Thursday, May 26, 2016

Sharma Humor perhaps

http://www.drsharma.ca/surviving-cancer-doesnt-make-you-an-oncologist

With success measured at 5% (1 in 20) how good of an expert are any of these weight loss doctors?

So if we, after eight years are at 72 percent of our weight loss still off, are we doing better than the experts on average?

On average is a misleading thing. Bill Gates walks into a bar. On average, everyone in the bar is a millionaire.

On average, one half of the population has less than average intelligence. That does not include we dyslexics, as the intelligence test cannot measure a dyslexic yet.

Time is now standardized as the vibration of a cesium atom. When we use this definition, black energy and black mater, red shift aka expanding universe, and a bunch of weird and wonderful stuff seems to exist. If we define it as a uniform fourth dimension, now is now in all space, and allow gravity to change the speed of vibration to vary the speed of vibration, the red shift reduces, universe gets older by a large factor, black mater and energy become measurement error, and individual life becomes intrinsically valuable again.

So by occam's razor, our definition of time should be changed, but that would create confusion in the world and through a bunch of physics working on black stuff out of work.

So by occam's razor, weight loss should study all those who have had better than average success with weight loss, and understand all the reasons for their success, but that is not likely to happen for political reasons. We can use this thought, as a evidence that individual live have intrinsic value, whether the experts agree or not. It is not going to happen, is it?

 

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

We do things for a reason... BULLSHIT

We do things for a reason is a piece of quick talk, it sounds good until we apply a bit of reasoning and analysis, and is essentially bullshit. The definition of bullshit, in this case, is the speaker/writer does not care if the statement is true or false, it is just for effect. We can do things for a reason/logic or the following incomplete list:
  • Reason/logic (included for completeness of this list)
  • To achieve a goal or objective (instrumental)
  • Stimulus driven behavior, it just feels right or good
  • For pleasure, what ever it is
  • for fun, or a challenge
  • a belief, or as proof of belief
  • emotion or for emotional relief
  • comfort, pleasure... it just feels good to do it
  • stimulus or fixation on doing that thing, habit
  • ego, because I could
  • social/cultural belief  
So why we eat may be for no reason at all. Note that stimulus made the list. 

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Stimulus Driven Behaviors

So how do stimulus driven behaviors develop? Well they start out as goal driven behaviors, and then the goal dies off, it outlives it usefulness, and must be changed.  So in youth we develop a goal of eating enough to grow, it becomes a stimulus goal that encodes, then we slow down, quit growing, or were eating too much to start with, and we have a problem.

Does knowing that it is a stimulus driven behavior help with recovery? Knowing that we are powerless may actually help; we know not to start and to deny the stimulus as a stimulus, we can stay in the present moment and revisit the new goal, objective, we can stay in the conscious mind space, in the present time, we can go into a different automatic stimulus driven behavior. We can name it as an unwanted stimulus and perhaps move on.

 

Eating as a stimulus driven behavior

Eating, for normal people, is or should be a goal driven behavior. For we overeaters, eating is a stimulus driven behavior. That is one more problem we, the obese and exobese, face. I am not concerned about the overeater of normal weight.

Stimulus driven behaviors are encoded in the dorsal striatum, and we are powerless to change these. They are there, and we have great difficulty to de-encode them. We can stay in the conscious and in the present moment, or in some other locked in encoded behavior and avoid the stimulus, or falling into that particular locked in behavior, but this is not easy. That is the simple explanation of why it is so difficult to keep weight off, and why regain is almost inevitable. It is more struggle to keep the weight off as it is to lose the weight in the first place.

Stimulus driven behaviors can be as simple as liking food, and as a result, when it is available we want to eat. We are powerless over the desire. So we need to do something to dissipate the desire or we will eat. That is our life until death. So now what is to remain in the conscious, and not allow ourselves to drop into the automatic portion of the brain state, really like? Strenuous effort. What does it mean to be in the present moment full time? Strenuous effort also. Is it doable? That is the question.

