. If you are a current member and want to join us in the new chat room, come to the landing page. We will send you the pass words after you join.


If you would like to join us in YLD, come find us here. ​​​​​​​
Man sitting on stage

What Really Happens In the Program

Kathleen DesMaisons, PhD ​​​​​​​

We held Ranch last May. It was an incredible experience. We were under a 200-year-old cottonwood tree that moved and soothed us with her sound. A phoebe called each morning while we sat outside eating breakfast. People shared deeply. Here is what one person said:


As Janice said, I'm not sure I have completely processed all that happened for me at ranch, nor that I can express it clearly. The bottom line, though, is that I since I have returned, I have never felt more peaceful. As I was getting settled in bed last night I noticed there was not a single nerve buzzing in my feet, or sciatica pain in my legs or pain anywhere or any troubling thoughts running around in my head, my whole being felt 'quiet.' And I just sort of melted into the bed and went sound asleep. What a blessing.

I loved the whole ranch experience. The Adobe Gardens as a venue was awesome. I loved its decor, the rooms are fabulous and Tricia and Lee made the most delicious program-friendly food and provided the perfect outdoor dining atmosphere for us to share its abundance together. I hope we get to be there from now on.


I liked that the group was smaller than some we've had. It was nice to be able to interact with all. Actually, being with everyone we share with online during the year provides an intimacy to relationship that continues to deepen and is comforting.


Then the content: What a perfect blend of being reminded what the program is and how it works (because of the newer people) and seeing and hearing the results (from those who have been around a while). I loved the discussions about feelings, allowing me to probe my own in a way that was not scary, and even to share some of those scary ones that have shaped who I am today, giving me permission through the meditation to lift the blanket and sit with my wounded child. Whew!

Last week I was talking with one of the attendees who commented on the fact that it didn’t seem as if Radiant Recovery cares about “weight loss”. She had recently lost 60 posts and no one commented on it at Ranch. There was another person there who had lost 40 pounds. I called her and asked her if anyone had said anything. She said, “No.” I had come to Ranch after losing 30 pounds. No one commented on that either. This was fascinating to me.


I really thought about this. Was it that we “don’t care”? Or was something else going on. I was washing the dishes and I had this incredible thought. “Kathleen, this is the ESSENCE of what you have wanted to create. All along you wanted to free people from the tyranny of ‘fat terror’. You wanted to create a place where we are not defined by pounds or a number on a scale. You wanted to do something deeper, something more important and it sure as heck wasn’t about weight.”


Then I was laughing. Try to explain THAT, Kathleen. Ask people to set aside the belief that losing weight will solve all of life’s struggles in return for something more? Here is where it gets a little strange. I sat down at the computer and went to Yahoo groups to respond to the Beta Endorphin Class. The last lesson had asked them to describe what life might be like if it was a “beta endorphin filled life.” Here is what one person wrote


Your note was lovely to read, Nancy, thank you so much for sharing.

I've been thinking about this for days too, and I too lack the courage to describe the life I want -- it feels too "uppity" and too risky, as if writing it is asking for it, and asking for it will bring some kind of cosmic punishment -- so I'm afraid my list right now mostly consists of things I'd like to be different:

- I'd like to feel less shaky and fragile, not be thrown by small things, like something going wrong with the car -- to feel more resilient. I'd like to be able to take in constructive criticism or even teasing without reacting so much.

- I'd like to have a sense of connection with people without constantly feeling that I need to withdraw to the safety of my own company; and I'd like to have a better sense of where my needs meet another person's -- that I don't imagine their discomfort over a request I might make to be so great that I have no right to make it.

- I'd like to have compassion rather than paralyzing empathy, and I'd especially like my first thought when I see an animal not to be a projection of suffering -- like when I see a burro lying in a field my first thought would be that it's enjoying the sunshine, rather than the immediate worry that it's dead and a projection into some imagined fear and suffering it might have gone through, and that I need to do something about that.

- I'd like to have a more sustained sense of the rightness of things, and of joy -- right now I can't feel joy, appreciation, or gratitude without an accompanying anticipation of loss and the feeling that I can't allow myself to really appreciate things, because then I'll miss them too much when they're gone.

I don't know if all that is too much to hope for, but when I read Nancy's note I see the inverse of some of these same things, so maybe … ?


Ok, so here is the thing. All these things are all a function of low Beta Endorphin. And as you heal, and you do the steps, they will change. I totally and absolutely promise this. This is why I changed my life to write for you, to go back to school to understand it, to quit my job and risk everything. I KNEW the power of that promise…do the steps and your life will change. I don’t yet know how to describe the power of what happens. The article for today’s newsletter is really just a preview. But, yah it is bigger than weight loss, stay tuned.

Here is the Annie Lane column that brought so many of you here.


Dear Annie: I read with interest the letter from "Weird, Stupid or Selfish?" – whose husband eats all the decorative candy she puts out. His inability to resist sugar resonated with me, as I have sugar sensitivity and have engaged in exactly the same behaviors. I simply could not resist sugar.


After years of struggling and dieting and sitting in work meetings obsessing about the doughnuts instead of the topic at hand, I discovered the book "Potatoes Not Prozac," by Kathleen DesMaisons. Her theory is that people who are sugar sensitive have brains that respond differently to sugar, alcohol and refined carbs and that what they eat and when they eat it have a huge effect on them. She shows how to rebalance blood sugar levels, serotonin and beta-endorphins through small lifestyle changes and offers the latest research, free online support and seven steps to change your life. It is not about willpower; it’s about biochemistry, which her program can slowly improve, just one tiny step at a time, with amazing results.


I have been sugar-free for six years now, lost 25 pounds and never gained any of it back. I can go to dinner with family and don’t even think twice when someone orders dessert. I don’t have cravings, and sugar is no longer on my radar. I am more focused and more tolerant, and the daily mood swings are gone. The woman who wrote to you could suggest to her husband that he check out http:// radiantrecovery.com to see whether he does have sugar sensitivity. At the very least, she would be better informed about this condition. – Happy Without Sugar


Dear Happy Without Sugar: I hadn’t considered that health issues might explain

her husband’s behavior. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of sugar sensitivity.

Thanks for opening my eyes to the condition! I’d like to encourage all readers to talk to their doctors if they find themselves compulsively eating sugary snacks.

—Email questions to dearannie@creators.com


ANNIE LANE
©2018 Kathleen DesMaisons. All rights reserved. You are free to use or transmit this article to your blog 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 for additional resources on sugar sensitivity and healing addiction.

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