Overcoming a Desire

Blog note: my other blog http://philosophyofweightmanagement.blogspot.ca/ and this blog being merged into one thought stream, to overcome overeating. 

So now that we understand that there is a desire behind a craving some of the time, we need to understand how to quash desires. 

The process of overcoming a specific desire is not direct but rather to push out that desire with a new and different desire. Ah yes, escape by doing something else. A conscious effort to replace a desire by a different activity.  Now when we consider the desire to eat, what should we replace it with. It does not matter, walking, reading, anything.

We can also quash desires by thinking how disgusting the desire is.  In stoic style, a desire for a dead fish or a chunk of dead beef.  A root or tuber grown in dirt, or perhaps think of the cabbage worms that frequent brassica. How can we make eating a disgusting image? Sugar and grains are poison marketed by evil persons. The health industry does not care about nutrition, and the food industry does not care about health. It is us against the government and the industrial products they would like us to eat.   

So how is overcoming a desire different that overcoming a habit? But these are connected. A habit is something we do because we have always done it. It would feel unnatural if we did not do it. It is desire control; we are slaves to our desires. F that, I want to be free. When our unconscious is in control, and we are on autopilot, it is habit.  So what are we saying? Habit is the automatic behavior stimulated by an automatic desire? So we consciously do some else and displace the automatic habit and the underlying desire.

Examining desire removal, yields solution in the here and now, not in time = never never concepts used in religions. We need to use reason, logic, and processes to quash desire. 

So why is it so difficult to adopt a new behavior, and ignore the underlying desire?

butwhatdoiknow?