Staying away from the stimulus is the obvious solution, but this may also be difficult when the stimulus are everywhere and food is everywhere. Once we are exposed to the stimulus, we need to move ourselves into the present, and conscious state and do the next right thing before we sample the goods. It is a tough assignment. Waking 24/7 attention. OK.

from SpringerLink: aka Automatic behavior; Stimulus-driven behavior,



Stimulus-bound behavior is commonly found in frontal lobe syndrome and other executive functioning disorders and is a response to stimuli in one’s environment – an externally oriented cognitive approach. For example, the behavior displayed seems to depend primarily upon available objects and subject predisposition, rather than the activation of a specific drive such as hunger, anger, sex-drive, etc. A person exhibiting stimulus-bound behavior may feel the need to use certain items present, regardless of a need to do so. The behaviors are often perseverative in nature and focus on partial information. Immediate stimulus-bound behavior often does not take into account future consequences or long-term outcomes and causes difficulty with planning, organizing, and behavioral initiative.

from wikipedia: perseverative --
In psychology and psychiatry, perseveration is the repetition of a particular response, such as a word, phrase, or gesture, despite the absence or cessation of a stimulus, usually caused by brain injury or other organic disorder.[1] Symptoms include "lacking ability to transition or switch ideas appropriately with the social context, as evidenced by the repetition of words or gestures after they have ceased to be socially relevant or appropriate,"[2] or the "act or task of doing so,"[3] and are not better described as stereotypy (a highly repetitive idiosyncratic behaviour).

So how do stimulus driven behaviors develop? Well they start out as goal driven behaviors, and then the goal dies off, it outlives it usefulness, and must be changed.  So in youth we develop a goal of eating enough to grow, it becomes a stimulus goal that encodes, then we slow down, quit growing, or were eating too much to start with, and we have a problem.

Does knowing that it is a stimulus driven behavior help with recovery? Knowing that we are powerless may actually help; we know not to start and to deny the stimulus as a stimulus, we can stay in the present moment and revisit the new goal, objective, we can stay in the conscious mind space, in the present time, we can go into a different automatic stimulus driven behavior. We can name it as an unwanted stimulus and perhaps move on.

Friday, May 20, 2016

Where is the desire to eat actually at?

When the desire to eat actually at? Is it in the gut, or just a mind sensation? Depending on who' paper one reads, it varies. And when we get right down to it, it may be all of the above.

from;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/where-addiction-meets-your-brain/201404/your-lizard-brain

The point to all of this is that 12-step recovery recognized (before the limbic system was described) that we all have this tendency to do what we don’t want to do and we are powerless about certain behaviors. Understanding this automatic behavior allows us to surrender to what we cannot control. It frees us to do the next right thing by staying in the present rather than worrying about the future or being shamed and experience guilt about the past. It takes practice. And more practice.

So this suggest the desire to eat is encoded into the R or L portions of our brain and recognizing this, that we are powerless over the desire allows us to let go of the desire and not act on it. Well OK, he can think that, but is it true?

Understanding that this behavior is automatic is likely true, as that is the way it feels. 

So https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/obesely-speaking/201311/compulsive-overeating-and-habit-formation ties it all to eating perhaps.

The stimulus may vary (boredom, anger, happiness, sexual frustration, fear, or anxiety) Ah but, the stimulus may have long been fixed, but the habit or automatic behavior remains... so we are left with distraction... in the present time.

So what do we have... a trained in automatic response to presence of food... so how does one beat that????   

http://www.cres.gr/behave/framework_theory_2.htm  so what is a habitual behaviors, automatic behavior. Given the presence of food, the desire to eat arises, and likely the action.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Enough is Enough.

“enough is enough” It is time to make that big behavioral change again.

A good summary of addiction, as I understand it can be found here: http://aaagnostica.org/2016/05/05/aa-alcoholism-and-medical-science/

 Overeating is a chronic behavioral and mental condition with comorbidity similar to alcoholism. It may also be an inability to deal with the situation we live in. Often the situation is not inducive (or inductive) to a good life, but it is what it is. Now it is about learning to live in the situation we find ourselves in.

There is too much we need to learn to get through life. Each educational professional has there own preference for what is important, and so much is missed, or time is wasted teaching wrong information like religion. And then we are out of time, like learning that marketing misinformation is not suitable for diet decisions. Skim milk is a bi-product, pig feed in my youth. Today it is the recommended food. Barley likewise. Oh well. Stoic philosophy, on the other hand is seen as unimportant, yet has proven to be useful, not as philosophy, but a way of life, of thinking, of being and of understanding other people, complete with their ironic and wrong beliefs.  You can believe what ever shit you want to. The prime directive applies.

It is time to sort out more wrong information. Weight control is more about what lies between metered meals. Get on with life.