Blood Glucose, the balancing act

We have two ways to balance blood glucose. From the high side, insulin, produces by the pancreas, lowers blood glucose. From the low side, the liver, through glycogenolysis and gluconeogenesis raises blood sugar. As an engineer, it is obvious to me that if the pancreas is worn out, the obvious choice is to manage from the low side, via not eating carbohydrates. QED.

Cost/Benefit analysis

Since I referred, in a comment, to Cost - Benefit analysis as a motivational tool, I better do a bit of a post on the subject.

Cost can also be taken as a disadvantage. Doing it both was refers to looking at both doing and not doing, which provides a 2x2 matrix. In addition, we need to look at short term (st) and long term (lt) effects, and also altruistic (o) verses self interest (s).  Long term should be weighted higher for weight control items, as is often the case for any decision.

For this example lets consider overeating to be anything beyond 3 moderate meals each day and eating sugar, processed foods, acellular carbohydrates, grains, omega 6 oils, anything containing exorphins, endocannabinoids, hormones or other flavour enhancers.

Consider Overeating
Benefit	Cost Disadvantage
relief of urge to eat (st)s	Obesity (lt)s
	High blood pressure, medication (lt)s
	High blood glucose, medication (lt)s
	Diabetes, insulin, foot amputation, blindness (lt)s
	Slow painful death (worse than death) (lt)s
	death (lt)s
$ (st)o - junk food companies	$  (st,lt) s
Not Overeating
Benefit	Cost  Disadvantage
Health (lt)s	Learning about food, motivation, learning about controlling cravings and urges, learning in general about life, philosophical sorting of my beliefs and discarding bad beliefs, replacing with better concepts.
save $, praise self for not overeating (st)s	help put junk food companies out of business (lt)o
	Do I care about junk food companies? NO.

This is crude, but enough to give the idea. Sometimes we need to hit ourselves with a big stick. But what do I know.

Obesity Comorbidity

Does obesity, addiction, and personality issues occur more often together than in the remainder of the population?

There is research that suggests that addiction, at least those seeking help at overcoming addiction, have a high frequency of personality issues (compulsive/obsessive, low impulse control, social isolation, short term objectives, poor decision making, etc). There is no clear, consistent definition for personality issues, but it seems that there is a conscience that there is commonly an personality issue, of some kind, with people with addiction. In a way, that might even be expected. Our society is brutal toward people with any personality issue, non-conforming, individualist tendency. It is to be expected therefore, that those individuals would be more likely to seek relief with substances and behaviours that allow some temporary ego boost or relief from the abuse.

As we all function on many levels, thought, beliefs level, feeling, emotional, urge level, and behavioural level. It is only the behaviour level that has a direct impact on others (speaking, communicating is a behaviour), it would be behaviour that everyone seeks to change, without understanding what gives rise to the behaviours. It is these lifestyle changes that must fostered and occur for recovery.

Motivation, coping with urges, management of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, must come before a satisfying life, but without a satisfying and tranquil life, how can anyone hope to achieve these?

Keep up the abuse folks, and you can be assured of a sick society for a long time to come, along with the accompanying employment. Food addiction is real. 

Added later:
from http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.ca/2013/05/just-in-haste-sorry-for-missed-typos.html


"The take home message is very simple. If you have severe metabolic problems the answer is not simply carbohydrate restriction. It also involves protein limitation, to adequate but not gluconeogenic levels. Low carb, adequate protein, high fat. With the emphasis on the fat."

Ah yes, it is not just carb creep (Atkins) but also protein creep.

Anti Research

http://michaelprager.com/weight-control-registry-james-hill-advertising-exercise-big-food

There is no point in beating dead horses, or idiots. They do not do wrong intentionally, only out of ignorance. They need practical education, not ridicule. It is human nature to do right, according to one of those old Philosophical Greeks or Romans Stoics.  But there are also those that do wrong knowingly for the money, more money, the prostitutes. Once we see the solution, how simple it really is, what can we say, Duh. 

The government, the medical industries, food industry, and the like are just irrelevant in my recovery. They no longer produce real food, and are in the business of research. Real information, and a solution to the problem puts them out of business. Therein lies the problem.

