Summary

Are You Sugar Sensitive? Have you ever wondered why you just can't seem to say no to fattening foods, alcohol or troubling behaviors like overspending and overworking? The answer is not that you're lazy, self-indulgent or undisciplined. The problem lies in your body chemistry. In her groundbreaking book, Potatoes Not Prozac, Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D., addictive nutrition expert, reveals that emotional troubles such as mood swings or depression often can't be fought by medication. Her radical new way of finding and maintaining mental and physical health offers instead a prescription for altering our eating habits. Millions of people are sugar-sensitive -- which means they have a special body chemistry that reacts in extreme ways to sugar and refined carbohydrates like white bread and pasta. DesMaisons reveals that these "comfort" foods actually provide just the opposite effect, triggering feelings of exhaustion, hopelessness and low self-esteem. What's worse, these foods don't stop our cravings for them -- they only make us want to go back for more. Helping us to free ourselves from sugar dependency, DesMaisons explains how certain food dependent chemicals in the brain regulate our moods. Once we understand how these biochemicals react to what we eat -- or what we don't eat -- we are free to control our lives. Serotonin, beta-endorphins and blood sugar need to be kept in balance. We can achieve this balance by following DesMaisons's inexpensive, all-natural nutritional plan, which has resulted in a 92 percent success rate with recovering alcoholics, and emotional stability for the thousands of people she has treated in her practice. In addition to food charts, questionnaires to determine your own sugar sensitivity, and accessible scientific lessons that explain your body chemistry, DesMaisons provides a straightforward seven-step plan to overcome your addictions. There is no regime of measurements or self-denial: you tailor the plan to your tastes and lifestyle. These steps are actually more liberating than any diet could be. You will no longer settle for the short-term relief from pain or problems that cookies or ice cream might give you. You will find the optimism, energy and high self-esteem you have craved for so long. Because DesMaisons is committed to her own recovery, she is a compassionate, skilled guide in navigating you through this process, one choice at a time. And what you learn in the end, she says, is that the process isn't about food at all. "As we come into balance, we can shape our own direction rather than being driven by biochemical circumstances. We feel empowered to make changes in our lives and to control what is happening to us. What seemed like a story about food is really a story about possibility." You can change your life with Potatoes Not Prozac.