Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Tarman's Separation

Vera Tarman of Food Junkies has put together part of the solution. Separation of food addiction and compulsive overeating. Food addiction is, as it sounds pure addiction to a food, usually sugar and white wheat flour, which raises blood sugar faster than pure sugar. Treatment is complete abstinence of sugar in all forms, and after several months, some relief in the desire is obtained.

Sugar, and wheat products stop being food, stop being even considered to be eatable. The problem dissipates.

Compulsive overeating is a different kettle of fish, and some of us have both issues. Food addiction must be the first to be addressed with a low carb diet.

Now on to compulsive eating. It is a learned behavior, and can be unlearned, with difficulty. It is often the result of using food to deal with all problems, emotions, feelings, anxiety, boredom, lack of interest in anything, free time, anything. Now we must learn to deal with all these things, from our native culture food pushing, to deal with nasty parents, abuse, and all the above list. When we learn to deal with those issues, we have an alternative method of cooping and should not need to eat over the issue, well in theory at least.

So no we need to recognize that we use food before the feeling, or emotion has even fully formed, we are eating and the issue has gone away. We need to stop eating and allow the feeling to develop; and deal with the cause of the feeling. Boredom and uninterested are the two big ones for me today, I just do not care about anything or anyone. That is dangerous. Being in continual low joint pain, and generally tired but not sleepy is also dangerous situation. Not wanting to socialize is also bad, but as I was religiously abuse in my youth, very low social need was the result.

Now add this to always being physically hungry, for some unknown reason, and you may start to understand the problem.     

Monday, July 24, 2017

Not within our control

My comment did not post so here it is, more or less:

https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-dichotomy-of-control/

“Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing.”

Not all of our desires are within our control. Our brain chemistry may be getting messed up, or it never was for all the population. Perhaps some segments are not all there; perhaps some of us are less evolved. Perhaps the wrong word was used in translation, or the concept behind the word has changed. Does desire include our biological imperatives, even when they are " run amuck" ?  Or are control of our desires just a philosophers wet dreams. Is the concept of control different for different people? I just do not know, but the statement that we have control of our desires is now bullshit. Perhaps it is more like we humans have changed or our environment has changed so much.

Ultimately, what I am getting at is some desires are biological, and not in our complete control, or not in our control all the time. Philosophy does not need to address reality. We living people do.

Perhaps it is more like in those time the possibility did not exist; therefore, we did not know of the possibility, hence, we could not even dream it. As I sit here, craving foods, after my allowed breakfast, I call bullshit on Epictetus's statement that we have control over all our desires.

When we start examining desires, we always find strange things. Consider obesity and alcoholism.  Now before you bring up AA's success rate, you must realize that AA is as effective as the "maturing out rate". See Straton Peele on that point. AA is a plan that is base on a falsehood, but it works for those who believe but never look at the evidence critically... just accept the sweet bullshit stories of religions. I use bullshit as the expression of not knowing and not caring of the truth of the statements. There is no other word for it.


    

Sunday, July 23, 2017

having lived through

Eating disorders are not fun. We are driven to eat by ourselves, against what we know to be good for ourselves, and are unable to stop the behavior. We have a split person, the body driving us to eat, and the mind knowing we must stop; the body always wins long term. So is there any solution? Well we need to stop the overeating, but the body is not stopping.

So the solution is letting go of the desire to eat, and stopping... and living with the desire... that does not stop... living with that nagging gnawing hunger that food takes away and provides relief from... for a while... and the medical community knows about but can provide no treatment beyond body mutilation.... that typically does not last anyway. From my years around programs, I must know thirty people who had various forms of gut mutilation and none of them were successful long term. That suggests that none of the problems were solved... the wrong problem was addressed... the eating disorder is in the head likely... so what is the solution to changing such desires... it is now my opinion that nobody knows... or is offering any evidence of a solution beyond hyper-vigilance and self forcing, self control against the body doing... eating.

Now those without eating disorders do not understand the feeling likely. It might be something like the gays feel, being drawn to an action with is not what most would classify as not normal, yet are drawn to it. A parallel could be drawn. Is it the same misappropriation of desires? But with the food, acting on results in obesity. So this is really the question, how does one recover? Just stop overeating... well obviously... but can a gay just stop the behavior... or a religious just stop believing the idiocy...



     

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

OO Overcoming Overeating

Overcoming overeating by Jane Hirschmann is a book that claims to understand and provide a solution to this problem. It does not address the other situation, when the gut hunger is just too large. It separates out the non hunger munchies from hunger and speaks to dealing with the munchies as the cause of overeating. Just eat when you are physically hungry.

Hirschmann claims that the munchies are caused by being trained to reach for food rather than to allow the feelings to develop and deal with the feelings. Ya ok. It still comes down to just stop eating.