Since AA begat OA, can Smart or LifeRing begat a secular food issue group? Today, will not be an introduction to recovery trying to use LifeRing philosophy, for I am in the process of trying to discover the LifeRing philosophy. How does one convert "LifeRing’s solution is simple: Don’t drink or use, no matter what." into something that is useful for food"
First we need to understand the difference between over consumption of food and alcohol. Alcohol is a substance that humans do not need, food is necessary, so abstinence of the substance is just not possible. For a long time, no sugar and no grains was adequate for me to lose, but the vegetable intake and increased fat consumption grew over time. I stopped losing and started to gain. Now what?
Once I start to lose, I experience hunger and cravings, which never go away, and get worse as I became lighter. As I understand and felt, removal of the alcohol improved how I felt, while removal of the food made me miserable. The OA program gives something else to obsess with, a false fact as there is no god, and once I delved into rigorous honesty, that falsehood was exposed. There program is based on a lie, but as long as one believes, it may work. There is no way to adapt once we know the truth.
In the past I have looked at Smart, but it does not offer anything useful for continued struggle with food issues. It tries to treat overeating as alcohol, but does not recognize this basic difference. The Smart tools are useful, as far as they go, but the people do not mix as the alcoholics do not understand this issue, and say just quit eating, like as if I could. It is not my choice, for I am physically driven to eat. It is not within my free will domain to not eat, or so it seems. As a result of this difference of opinion, Smart does not provide a social network that OA does provide. In my opinion, the extended social network is largely the reason that OA works. FA takes it one step further, to be part of the network you need to obsess over following the program of calls, meetings, and the food program as well, the old OA " grey sheet diet," it was copied on grey paper. It means taking on the program like a job, living and breathing for that program only. It is a way of losing weight, but what about life long term?
In the past, the only way is to displace that desire to something else, but now that I am older, retired, I cannot do long days away anymore. I just get to tired, and that make it worse. Displacement has stopped working. Now what? Try to understand the problem and look for a solution.
At this point, overeating is epigenetically ingrained, a physical imperative, beyond my will power, or so it seems. What now? Some things are up to us and some are not, as the Stoics say.
LifeRing puts recovery on the individual, who ultimately must be responsible. It is the act of continual letting go of inbreed desires that is difficult, and logically that must be the first step in this recovery, that is letting go of my desire to eat, and ignoring the body's demands. With food, in my case, the demands become larger and louder, as time goes on. I will explore LifeRing a bit more.
Friday, December 29, 2017
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Bake that Cake, US Supreme Court.
Bake that Cake, US Supreme Court. This is just questions.
http://morinvillenews.com/2017/12/19/national-column-why-court-needs-to-decide-gay-wedding-case/ just for reference
So the US is about to make a decision on where the moral line is on individual rights vs the rights of a group of individuals. Forget that this fellow is the owner of a business, and as such, it is a company policy, which may split the question further. Consider an employee, working for a bakery, who has a personal issue, but the company policy is to serve all. The employee has the choice; stuff his feelings and moral guidelines down and do the job, or deal with the owners wrath. That is the just doing the job assigned defense. Does an employee have the moral responsibly to not do something he thinks is wrong? So we have seen similar in the past, but the US Supreme court needs to make the decision, is it wrong to not support gay rights. This is to say that religions are right or wrong on this point. If they support gay rights, they say the common christian belief is wrong. If they go the other way, they say that something like 10% of the population has lesser rights than the main population. The US is making moral decisions that are going to plague the US society for a long time.
What would be the decision in Canada? There is little doubt in my mind that the company would need to provide the cake, the decorations are a separate issue, as they are dependent on the skill of the employee making them, so there may be issues there, but the company cannot be discriminatory.
Canada is going through its own similar case with Quebec Face covering. Does the religious requirement have high priority than social safety? We are now into religious values debate vs public standards debate. Are we going to define and enforce national standards of behavior? How are we going to correct the behavior of those who do not meet the public standard of behavior? What about those who are unable to afford those standards? Yes, in this case there are no costs associated, but there are moral costs to changing our opinion of what is right and wrong.
In my opinion, all religions are based on superstitions, so the religious opinions have no value. The gays have rights, regardless of how disgusting I think public displays of gay affection are. Religions are idiotic or socially retarded, and therefore have no right to create dangerous or stress causing situations. If a person comes into a bank with there face covered, what should the security guard do?
Ultimately, I guess what I am saying is that the religious values has less intrinsic value that the social/humanity based values. Equality of all trumps religious based prejudices, society safety trump religious attire.
http://morinvillenews.com/2017/12/19/national-column-why-court-needs-to-decide-gay-wedding-case/ just for reference
So the US is about to make a decision on where the moral line is on individual rights vs the rights of a group of individuals. Forget that this fellow is the owner of a business, and as such, it is a company policy, which may split the question further. Consider an employee, working for a bakery, who has a personal issue, but the company policy is to serve all. The employee has the choice; stuff his feelings and moral guidelines down and do the job, or deal with the owners wrath. That is the just doing the job assigned defense. Does an employee have the moral responsibly to not do something he thinks is wrong? So we have seen similar in the past, but the US Supreme court needs to make the decision, is it wrong to not support gay rights. This is to say that religions are right or wrong on this point. If they support gay rights, they say the common christian belief is wrong. If they go the other way, they say that something like 10% of the population has lesser rights than the main population. The US is making moral decisions that are going to plague the US society for a long time.
