Eating Cycle

As I lay awake last night, it came to me that our eating is a cycle.

As it is a cycle, the start point is arbitrary, and each step has a number of decisions that we make, actions we take, and all this is based on knowledge, availability, physical needs and wants, cerebral influence, (not control, or absolute control). As someone said, we are talking to a brain stem.

The main step or blocks:

Appetite, the desire to eat.
Meal preparation, with associated food and food - body interaction knowledge
Eating
Followed by life, the time between.
Appetite stimulation that occurs during the life phase, hunger, cravings, compulsions, and all to other things.
Back to Appetite. We go through this cycle at least three times a day.

The only things that we can influence in diet are, the frequency, the foods, and the amounts. Some of the time the brain stem just takes over.

Each phase has potential issues that could cause obesity, and as I work through recovery, I learn more, and unlearn some stuff. Something I can change, some thing do not matter, and some just need to be accepted. Such is life.

There is one third of the population now that has no food issues, and 50 years it was 98 percent, and I was one of the 2% that had issues. Since there is one third of the population that has no issues, beyond the physical issues of sugar, grain and omega 6 oils, there must be something in my thinking, my philosophy that is a problem.

There are two distinctly different approaches, one is to severely limit calories, lose the weight, and then resume the former life. This is doomed to weight regain. The other is to adopt a new lifestyle, and eating philosophy, a set of rules, then be happy with what ever weight that we stabilize at. The goal becomes following a food philosophy, not one of weight.

LCHF is a simple approach, which is in general agreement with most of the low carb/Paleo/Primal world. It has been proven in Sweden, and is generally what I have been doing. A few vegetable carb rich meals in season may also work into the system, once we recognize that BG will go high, insulin will go high, fat will go into the fat cells, and not come out.