The answer is dealing with food compulsion, temptation impulse and addiction for the subset that has those problems, eating about 3 moderate meals each day containing no processed foods, sugars, acellular carbohydrates, appetite stimulus, or other nasty chemicals. The size of meals must be reduced in size to do the energy balance thing.

This does not include any organization  just the philosophy, attitude, and willingness to follow the prescription. There is the hard part, selling it to ourselves.

Note: never saddling dead horses, is the way to remember the correct way to put on a cable clamp; the saddle goes on the live line. 

Added later:

http://chriskresser.com/the-roundup-edition-5

The governments and organisations are a group of inadequately trained idiots trying to do a impossible job, to provide a one size fits all recommendation, when the "need" is normally distributed.

No recommendation is therefore logical... without a statement of the water throughput and of carbohydrate of the individual. Someone drinking a gallon of water a day due to perspiration, and an office worker need different recommendations.  High carbohydrate diets also modify the kidney sodium re-uptake. Any meaningful salt recommendation must look at total chloride intake as well.  

Compulsion

Can compulsions drive overeating? Yes. A I see it, I have four problems.
1.) Compulsive eating, hell, compulsive person.
2.) Addiction to sugar, acellular carbohydrates, omega 6 oils, exorphins, endocannabinoids, and likely hormones.
3.) Temptation, or low impulse control, but with desire attached after sight.
4.) Ageing, and slower metabolism, lower level of activity and interest with age.

How can I live free of all these issues? not possible. Learn to manage as best I can. But there is nowhere that teaches these skills. I guess I will just need to search out "solutions" where I can.

Treatment for the compulsion - Schwartz, OA, plus abandon all compulsions; abandon all eating beyond 301, moderate meals, -- tea drinking, -- Fisherman's Friend sucking due to tea drinking,----agitation of the peace, contentment, serenity, tranquillity in any form.

Treatment for addiction, No sgo6eeh, as far as possible.

Temptation is a tough one. Oriel, the garden snail leaves slime on the wife's poisonous foods. I do not know.

Ageing is just cut back eating to stopping as soon as I can, I guess.

Are these all just learned behaviours? if so, they can be unlearned. But there is none other than the "school of life", Alain de Botton. 

references for my personal understanding, just because I want need a list somewhere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_control_disorder

McDonald's

I was sitting in McDonalds today sucking a tea and reading Irvine, and big couple walked by, both struggling to walk, both sucking sugar water. I doubt if either one realized how much they are addicted to the stuff. Addicted, using drugs and not seeing or caring about there condition, only the next fix is important.

It struck me that Coke and McD's both sell sugar water and preach CICO. But it is not just the sugar in sugar water, but also the exorphins that are in the flavouring that drives consumption. It is the exorphins in diet versions that drive appetite, show in the rat studies. It is the carbonate that must be neutralization by available calcium that contributes to bone density loss.

These organizations feed the uninformed, and it is our duty as exobese to state the facts; sugar, wheat, omega 6 oils, exorphins, acellular carbohydrate, endocannabinoids are essentially slow acting poisons. These companies are just merchants of slow death, and should be treated as such. I will continue to drink tea at McD's, but I also know that these companies are evil. Keep your enemies close.

Appetite- the cause of overeating

It occurs to me that this is not a eating disorder as much as a appetite disorder. It is an excessive appetite that drives overeating. So is there any treatment? still no. So what now?

The Stoics suggest that it is pleasure that drives appetites in general, and these can give rise to what we would call addiction now. This sure sounds like addiction...

From Irvine...

Homer... Pleasure hatches no single plot but all kinds of plots, and aims to undo men through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, with food too, and drink and carnal lust, tempting the walking and the sleeping alike. Pleasure, with a stroke of her wand, coolly drives her victums into a sort of sty and pens him up, and now from that time forth the man goes on living as a pig or a wolf.

Diogenes.... The most important battle any person has to fight is the battle against pleasure, she uses no open forces but deceives and casts a spell with baneful drugs.

Marcus... twitching puppetwise at every pull of self-interest... ...resist the murmurs of the flesh.

Epictetus suggests that we... be pleased and will praise yourself for not eating it.

