What food program?

Grain Brain is about right.
I would move potatoes and
yams into the occasionally
eaten group, along with rice,
beans, and the heritage grains.

What should I read first?

The answer, today,
from me is
Epictetus's Manual.

It has so much in it
that deals with
emotional regulation
and our expectations,
judgements, commitments,
in such a dense format,
that I beleive it is essential.

Emotional Regulation

Emotional Regulation Ok.
A modern term, but Stoic methods work.

Emotions are automatic reactions to situations.
Stoic, we react, not to the situation,
but to what we think about the situation.

There is a space between the situation
and our reaction; insert filter.
Stoic- we feel the emotions,
but we react with reason.




Anger is something getting in the way
of our expectations.
Stoic, expect what happens.
Expect what typically happens,
in traffic, the aggressive assholes,
and the road slugs.

Stoic, natural human development
is from emotional to rational.
Encourage development of rational
approaches to emotional situations.

Stoic, some things are up to us,
and some are not. Our judgements,
our opinions, and some violations
are up to us. As we become more
rational, our desires, aversions, delusions,
and the like become up to us.
Our body, and everything outside
us is not up to us.
We can influence some things
by our actions, and more
can be influenced by others,
but there is much
that we have no influence on.
The weather, earth and it's events,
the physical world.

Boredom is lack of interest
in the world around us.

Hypofrontality

Ultimately, we overeat because
we receive some benefit
from overeating, and we like
that effect we receive.
It is the warm fuzzy feeling that I like,
an alternative state of mind.

Hypofrontality is loosely defined

as a decline frontal lobe functioning 

and metabolism. It's 

one of the major brain changes

 caused by an addiction process.

Weakened self-control systems (hypofrontality), 

are overwhelmed by the cravings 

emanating from sensitized addiction pathways 

and a desensitized reward circuit

Characterised by:

low (no) social skills

low (no) impulse control

poor regulation of emotions

Learning emotional regulation

is part of the recommended treatment.  

Cost benefit analysis:

Benefit of the active addiction: 

-the warm fuzz feeling 

obtained by partaking.(short term)

-removal of the craving.(short term)

Cost: overweight, obesity.

Benefit of not using:

health, long term

The cost: 

the craving, (short term) if it goes away:

to date, the craving is occurring,
and not going away.

  

Community

Step one suggests that our
personnel issues go far beyond
just the food
to other areas of our life.

Unmanageable may be a suitable term
for the alcoholic,
but what about the food overeater,
regardless of the actual cause
and manner of overuse.

Habitual bad diets (ignorance based overeating),
food addicts (substance based addiction),
compulsive overeaters (behavioral addictions),
undiagnosed allergy (physiological driven overeating)
emotional eaters (psychological overeating),
ritual eaters (philosophical overeaters),
etc. and all the other forms have separate causes.

Is it logical
to try to apply
just one treatment
that never identifies the problem,
and just applies a brutal one-size-fits all solution?

Is this something that the
"OA community" would like to address?
or are we going to keep our heads in the sand,
and bleed members?

Priorities

What are our priorities of desires?

Similar to Maslow needs,
we can create a priorities of desires.
Where does our desire to recover fall,
relative our desire to overeat?

Now what is real food?
and where is our desire to work?
and if we have no desire to work?
do we (I) have desire for what?
so where has my desire gone?

It seems to me, the more desires,
good desires only need apply,
being greater priority than overeating,
the better of we be.

So displacement of overeating
can occur.
Keep up the struggle.
Death will find us soom enough,
but it will take longer if we are busy.

So today, I will try to build good desires.

Today

Logos.
Polyphagia.

Today is the first day or the remainder of my life.
Death is looming on the horizon.

To that end, I, along with Epictetus,
will point out the blackest of vices,
lack of persistence, and lack of self-control.
But note that lack of self-control,
in stoic terms, is not quite the same
as modern - lack of self control.

Man's higher stoic nature is reason,
and as such, reason must control emotion.
That is not saying we do not feel emotion,
but rather, we do not assent to action,
as a result to feeling emotion.
Ah. What?

We have the choice to act or not.
We can chose to not act.
We can chose to eat or not.

Our personality is known to ourselves
and to other by our actions, not our thoughts.

Step 1 Revisited

Here is a previous posts about and related to step 1.
http://oathursdaynightgroup.blogspot.ca/2011/10/step-1.html
http://oathursdaynightgroup.blogspot.ca/2012/09/to-what-lengths.html
http://oathursdaynightgroup.blogspot.ca/2012/02/step-0.html

When I came to the program,
I was desperate. I could not stay
on any diet any longer, but having
cycled through about 75- to 100 pounds
7 or 8 time in my life, I knew any
diet would take the weight off.
I had my problem down to not
being able to stick to a diet.

I had no idea that I was addicted
to wheat, carbohydrates, sugar,
omega 6 oils, and the like.

Admitting I was powerless over food
was not the issue, but that my life
was unmanageable was less apparent.
It did not take much thinking to see that,
I was on compensation at the time and
could hardly walk for back pain.
I had time to read, in fact, I did little else.

