Picture of an antique doll
Welcome to Radiant Recovery®
March 10, 2019,
Hi {!firstname_fix},
I am going to start each newsletter with a *joy dot*. For those of you not familiar with this practice, it is writing about some moment that just touched you during the day. My joy dot for today is discovering the little pillow and pillowcase I found that belong my mother's doll, Betty. It is a hundred years old. I was thinking about washing the pillow but at first thought I couldn't because it is filled with some sort of seeds. Tonight I was looking at it and noticed on one side it is stitched with tiny little stitches.My grandmother made clothes for Betty with those same tiny stitches. So I can open it, wash it and restore it. I will be writing lots more about Betty and her life, this is one tiny start. That doll up there is not Betty, but she looks like her. I will do a whole story on Betty in a bit.
I want to let you know that I have actually revised the template for our newsletters. I will write it up and post it on the newsletter page at the website. If you have not been over to that page, go visit. It is where we post the newsletters each week.
Our little group for men continues to flourish. Several new guys have joined us and we are having a lot of fun exploring male journaling :) If you want to be involved email me and I will get you set up.
The journaling class is continuing. I will comment on that below in the classes section. Mostly this has been a time of complete re-evaluation of directions for the community. In the midst of all of this, my publisher has sent back the manuscript of the new edition of Potatoes Not Prozac. It has all the copy edits, comments and questions that a very seriously pay-attention-to-detail person might come up including such things as whether to us a & or the word and in all the science citations. I put on nice music and do the job.
I have been editing the testimonials for the beginning of the book and decided to start sharing those with you here. Think of it as a preview :)
Stop by the Community Forum. We have been having a very funny discussion of chocolate experiments and Fritos. If you want to ask questions that are a little outside the bounds of the steps, the Forum is the place to do it.I hope you will come share your thoughts there. I am very interested in your ideas.
Support for Your Program
COMMUNITY FORUM
Share with others, ask questions, explore everything and anything about your program.Yes, even topics like chocolate and Fritos.
Share
GROUPS
Work on your steps, get information on what to eat while running a marathon, ask about depression meds, learn how to do life ;) . Groups are free and fun.
Sign Up for Groups
JOIN US ON FACEBOOK
If you prefer talking on Facebook, come over to one of our three groups there. Radiant Recovery®, Radiant Recovery® International or Radiant Recovery® Germany that shares in German.
CLASSES
The Learning to Journal class is continuing with a great deal of enthusiasm and the Return to Radiance Class is ROCKIN!
WORKING WITH KATHLEEN
I feel very strongly about offering you a a number of ways 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.
Chats are offered 4 times weekly through the Your Last Diet Program and the Radiant Living Program. You pay one lifetime fee of $99 and then have continuing access to the cutting edge issues we explore each week. We have talked about Adult Children of Alcoholic issues, Gaslighting, Problem Solving, among other things in the last month.I have been told this is one our most amazing offerings.
Signature Coaching is personalized and intensive coaching geared to your specific situation. You may want to step out of the craziness of sugar addiction, return to steadiness and clarity after slipping away, slow down and focus on your recovery, or deepen a steady rhythm of recovery.
This is a way to step out of amnesia and anesthesia into joy and focused growth. Not only will you learn best practices of doing the food, you will draw from skilled, informed professional life coaching. No one knows about healing the sugar sensitive brain and body than Kathleen. She has been on the cutting edge for 30 years and is able to cut through your chaos and take you to the heart of your recovery.
A typical plan starts with a 90 day commitment, but often flows into a year because the work is so fruitful.
Ready to Start?
Email me to book a free introductory coaching chat.
"Food will no longer be your enemy, but your support."
Testimonial of the Week

For the first time in my life, I am not fighting constant hunger.I always knew we had alcoholic relatives, and my mother was hypoglycemic, but until I read your book I never correlated the two. It makes perfect sense! In the past seven months I have lost 20 pounds effortlessly. I enjoy exercising but the weight NEVER came off, not before the program. I've recommended your book to my daughter and my niece and each has lost 12-15 pounds. Thanks for your good work.