What would be the decision in Canada? There is little doubt in my mind that the company would need to provide the cake, the decorations are a separate issue, as they are dependent on the skill of the employee making them, so there may be issues there, but the company cannot be discriminatory.
Canada is going through its own similar case with Quebec Face covering. Does the religious requirement have high priority than social safety? We are now into religious values debate vs public standards debate. Are we going to define and enforce national standards of behavior? How are we going to correct the behavior of those who do not meet the public standard of behavior? What about those who are unable to afford those standards? Yes, in this case there are no costs associated, but there are moral costs to changing our opinion of what is right and wrong.
In my opinion, all religions are based on superstitions, so the religious opinions have no value. The gays have rights, regardless of how disgusting I think public displays of gay affection are. Religions are idiotic or socially retarded, and therefore have no right to create dangerous or stress causing situations. If a person comes into a bank with there face covered, what should the security guard do?
Ultimately, I guess what I am saying is that the religious values has less intrinsic value that the social/humanity based values. Equality of all trumps religious based prejudices, society safety trump religious attire.
Friday, December 1, 2017
How long can you (I) tread water?
http://michaelprager.com/food-addiction-relapse-weight-gain-spiritual-emotional-health got me thinking about the difficulty of maintaining a behavior which is not not natural to this organism, that is staying on a diet that leaves us unsatisfied, for the remainder of our life.
Some of us arrived at this unsatisfied condition in life about when we realized that there was more out there then the life we had been living. Many of us suffer from some chronic pain, physically or mentally, and eating was our method of dealing with the chronic pain... what ever that pain is. Take away the food and we are left with the chronic pain, and no way to deal with it, and likely, we are not even sure what the pain is now, nor the cause of the pain. Yet the pain remains, or the memory of the pain (or the cooping skill) has become epicgenetically etched onto us. Now it is a matter of consciously, for the remainder of our life, struggling against the demon, and those who would push the demon back onto us. For those of us who deal with hunger and/or cravings 24/7, we know the struggle.
The cause is important to remove if we can; that is not always possible, even if we can find the cause. For many of us it is or has become biochemical, we are left to struggle for the remainder of our lives, without any effective medical help, but lots of useless medical bullshit... just eat less than 1800 calories each day and get 1/2 hour of high heart rate exercise each day. At the same time, we may become in chronic physical pain that is made much worse by physical activity. The overeating must end first, then the physical activity can increase.
So how does one resolve chronic mental pain that once caused overeating? Is it still an issue, or are we primarily dealing with the biochemical issues that may have been caused by the original overeating? That is the typical issue, as these can become permanent in as little as four months.
So it comes down to four hormones, ghrenlin, insulin, leptin, adrenaline, and three endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, cortisol... according to some, but the basic problem remains. Hunger and/or cravings out stretch our physical need for energy, so we must learn to live unsatisfied. Try to live unsatisfied 24/7. I find myself essentially prowling, looking for food, in a time and environment in which food is always available.
Some of us arrived at this unsatisfied condition in life about when we realized that there was more out there then the life we had been living. Many of us suffer from some chronic pain, physically or mentally, and eating was our method of dealing with the chronic pain... what ever that pain is. Take away the food and we are left with the chronic pain, and no way to deal with it, and likely, we are not even sure what the pain is now, nor the cause of the pain. Yet the pain remains, or the memory of the pain (or the cooping skill) has become epicgenetically etched onto us. Now it is a matter of consciously, for the remainder of our life, struggling against the demon, and those who would push the demon back onto us. For those of us who deal with hunger and/or cravings 24/7, we know the struggle.
The cause is important to remove if we can; that is not always possible, even if we can find the cause. For many of us it is or has become biochemical, we are left to struggle for the remainder of our lives, without any effective medical help, but lots of useless medical bullshit... just eat less than 1800 calories each day and get 1/2 hour of high heart rate exercise each day. At the same time, we may become in chronic physical pain that is made much worse by physical activity. The overeating must end first, then the physical activity can increase.
So how does one resolve chronic mental pain that once caused overeating? Is it still an issue, or are we primarily dealing with the biochemical issues that may have been caused by the original overeating? That is the typical issue, as these can become permanent in as little as four months.
So it comes down to four hormones, ghrenlin, insulin, leptin, adrenaline, and three endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, cortisol... according to some, but the basic problem remains. Hunger and/or cravings out stretch our physical need for energy, so we must learn to live unsatisfied. Try to live unsatisfied 24/7. I find myself essentially prowling, looking for food, in a time and environment in which food is always available.
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