Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Willful Overeating

Willful overeating is a concept that we have a choice, to eat because of the causes of overeating or not. It is willful because we want to eat and it is our will that drives us to eat. It is the recognition that it is a willful act that may help others as it has helped me.

We can choose to overeat, rather than taking the appropriate steps, or we can take those steps. These steps are not necessarily the 12 steps, they need reworking in light of modren knowledge.  Addiction and addiction like requires total absence of the addictive food stuff. The first sign of "addiction like processes" is claiming it is not addiction, but I like it. These are essentially chemicals, that if consumed, cause us to want to eat more. It is those food that turn on desires for more, either those foods or others, or just volume, that is creating the problem. Typical addictive foods are sugar, wheat, dense carbohydrates, and dairy products. In the first step of recovery from morbid obesity and obesity is to stop consuming these foods, completely. If you are unwilling to attempt to stop, and ultimately stop, it is willful overeating. There is no hope. You are just willfully eating. Until you can want to stop eating, go away and enjoy your foods. WHEN YOU WANT TO FOLLOW AND ARE WILLING TO LISTEN, come back.

Second, we need to look at maladaptive eating and eliminate that process. This is eating for emotional reasons, stress, or other non hunger causes of overeating. The most effective way of dealing with this is to learn proper methods of dealing with whatever you are not dealing with. There is philosophy and psychology to help. Note that I have put philosophy first, It is the quickest and most powerful, but even it may require considerable change. The whole process is educational, and can cause major upset in your way of thinking. Some much loved concepts may need to be abandoned like a dead car at the side of the road. Some thing may be necessary to run away from like controlling people, control freaks, and even some religions.

Third is the environment and temptation conditions we live in. Parts of these may require cleaning, replacement, destruction and reconstruction. This may require considerable effort.

Now comes the physical problems, some of which we cannot change, but instead we must learn to live with. Hyperphagia, polyphagia, the desire to overeat are tough problems. One thing we can do, is willfully resist. We need to remove all the chemicals that will cause us to desire to overeat, and what remains is pure physical. Some of these pure physical are natural, and can be greatly reduced by following a specific diet which shuns specific food groups. Dietitians frequently argue against this approach, but for some of us, it makes recovery possible. Dietitians who do not pay attention to these natural process in we, the obese and exobese, cause essentially willful overeating.

Now when it comes down to the end, I do not care what you eat. This is how I think about it for relief. Fifty years of listening to the professional did not cause recovery, but these few simple concepts have made a difference. If we remove all the causes of overeating, the problem should go away. This is all an educational process. I missed something in my instinctual life; I must therefore make that up with more training, education and practice.

The groups of cause of overeating are willful overeating, physical, environmental, maladaptive, and addiction like.We all have the ability to learn the necessary parts we are missing to overcome this overeating problem.

But then what do I know eh?

Sunday, July 27, 2014

The key

There are five groups of reasons that cause overeating:

  1. willful overeating, as in Newfie,   I wants________.
  2. physical causes
  3. environment and tempations
  4. maladaptive behavior
  5. food addiction
for more details on the last 4 see http://philosophyofweightmanagement.blogspot.ca/2014/07/expansion-of-lettuce-effect.html

Friday, July 25, 2014

Changes in our beleif system

Recovery is as much about changing our belief system as anything else, once we get free of the addiction and physical forces that drive us to overeat. It is the changes in our belief system that tell us to only eat moderate meals three times each day, nothing in between, and live this day without fear of the past or future, without resentments, worry, concern for the future, and keep our mind on that which is within our power.

Having said all that, we need to define what is within out power, and our prime principals we live our life by, our priority list of principles.

First, I will say that this is my opinion, and I have no right to force my ideas on others, just as they have no right to force their opinions on me. Parents should be aware of this. My "childhood" was ugly, and this was not the opinion of my parents, as projected from there actions. It is not the way of any religion, including AA and OA. We are free people, able to make our own decisions. The most important part is likely being able to express the reasons for our decision/opinion. The reason for this statement is freedom to choose, and our resistance for others pushing there opinions or way of life on us. Freedom is only possible this way, not with imposed rules by others.