The Stoics advise to simplify our diet.

But what do I know.

Summarizing important life philosophical points

I'm off on a tangent for a bit.

What we think is not important, it is what we do as a result of our beliefs that is important.

This implies that a philosophy is equivalent to a spiritual approach to the weight problem.  Watching our ideas, our impressions and living a delay tape in our head are equal concepts.

Some things are up to us and some things are not. So we can divide all internal issues into three groups, what we have control over, what we have influence over, and that which is beyond control or influence. Externally, we can influence a few things, and control nothing. We are responsible for our opinions, desires, impulse and aversions. Some will argue that we have no control over some of these, but some translations of Epictetus say responsibility, not control. We are responsible for our actions for sure. Desires and impulses can be redirected, where the control is poor.

So we can redirect the desire for additional food. We have a choice: live in the addiction/compulsion or live in recovery.  

Negative toward recovery

In the past few days I have encountered a number of people that were negative toward what I have needed to do for recovery from obesity. Having a excessive appetite is an undesirable biological trait, in this time in the world, but I cannot look on it as a bad. Looking back over the bit of family history that I have, it is obvious that it likely biological, as I come from a long line of people who became heavy at some point in there lives. Oh well, we need to play the hand we are dealt.

Most modern diet people do not deal with calories, likely due to it being sloppy measurement, and fear of the science behind it. They do not deal with food absorption rate, satiation, satiety, or the human drive to eat. They do not address environment, culture, economy, lifestyle or available fresh foods. They avoid the philosophical and psychological factors effecting dieting. Most fear a feeling of deprivation, as a result of elimination of food groups, without understanding that food groups are artificial concepts, and the deprivation is a psychological/philosophical  item that can be displaced with a bit of knowledge and practice.

Oh well, shit happens. Negative people happen, and should be just walked away from. But what do I know? 

Excessive Appetite

The problem is excessive appetite. Obesity (now overweight) is the result.

The cause is largely chemical and in some part natural, perhaps even a natural excessive appetite.

Until we are ( I am ) willing to permanently give up the food that drives the chemical appetite, the issue will remain.

I must also be:
1) willing to give up sgo6eeh. ( see header)

2) willing to do 3 small moderate whole food meals each day.

3) willing to give up all "contributing" behaviors or factors; be they environmental, cultural, social, emotional...

Appetite Control

What is clearly known about appetite control?

A web search yields lots of yap, very little information. Same old shit, controlled with water, ice, fibre...

It is psychological developed, why not psychological / philosophically controlled?

from http://www.erlanson-albertsson.se/Actaped05.pdf

Appetite regulation is governed by hunger and satiety
signals released according to our state of energy
balance: hunger signals in response to fasting, and
satiety signals in response to feeding. Hunger signals
drive us to seek and eat food, whereas satiety signals
induce a state of non-stress and rest. There are two
problems with appetite regulation today. One is the
highly tasty food that overrides satiety signals and
triggers the reward system. The second is a lack of
physical activity, which makes overeating easier.


The problem is appetite control. The result of failure to control appetite is obesity. Appetite is a desire. How does one control ones desires, aversion, expectations, delusions and the like? How about that, folks. I know where I have seen that answered. It is one of the few things we have power over, our beliefs, values and ethics.

What causes the drive to eat?

What causes the drive to eat? Appetite?

Ultimately, the drive to eat must be hard wired into us, so what if it is just a bit too strong? We can look at insulin all you want, and knowing high insulin causes glucose storage, but if no carbs leaves us hungry, what is the real issue? Low carb is part of the solution, but what is the remainder?

Now I know that low carb should work, according to the whole low carb community, but what is the solution when it does not?

What is essential?

added later Fat Chance http://cravingsugar.net/fat-chance-beating-odds-sugar-book-review.php

What is essential in life, for life, or should it be of life?

Well, reading the Stoics, I realized, very little. All else is what we have been taught to believe is, or likely was, important. Growing up in poverty, and being happy, contented, screwed up my thinking for a greed based society that I lived in as an adult. I now know that it was the philosophy of the new testament that caused the issues. Put is it just concepts, noting more. That is an easy fix, even if it is too late for me.

