Where does the urge to eat come from?

Valerie got me thinking, where does the urge to eat come from, and how do I separate these urges from one another. Not everyone will call these the same thing. First get the grain, and sugar out of our diets. These are big issues for many people.

First the gut hunger, real hunger should occur 5 or 6 hours after the last moderate lower carb meal, or in the morning.  Just add a bit of fat, oil to abate 1 to 2 hours, or another low carb meal and it disappears for another 5 to 6 hours or overnight.  These are felt in the gut, it is true hunger.

But if that hunger appears 1 to 2 hours after a meal, not so low carb, then we have a likely blood glucose issue, not real hunger. Add a bit of fat or oil and tough it out (shangri la diet, Atkins advise). We may be suffering from an overshot of insulin (natural or otherwise). Insulin's first job is to lock all fat away, then stop glycogenenis, glyconeogenenis, then to help glucose into cells, out of the blood. If we overproduce insulin, we can run a bit low of blood glucose or on the low side of normal, or just rapid decrease. All future meals should contain less carbohydrates, but there is also a speed of digestion/absorption issue there. After two or three days of lower carb, this type of hunger dissipates.

There are also a number of chemical responses that can simulate physical gut hunger, most also will reduce as we get our carbohydrates down. Digestion resistant carbohydrates, potato starch, some fibers, some raw vegetables (brassica) and the like are slower to digest, and require different gut fauna.

Now the other types of cravings, which are not in the gut, but in the neck or elsewhere. The physical craving occurs before any though of food.  The order of occurrence of these two, physical carving, a feeling, and thought tells a bit of the story, especially if we add what was going on just before the feeling arose.

If any emotion, or feeling, stress, act, or other mental image occurred, then we could be dealing with a maladaptive response, often learned in childhood, to some situation, place, or thing. These are cues, and the response hides in the unconscious memory. Deal, as an adult with the problem, feeling, and do not eat. If it is in the unconscious memory, it will never be trained over; do it just once, and the problem will be back, as strong as it was before. We can only lay down new unconscious memory, not erase old.

If the idea come first, I could eat . . . , I could have  . . . , then the idea is coming first, and that is a different problem, desire lead issue. These may be from baiting, temptations, torpor, boredom, inactivity, . . . , a different group of causes. Keeping busy may help, but we do get tired, especially as we age. Now we run out of desire to do, before we run out of day, or food desire. Now what?

Some of the difficulty is there are no clear definitions for many of these food related issues. Consider food addiction, eating disorders, compulsive eating, and the other host of terms. But what part comes first, the impulse, craving, desire, judgement, the opinion, suggestion, reaction, habit, on natural response to the presentation of food (cue, bait, tempt, advertisement, improper offer, Yettie), ?

We need salt, trace amounts of particular carbohydrates found in leaves and stems, fish a couple of times a week, about 1 gm/kg lean body mass of protein, and the remainder of our food should be fat to address hunger issues. But non of this addresses desire issues for food.

   

How does one quench food desires?

For the last bit I have been studying food desires. It seems the advertising and marketing people know a lot about building desires, for food, for new cars, for lot of unnecessary stuff. No body is taking about reducing desires.  Desires can be grouped firstly into natural and unnatural desires. The naturals can further be divided into necessary and unnecessary desires. We can add to that natural necessary but excessive desires. The unnatural are all driven by chemicals or human marketing, mainly chemical, alcohol, tobacco, opioids, and the like. These are all unnecessary. Some will argue that there are unnatural but necessary like communication electronics, and other consumer driven goods. These are not my problem; so I say "whatever"  to that.

Now back to the foods, natural, but excessive. Our whole culture is about sugar and acellular carbohydrates. these are unnatural and unnecessary, and are not even foods. But what about excessive amounts of health foods, natural foods? It is not hunger, not craving, but desire for more food that seems to be driving me. I have eliminate hunger, food addiction (sugars, wheat), compulsion, obsession, maladaptive eating, emotional eating, stress eating, so what is left? Excess desire. So how does one deal with a active desire?

Modern culture says fulfill the desire. Wrong, that leads to obesity. The modern culture is screwed for a lack of a better word. Some are making the adjustment without understanding what that adjustment actually is. For other, just getting off the sugar, wheat, processed food is enough. But for some of us, off of those is a good start, but it is still not enough.

Food desires are hedonic and terminal, making them bad to resist. In addition, we are hardwired to want food, but what if that hard-wiring is a bit to strong? 

How do you displace your desires?

"Balanced diets"

http://thelowcarbdiabetic.blogspot.ca/2014/03/the-fallacy-of-portion-control-and.html

got me going with what is a balanced diet again. Balanced implies two equal or something along that line. The word balanced is a red herring or a misnomer until some one can show me what balanced means in diet. It is just one more modifier that sounds nice and is meaningless. Anyone who uses balanced and does not explain what it means is just beating their gums, and does not deserve any attention.

But I agree with the post, low fat just does not work. There is one more issue also, and that is fat deficiency drives hunger and cravings. If it works for you, good luck with that. It is not my place to tell anyone how to live; I do not know myself, but I am making gains, I think.

Now I must go do the work of a retired person, what ever that might be.

Naturally thin People

Naturally thin people. like SG, and many other may be "unable to generate any hedonic terminal desire for food."

OK, so what does that mean?

One of the reasons that obese people eat is due to excessive "hedonic terminal desire for food." OK, we eat because we desire food, and hedonic (we like food) terminal (immediate reward) desire is greater than any non-terminal - non-hedonic desire to be thin.

By the way, will power does not impact on hedonic terminal desires, according to Irving, and that seems likely.

So we have dueling desires, the strongest will win. All we need to do is let go of all desires, especially to eat food. The Stoics have a technique, a bit of philosophy, a bit of practice, and we will see if it works.

Our culture, families, environment, and the like are all a bunch of abusive food pushers. We are screwed unless we get tough enough to avoid all contact or become able to not eat at a smorgasbord.
I am about ready to move into a whole in the woods to get away from all the pressure to eat.  

Does anyone have a good long term solution?

Bunk

http://www.drsharma.ca/can-eating-more-fat-make-you-leaner.html

Somebody does not know the difference between carbohydrate and fat.

http://diabeticmediterraneandiet.com/2014/03/03/myth-inadequate-sleep-time-linked-to-adult-obesity/

Cause vs contributing factor.