Life must be in accordance with nature, yes, but if it is not within nature, it would not be possible. Nature allows or permits anything, so what is right and what is the ultimate test? All humans should be equal, that is the basics of the golden rule, do unto others as you would they do unto you. OK, that is the foundation to start fleshing out this philosophy a bit more.

What is important? Virtue. Justice. Duty. Responsibility. Prudence. Temperance. Courage. Perseverance. Rigorous honesty. Silence, ignoring some people, questions. Freedom.

What principals are meaningless, or irrelevant? Honor. What other people think of us. What society says, or does.

We do trade a bit of freedom for security. How much do we trade is up to us. Devotion to a education, to a company, for pension - if it actually happens, we will be lucky. We see all those iron workers who's company used there pension to buy time to bankruptcy. Job gone, pension funds gone. Old. Now what?

Where does pleasure rate in all this, and what is pleasure? Certainly the absence of pain, emotional and physical is a preferred thing, but this can be had but separating out that which is in our power from that which is not, and using our ability to chose only within our power, to limit our desires to that which is within our power, and to ignore that which is beyond our power. That which is beyond our power is none of our concern. Pleasure can be gleaned from the small things, an arrow well shot, or an arrow just shot without concern for it's final location. A weed pulled. A dog happy. A nice cup of tea. Simple. A sunrise seen, or a sunset. The time to think, watch, observe, and contemplation of action taken or not, or future actions possible just to agitate the loud mouthed young punk.

After we decide what is important in life, for us and others, we can go on to construct that life in the future. The past is done; evaluate the value of the lesson, remember the lessons if it is of value, and move on. Bradley is just a young loud mouth yappy punk with opinions on everything, his opinion is just an opinion, and it without much consideration and largely based on his wants, likes, dislikes, not on the value to others. It is noise.

Ah, but what do I know?    

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Just for Today

A bit of psychology/philosophy that AA built a religion on, can it get us through the days, long term? Just for today is a concept of making only this day the objective for consideration for today. It is all about getting through today, tomorrow we can worry about tomorrow. This concept can work well short term, an unknown short period. It is a short break in though, a vacation and never left the farm, sitting there on that sack of seeds. Wildwood Weed - Jim Stafford . Or Marcus Aurelius 4.3.

Back in 1969 I had a instructor at a technology college that told us of this philosophy, and how to use it to deal with pressure of exams. There was too much work, too much reading papers, assignments, and all the classes. No one could do it all. We had to decide how much work we could do. I decided to do enough to get through in all subjects, and any extra time would be spread where I thought I need it. Sacrifice the potentially high marks in some subjects, just to prop up the potentially lower marks in some subjects. Lay out a 60 hour a week plan of time use, and live one day at a time until the last final exams. The marks were irrelevant to the plan. One day at a time worked, short term.

This was not the first time I had explored this concept. Dale Carnegie, in either How to Win Friends and Influence People or in his Stop Worrying and Start Living expresses the concept of living in day-tight compartments... a similar concept, if not the same concept, expressed in different words. There is much of his two books that is in the BB, but not in the same words. Was Carnegie a concept copier?     Oh well, that is irrelevant.

But doing that just for today really grinds after a while. Short term it helps to focus, but long term? It is a management method, not a solution to anything, at least for me. I need something that holds my interest but does not leave me physically drained, unwilling to do anything beyond wonder around the house. Bait is everywhere. That is a environmental situation that the only way to change is go away. Do I have the energy to resist or go away? The solution to to get on with something, as last days distraction.

Enough. I am going out to kill something.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Distraction

Comments from my other blog  http://philosophyofweightmanagement.blogspot.ca/ made me need to explain more of my situation. Tradition 2 also states we have a duty to tell other of what we have learned.