I am starting to think that all people should study philosophy as a high school subject. There is danger in that for the government. Some of those same people would drop out of the greed based economy of today, and go live alternative lifestyles. Other would recognise the opportunity to rape, gouge, pillage, and plunder the people, and become rich, just as some do today. But this would all be done knowingly, not unconsciously, or accidentally.

On average, everyone in a bar becomes a millionaire, when Bill Gates walks in.

So is it ethical to work for a large food company, a drug company, a junk food company, McD for example. I have come to believe these should be treated as Buddha said of "Poison Merchants".

But what do I know.  

Teachibility

In order to change I need to be teachable. What does that entail as far as an attitude adjustment in myself?

In order to learn one must be teachable, that is to say able and willing to learn. The material must not contradict that which I know now. But how do I know that which I know is correct, or should it just be over written in this leaky organic computer brain of mine. As an ageing adult, some thing need to be unlearned, but what is the ultimate test? Try it, and if it works, it is likely right.

As an ageing adult, I have long had the habit of not listening to much of the crap that comes to my ears and eyes, as it is garbage. Such is the modern age, but now I need to become teachable in some areas again.

But what if I know as much as the instructor is now teaching, and what she is saying is actually wrong? I know a bit about food, mathematics, testing, logic. Of course, success could be just one concept away, but how do we tell?

Teachable moments come with total surrender, total failure, total loss, letting go. Absence of resistance to an idea, passion for the subject, and enthusiasm is necessary for retention. Oh well, shit happens, and what do I actually know?

Processed food digestion rate.

We humans typically have a digestive system that is capable of delivering much more energy that we currently need. That is one of the root causes of our obesity grief. Add to that the issue of our desire to eat good tasting food, a basic survival drive, that has over grown its need in our current environment. Cooking aid digestion. So does grinding. There in lies the basic problem. We digest food to fast and get hungry to quick. Now we need to learn to live with the problem.

We can see immediately a number of promising options. Raw food. No processed foods, especially carbohydrate. Paleo template food plans. No sugar, grains, omega 6 oils. Add the removal of taste enhancing exorphins, at the like, and the problem becomes much smaller. Now all that remains is to do it. But what do I know.

rehash

I have been struggling maintaining and losing relosing this last 10 kgs for two years or more. It is time to rehash this entire obesity / overeating problem, one more time.

In engineering there are processes of looking at a problem to find solutions. There are two general solutions, remove the cause, and repair the damage or reconstruct so that the original cause is no longer able to do the damage it was originally doing. The "third" solution is some combination of the two. There is also a "zero" solution, that is do nothing, and ignore the problem.

The zero solution, in obesity, is to do nothing and watch the problem grow, aka, gain weight. This is not acceptable to me.

Remove the causes is difficult for the causes are multiple, and there are many contributing factors. Hunger, and the biological directive to eat are the two that can be ignored short term, but not long term. Then there is the psychological or emotional causes, the spiritual or philosophical causes, the social, environmental, physical addiction, chemical addiction, and behavioural addictions. We have come a long way down this path with Taubes, Lustig, Davis, Paleo in general, all the others.

Modification of the self, through gut modification, although is possible, is an extreme  and I do not think it deals with the real unknown problem, something psychological, philosophical, or physical that is still unknown to me, and drive me to the food. I have been listening to experts and trying things, but to no avail. It is impossible to live with this drive to eat, and not eat. I think the experts are missing something.

Learning to live with the problem, in such a way, that it is not a problem, can be done, but that too is a stop gap method, but at least it does work.

Studying the cause and elimination them, one at a time has been helpful, and I do better when I as so busy that I do not have time to eat, but how long can I tread water? Is there another way to learn to live with the problem and not have the problem effect me?       

Dual desire

Mutuality exclusive desires, that is wanting to be thin and wanting to eat, occur naturally. Letting go of the desire, a conscious impulse toward eating, may be the missing step. Elimination of the desire to eat, both conscious and unconscious.

This reminds me of the old Greek, who was he? Homer in   Odyssey?   Lashed to the mast so he could not act, his crew blindfolded and with ears plugged, to avoid the siren calls, temptation.

How does one let go of desire?