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?