Distraction - other activity - is a management tool that works as long as we can maintain enough desire to do the distraction. Work was mine for years. Then I retired... Now I need a cure. Now I need to understand this problem. AA, OA, RR, FA, FAA, HOW, ACORN, SMART,,,, and most of those others do not understand the issue, but have devised belief systems, that "if you believe this and do this, your problem will go away." Well, it has not. Why? because it is a physical problem in my case. All these programs do is beef up the psychological ability to deal with the problems. They are addressing the wrong problem, in my case. This is why they work for anyone who can believe without proof, without logic, without reason. These things are religions.

Jack Tripp, in the second paragraph get the AA message wrong, we are powerless over alcohol, meaning - if we consume it, we will want more- not over the choice to drink. Choice is all we have. You can choose to follow a program that works for others, or you can go elsewhere. It was the only know solution at the time. That is Jack's ignorance of the AA message. Bill wanted to say we are willpowerless but that is not a word. (see AA comes of age, or was it in The Vicious Cycle, Jim Burwell). The big book was edited by committee in effect.

The word "disease" was used to bring it into the doctors realm, so that treatment could be funded. If you got a better word, use it. It is a natural occurring condition that occurs after some to considerable overindulgence in some people. What single work covers all that? Obesity is a fat storage problem. Overeating is a neroendrocrine issue. Learning to control our will is a philosophical mater, while learning to control our behavior is a psychological matter. So what expert are you going to turn to?  

We have free will, well, within our control and real choices. What our body dictates is not free choice, unless we can keep our bodies from "wanting". That is the diet hack, getting our bodies to want only what it needs. Will power can only hold up so long. We can transfer the decision to a different part of our brain by making a rule, and thereby change the food choice to a belief section or emotional section of our brain, give it more force. But if our body is wanting, we will soon be in trouble.

My overweight body wants carbohydrates as soon as it gets a taste of them. The only way to win is to disallow dense carbohydrates, something like Atkins induction or R Bernstein, (R not S, but S also may work). It does not matter which carbohydrate, but 30 grams per day is a few leafs. Else-wise it is a struggle. The worst part about all this is I am becoming more carbohydrate intolerant, and everyone is pushing carbohydrates. Acknowledging that carbohydrates smell or taste good produces cognitive dissonance, so carbohydrate is a sweet poison, bate to a trap.        

But really, what do I know.
 

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Adrenaline Junkie

Is the whole overeating problem adrenaline issue? Perhaps I live in a manner that produces high adrenaline, and the overeating is a way to take the edge off in the evenings, or should that be of an evening, Joice? Or is it the other way, that I eat to cause adrenaline?

Sugar, the fructose portion and insulin are all sedatives. Glucose make the blood glucose higher. This is a known. Dr. Lustig says that we insulin resistant sugar junkies do not get sugar highs; we go on the prowl for more sugar. This sounds like me, if not on the prowl, the desire for more all the time. It is not hunger, just a craving that seldom goes away.  Oh well.

So what is a potential solution. Never get my adrenaline up. Can I be disinterested in most everything?

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

a course of vigorous action

When BB (pg 63) says we launch into a course of vigorous action, it is not referring to going to the gym ever day, but that might do us good anyway. We are by now set up with a new belief system, perhaps an new judgement evaluation system of adequate impressions, perhaps we have learned to look at our conversion matrix, cost benefit analysis, life plan, or rely on our god concept, whatever, we have a new way of thinking about life and life situations. Perhaps we even have new ground rules, and a bit more knowledge of our problem and the solution. Regardless, we need to develop and more importantly implement an new program of vigorous action. 

OA has adopted an action plan, SMART a push to living a balanced life, what ever that may be. In the processes of change, we have an action stage, and until we can live in recovery and maintenance, we need to salivate around the action stage, just like a wet mouth hound with a inverted smile of drool. We need to want it, that is the action. Idle time is the devils playground, or something like that to you bible thumpers. The BB has a whole chapter (into action) on how we can abuse ourselves, or we can just get on with life.

We need to understand what our role in society should be and get on with it, at least between meals. We can choose, it is our plan that we must ascent to, or you can stay in bed, warm, and not do the work of a human today. As we trudge the road of happy destiny, I am sure more will be revealed. This suggest that we need a concept of our future, or a plan, a purpose in life of some kind to act as a driver, whipping us into action.

but what do I know.