Books: The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Program

The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Program
By Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.
Copyright 2000

This book says sugar is addictive and if you eat too much of it, it's because you've got the sugar habit.

The book outlines in great detail a 7-step program to beat your addiction to sugar. Here are the steps:

1. Eat breakfast with protein.
2. Journal about your food and body.
3. Eat three meals a day with protein. (I think you're supposed to skip the snacks in here but the book doesn't come right and say "DON'T HAVE SNACKS"; however, I think it is greatly implied).
4. Take specific vitamins and eat a potato every night (yeah, every night...)
5. Stop eating white food (like white rice) and eat brown food (like brown rice). Potatoes, by the way, are classified as a brown food because the skin is brown... yeah, I know, it's a logic stretch.
6. Stop eating stuff with sugar in it and
7. Get a life.

I honestly don't know that I could ever *not* have a piece of birthday cake, or a piece of fudge. The key, of course, is to only have one piece and not the entire cake.

That said, I have determined to embark upon this as a major effort in my life, because I do think I can eliminate a lot of sugar, if not all of it. I guess the idea is that, like alcoholism, if you have a little bit you slide and have a lot. Plus the book advocates taking months to do this; this is why eliminate sugar is not the first step.

Apparently if you eat enough protein with meals, you don't have those crash times when you desperately need a Coke. Or at least they aren't so bad.

The potato at night is rather odd but apparently this author believes that potatoes, which is a slow-release carbohydrate, helps your body make tryptophan, which is necessary for mood enhancement.

There was a lot of stuff about tryptophan and serotonin and beta-endorphins, much of which I recognized from the time I was in therapy and read many books about such things.

However, I bought a couple of other "diet" books to read, too, so I may change my mind about this. Really this seems like a slow way to get on the Atkins diet, or a way to make the Atkins diet a bit more livable. And the Atkins diet does work, but it is difficult to stay on.

So wish me luck as I break my "sugar" habit. Here's to losing the flab ...