A. Redwood City, CA
Seven Steps to Healing
This is David, your Radiant Recovery® Concierge
Come visit our STORE. Call 505-345-3737 if you have questions.
David, the store manager, is always happy to help.
Your Body Speaks Journal
Buy Now
This is THE best resource you can get to add to your program. Not only does it have the perfect format, it has quotes from Kathleen on every page and great lists of feelings. Add this to your program, and feel it deepen.
Do you want to keep having recipes?
Buckwheat and Brown Rice pancakes

We are going to start talking about whether you would like me to continue posting recipes in the newsletter. We will have this discussion over on RadiantTable, our group to talk about program cooking. I will meet you over there.
Get the Full Recipe
Your Last Diet!
Your Last Diet Book Cover

Chats are sometimes funny, sometimes light, sometimes instructive. And other times, they are just *one of those wonder moments.* Thank you all for coming. That last chat about gaslighting was mind boggling.

I just wanted to take a minute to let you know how profound Wed. chat was for me. It felt like you were reading my mind. I was right there with it. Then I realized, "wait a minute, all these other people are experiencing this too!" It was one of those wonder moments for me and I just had to let you know.

Alison

If you would like to join us in YLD, come find us here.
Baked sweet potato
The Power of Radiant Recovery
Kathleen DesMaisons, PhD

A few years ago we had a discussion about OA (Overeaters Anonymous) and Radiant Recovery. Are they compatible? Should you do both?

OA is patterned after AA, so it is based on the idea of setting down the problem [they define it as compulsive overeating] and learning a new life.

OA says, *we learn that we are 'powerless over food' and that the spiritual awakening of turning our lives over to a power greater than us could heal us.*

OA offers incredible fellowship and support. Its focus is on *abstinence*, or giving up sugar and white flour and creating an individual food plan that gets you there.

Here is the difference. RR does not believe that *powerlessness* is a good construct for women in particular. There is a core difference in the baseline. RR simply says that some of us have different bodies. That chemistry sets us up to respond to some food differently. *Food* is not the issue. And we are not powerless over *food*.

Food is good....And some foods set up a biochemical response that leads to compulsion and addiction.

But *we* are not *powerless*. If we heal the imbalance that leads to the addiction, then we are able to make profound life changes.Healing is about empowerment.

And personally, I have a major problem with the concept of *abstinence*...it is so negative and punitive. And if you *lose* abstinence, you have to start all over. How silly is that? Far better to approach healing as a process...you learn skills. You don't just stop sugar or compulsive eating. Stopping sugar is only a tiny part of healing. In RR we want you to heal. You learn to take tiny, nano steps so you succeed. You count your recovery based on your COMMITMENT to heal, and not on abstinence.

Your struggles in RR become treasures to learn from. Your *relapse* becomes a teacher rather than a failure. Your *defects of character* are simply biochemically driven behaviors that just seem to get resolved as you do the food and learn to change behaviors. Now, I know this will sound silly, but I just had an awakening.

The 7th step in OA says, *humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings....* I have read this for many years in AA, this morning I read it at the OA site and I thought...this is so different from RR. I think the removal of the things we wish to let go of is what heals us. It is called taking responsibility.

My perspective is that doing the food is not grace's job. It is mine, LOL. I work on the food, I learn to take responsibility. I learn how to communicate, to do anger differently, to do intimacy differently. That is not grace's job, it is mine.

I think perhaps RR is less about spiritual conversion and more about practical ways to eat breakfast, to stop obsessing about SUGAR, including abstaining from it. And to start working with healing. What will I add today to make my life more full? How can I have shake on time?

How can I laugh, not take myself so seriously? How can I stop being afraid or ashamed of my addiction and simply kiss it on its black nose and say, come on darling, time for a different way? Let's use those fabulous addictive skills on behalf of healing.

Do I love the RR way? You bet I do. I love every part of it, every nuance, every scruffy little thing. It is informed by grace, by experience, by thousands of lives and by this deep knowing that addiction can be healed. And it is informed by those funny seven steps that work so well.

Can you do both? Of course. Many people do. If you have a group that will allow you to use the RR *plan* as your food plan, you can get the best of both worlds. But make sure you keep laughing. Laughter will heal you no matter what. And that potato helps too.

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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