Diving into service and studying the program,
AA bb, AA 12x12, AA comes of age,
and the OA stories, and first 7 pages of text
were all of our literature then.
Kay Sheppard book had just come out.
http://kaysheppard.com/
Within about 6 weeks I became abstinent
and in the next 2 years lost nearly 100 pounds.
But life was unmanageable all the time,
obviously, as soon as I started looking.

I went into the program with my
"ideology of origin" and a
concept of god being a set rules,
that if I could follow them,
then I could recover.

Start .. where you are

Change in our thinking, is what this program
is all about. This is ultimately what happened
and what must happen, but the program
never says that up front. The term "spiritual"
is used, but it is our thinking, our beliefs, our values,
that we need to look.  The word
"spiritual" is the handle for the concept that was
in vogue when Bill wrote AA. Now we might
use psychology, philosophy, thinking, mind,
or any other handle. These are the non-physical
parts of us, some of which we have control over.

When we are done, we will know a
great deal more about ourselves.
We will know that we contain wrong ideas,
concepts, and let go of many of these.
We will adopt many new concepts,
more correct those we let go of.
We will understand our characteristics,
as well as the stages of recovery,
and the processes that move us
from one stage to the next.
Life will change in unimaginable ways.

At any time you can stop changing and
even go back to your old ways. This is or
will become totally within your control.
All we need do is let go of those thing
we have no control over anyway.

Food is one of those thing we have little control over.
We like to think that we can control what we put into
our bodies. If we were totally rational we could
control ourselves, but we are not totally rational,
we are largely emotionally driven. We need to learn
to manage our emotional drives so that we can
obtain what our rational mind tells us we need.

Some things are up to us and some things are not.
The question we need to answer is what is
within our power and what is not. This changes
nothing but our understanding.

Impatience is fine, but mainly irreverent to recovery.
Impatience is far better than procrastination. These are
related to our eager want, our time related desires.

Perseverance is the characteristic you will really need.

Caution: These are my word to describe how
I understand what happened to me, not the program.
The program is the steps, tradition, and the like.

Further reading suggested: everything on step one
Further writing: a food diary.
Write down everything you eat, before you eat it.
Also list down the attitudes,
characteristics and virtues that are named in step one.

Remote Sponsor

I have been asked to serve as a remote sponsor.
Here is the warning that I sent as a response.
I beleive that it is only fair to warn anyone what I have done,
as part of my program of recovery.

I must warn you that I do (and have done)

other things as part of my recovery,
and may stray beyond the program.

In addition, I am a non-thesis, so that I twist the program to fit,
but still use the same processes as the basic of my 

program of recovery,
plus a few more.

There has been fifty years of research since the 

program was developed,
and many things have been learned, or proved, and more suspected.
Some of these things are useful, and some
contradict typically held knowledge, beliefs, and values.

For me, recovery has been a learning process,
sorting what works, from that which does not work
what is real from what is not or less real,
what I believe from public myths and fiction.

It is said that this program has three parts, 

physical, emotional, and spiritual.
I look at is as more, including knowledge about food, 

physiology, philosophy, psychology, behavior, feeling, 

thinking, and much more.

With this program as my core thinking system,
I have been able to let go of in excess of 50 kg,
and maintain that loss for a number of years.
Along the way I have changed considerably in behaviors,
feelings, and thinking. (emotionally, spiritually, physically)

I have learned a bit about food addiction, behavioral addiction,
and learned behaviors, food knowledge, all of which contributed
to my recovery.

Welcome to the adventure.

I am aware that this is all a bit intense,
but for the first 20 years around the program,
all I did was the program, and that was really tough.
This is easier, but how ever you would like it,
all I can do is tell you what I tried, what worked, and what did not. 

The Question

Today is International Recovery Day.
http://aaagnostica.org/2013/09/08/faces-voices-of-recovery/

What does your recovery look like?

What does recovery look like?

Belief System Clean Up

I have had expended family up the ying yang for ten days, and on and off all summer. Enough already. Back to reality.

Along the way, I need to clean out my belief system. The range of possible choices is limited by our belief system, which is to some extent, is set by our ideology of origin, and is then modified by our lives. For example, if our belief system says: it is wrong to eat between meals; the idea of eating between meals is placed off limits, aka just not acceptable, and we are not likely to eat. Same with "not considering acellular carbohydrates as food"; there is less temptation to eat them, until some "grannie food pusher, aka temptress" comes along.

Eve and original sin is a concept, but the original evil is producing and pushing acellular carbohydrate as food. Anyone in a idology gives up free will, so why not use that to our advantage. It is just wrong to eat acellular carbohydrate, it is evil to offer it, to push its use, and the like. The whole concept of sin, aka, not adhering to arbitrary rule, in itself suspect. If the rule has a known purpose, perhaps it is ok. But then abstinence is a arbitrary rule to reduce or eliminate craving for some foods, and when I slip, the cravings come back severely, so there is a arbitrary rule with a purpose.

Emotional growth is the process of letting go of negative emotions and cling more strongly to positive emotions, that is positive for my life, not necessarily positive for other's lives. You may not like what I say but Oh well. One of the process of change is venting or dramatic relief. But change is made difficult by the continual temptations of food pushers. Until we, as a society, or as a subset of society, over come this, the obesity problem will continue.