A look at LifeRing

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.

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.

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.

       

Comments to other blogs.

Why do I comment, they are not posed; therefore likely not read anyway. So I will post them here

http://modernstoicism.com/stoicism-and-sustainability-by-kai-whiting/#comment-3618
 
Vegetarianism is a no win in northern climates. The land and/or climate is just not suitable for growing many foods, and many cannot be kept for 8 months, until the next food is available. It is just illogical to think that will work, just as illogical as sustained economic growth. Also there all those of us who have become glucose intolerant, and need to limit our glucose intake.

Sustained growth is not practical long term, as the world in now over full, but it was until now. We as a species/population need to make some big changes. Oh well, it is not likely to happen, until it is too late. There will be a mass die off and then the earth can recover.


Nuts, just nuts
 http://freethinker.co.uk/2017/11/18/deranged-ny-rabbi-weighs-in-to-support-judge-roy-moore/
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/11/17/tamara-lovett-calgary-mom-guilty-in-sons-strep-infection-death-gets-prison-time_a_23281094/

With overpopulation, a few lives just do not matter. Gays and abortion are just irrelevant to sustaining reducing populations. No, not irrelevant, necessary or suggested methods of reducing population growth to a negative number.

Promoting atheism, reason, and an ethical, secular state; Atheist Ireland launches a children's book. https://atheist.ie/2017/11/new-childrens-book-agm/

Hey, thanks for reading. The Boy Scouts of America prohibit atheists or agnostics from joining their organization. 
Don’t buy your holiday/Xmas/Yule tree from them. Don’t finance hate! 

OK, like an atheist is going to buy a christmas tree. OK.

JW hid child abusers http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/18/jehovahs-witnesses-owe-2-million-for-hiding-info-on-child-sex-abuse/





Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/laughingindisbelief/2017/11/man-shoots-himself-and-wife-in-church-weird-news/#YZVVRdbzbQ27B2ex.99

Yeh OK.

I am an atheist; now what?

I am an atheist; now what? After we realize there is no god, no afterlife, no eternal soul, and that our morals can come from society, reason, man made laws, what is there?

In religions there is a society, a community of like minded. They are all wrong together, but they are together. Once we become enlightened, what does the atheist society have to offer? Well one can become a firebrand atheist evangelist, carrying the message to the uninformed... or a skeptic that questions everything, and gets lots of things wrong because they have opinions on everything, even that which they know nothing about. They are as full of bullshit as are the religious. There are lots of issues to champion, anything from environment issues, building issues, housing issues, food issues, medicine issues, big Pharma abuses, and the list goes on. But once we know the truth, or as close as we can get to the truth, we make a decision and go forward, there is not a community to go to for support/companionship.

I have not been impressed by any of the skeptics, as they do not do disaggregate analysis, rather like to aggregate everything into big chunks and reject, when in reality most things are partly correct, under some cases.  

There has been many people pushing for a atheist world view, but that is relatively easy to acheive; once we realize there is no evidence of a god, but masses of evidence that others have believed there is/was one. Now we are left without fear to motivate us to be good; we then need to make the choice to be good, and after that need to think through the logic of what is the right choice, not just for us but for all. It is easy to see how easy it would be to make decisions based on money, and among those who are trying to buy influence.

We/I could develop a "philosophy of life" or adopt one, but all the existing are not entirely rational, have limits or exclusions, are so out of date, and or are off putting wrong concepts. The two that come the front runners are Stoicism and Buddhist philosophy. Both have off putting ideas that are just not modern reality concepts or only practical in no communications -almost stagnant societies. Today we are in a overpopulation state, which must play a part in our reasoning. Human life has less value than it did when we were living in a underpopulated world, yet at the same time, we can sustain life longer than we could before, but at what quality of life. Self termination of the elderly must be allowed or even encouraged before suffering. Also abortion should be permitted, as should abortion of any unhealthy fetuses. with no guilt. Termination for murder and the like should be a choice of the convicted, life in solidarity confinement vs self termination or assisted termination.



    
 

Just wrong thinking

Have we ever been just stuck in wrong thinking? I know it is wrong, but it is what I though for years, and that view was promoted to me for years by various diet pushers. Eat when you are hungry. it is just wrong. Eat a small bits on schedule is a far better strategy. Hunger is a natural force that must be overcome.

We all have beliefs, and many of them are just wrong for me. I do not care what you believe, as that is your life, but do not try to push your beliefs on me. I am a card carrying atheist. I am also a person who has suffered all my life with a imposed eating disorder, that was trained into me as a small youth/child. It was just wrong. But that is what happened. I never realized that is what had happened until now.

So now it is time for me to change those views.

The Krill

The Orville is a comedy space series, in which in one spoof, the kirll are a species, equivalent to the Muslims. It is there way or they kill you. Complete obedience or they kill, just like the Muslims, which is obedience by force. If you leave we will kill you. If you question we will kill you. And the government, if Muslim, permit and even carry out the acts of murder.  It is a violent and murders religion, and so are the Krill. It does not seem to have the phobia of pictures of their leaders, well it has a official rendering anyway.

Under penalty of death is hardly a honorable way to force allegiance to a bullshit religion, but that is what is being done. Comply or we will kill you. How peaceful is that? Muslim is a violent religion. It should not be permitted; no religion should be permitted. All religion should be abandoned.

Behavior, thoughts, emotions are the three loci of CBT, but in my mind we have four, the fourth being beliefs. These are the stuff that we learned or adopted from our culture or society, which we do not question. That is bullshit, we need to question them and throw out the rubbish, just like all religion. We have all these beliefs that we have never examined; what is culture if not beliefs that we do not question? It is just not worth saving for the most part. It is just a source of conflict. Just like "archery culture" or "car culture." It is a group of common rules of conduct, some for safety, and some out of some sense of fairness, equality, order. It is something we could base life on, well at least life around that group.

Life does not need to be that complex. We do not need to be all things to all people, we need to serve ourselves first and only. Each of us are responsible for ourselves, unless other arrangements are made. All others must look after themselves. We each are responsible for what we eat, our diet. No one is going to help, and what is driving us to eat does not matter, be it culture, family, temptation, biochemical imbalance, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, or ingrained epigenetic behaviors.    It does not matter in the end, we all just die in the end.