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Day 20: Potatoes, Not Prozac
My friend and fellow candy freak Meg reminded me of a 1999 book and a program I read years ago that was very helpful but that I’d forgotten about. The book is called Potatoes not Prozac: A Natural Seven-Step Dietary Plan to Stabilize the Level of Sugar in Your Blood, Control Your Cravings and Lose Weight, and Recognize How Foods Affect the Way You FeelAs put forth by author Kathleen DesMaisons, the simple idea behind “Potatoes not Prozac” is that sweetfreaks have a sensitivity to sugar much the same way alcoholics are allergic to alcohol. They crave that which is the worst thing for them. (See also: the majority of the population of Ireland.)
You can get all sorts of crucial information at DesMaisons’ website called Radiant Recovery.
Here’s what’s on the front page of Radiant Recovery:
Are You a Sugar Junkie?
Are you tired of looking good on the outside but feeling bad on the inside?
Maybe you have a lot of potential, but you can be moody, impulsive, angry, tired, restless, overwhelmed and stressed out. Or you are overweight, flirting with diabetes, struggling with depression, drinking more than you want to or working hard to keep your eating disorder hidden from others. Are you plagued with low self-esteem and hopelessness even though you act like everything is all right?
Are you driven by cravings and need sugar, alcohol or excitement to keep you from feeling helpless or hopeless? You probably tell yourself things aren’t so bad and you can stop anytime. But you can’t and things keep getting worse.
You probably think your sugar addiction is about lack of willpower or discipline or motivation. It is not. It is about your biochemistry. You were born with a body that responds to sugar, alcohol and refined carbohydrates differently than other people. You are sugar sensitive. Sugar acts like a drug in your body. In fact, it affects the very same brain chemicals that morphine, heroin and amphetamines do.
Because you have a sugar-sensitive body, you can be addicted to sugar. You can’t NOT eat it. And because you are sugar sensitive, the “high” you get from eating sugar is actually heightened.
Sugar addiction is not a joke or a fad. It is a serious problem for your health and happiness.
Being sugar sensitive means you have unstable blood sugar, low serotonin and low beta endorphin. All three are out of balance. When this happens, you feel bad and you cannot will or medicate or talk your way into feeling better. Therapy, self-help or 12-step programs alone cannot heal you either because they do not heal the cause of your addiction: your sugar-sensitive biochemistry.
If you are sugar sensitive, what and when you eat has a huge impact on how you feel. Eating a diet high in sugar, refined flour, alcohol and junk foods makes your sugar sensitivity – and your moods – out of control.
When your sugar-sensitive body is in balance, life is good. When it is out of balance, life is miserable.
Getting Well
Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D. has designed a program to heal your body’s sugar sensitivity and bring it into balance. She is a pioneer in the field of addictive nutrition and was the first to give sugar sensitivity a name. She understands your issues and knows the huge impact sugar has on your body and mind.
When Dr. DesMaisons first developed her revolutionary program, she was running a drug and alcohol addiction treatment center. She recognized that the alcoholics she was working with were also sugar addicts. When she addressed their sugar addiction by adding a nutritional component to the traditional treatment for alcoholism, she had an unparalleled success rate of 92%, even among long-term, hardcore alcoholics.
Dr. DesMaisons introduced her nutritional program for healing sugar sensitivity to the world in 1998 in her first book Potatoes Not Prozac. In it she outlined seven steps to restore balance in the sugar-sensitive brain and body. These steps work by using nutrition to balance blood sugar, raise serotonin and keep beta endorphins at optimal levels. This changes the body’s sugar-sensitive biochemistry and has an enormous effect on self-esteem and well-being.
Dr. DesMaisons has shown hundreds of thousands of sugar-sensitive people like you that if you change your food, you can change your life. Her program goes beyond symptom relief or behavioral training. It brings about profound, life-changing recovery.