I thought I knew everything about sugar sensitivity, but Kathleen DesMaisons (also the author of Potatoes Not Prozac) taught me a few more things in The Sugar Addict’s Total Recovery Program. There’s much to learn here, in particular about how your brain functions (or doesn’t).

The downside of this book is that is recommends eliminating sugar completely from your diet — as in, no birthday cake, no Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, no placating your great auntie by eating her special banana trifle. That’s no fun! Beside which, setting the bar so high can lead to an all-or-nothing attitude instead of a healthier lifestyle. She offsets that problem, however, by offering a “total recovery program,” not a diet, with a multi-tiered approach toward weaning yourself off the monkey. The “sugar detox” doesn’t come until weeks into the program, and she stresses that you still might not be ready and shouldn’t rush it. Finally, the goal isn’t to lose weight — it’s to stop being a slave to the white stuff, with all its attendant ills.

Another downside: She pushes 3 square meals a day, which just doesn’t work for everybody — and especially not for hypoglycemics, who probably number high among sugar addicts.

The book has one very odd recommendation for sugar sensitives: A nightly bedtime snack of … potato. That’s right, she wants you to eat a potato (with skin) every night, and swears the timed dose will operate over time like an anti-depressant: It’ll boost your serotonin levels, which will cheer you up, bolster your impulse control, and keep you from pigging out. Sounds hokey, but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try it.

My favorite part of the book is the section on beta-endorphins, chemicals in the brain that make us happy and sociable. Sugar sensitives tend to have lower beta-endorphin levels and turn to sugar to boost them. (Women get screwed again here: We tend to have lower serotonin and beta-endorphin levels than men.) DesMaison provides a list of activities that have been proven to raise beta-endorphins, including: yoga, exercise, prayer, music, petting your cat or dog, and kissing and hugging. (If those are the cures, give me the disease!)

The book is strongest when it suggests that diet and lifestyle changes, not drugs, should be the first line of defense in treatment of depression, even if they’re not always the last.