Habit overeating

There are many causes of overeating.  What I am describing and calling habit overeating is just one of those many causes.

Habit overeating is a group of  behaviors that just go together, where eating is one of those behaviors. We have been trained by society to do these. For example: popcorn and movies, evening TV and snacking, or sports watching and snacking. Baseball and hot dogs, or so I have been told.

Why do I eat two eggs for breakfast, well it is habit; but it is now habit to not eat sugars, most grains, and most starches. I am not ready to totally give rolled oats and potatoes yet. Why do I eat three time a day?

Some habits are part of our automatic response to life and are good. Others have past there usefulness, and I must let go of. When two behaviors are coupled, perhaps both must go.

One of the down side of getting older is our interests change. Yet I still find that I must be interested in doing something to find the motivation to do it, more so that when I was younger. I could force myself to do things I had little interest in doing. Now it is more difficult. Anything that has meaning, value, engagement, aka interest, is not a problem. But with age and loss of interests, the motivation to do, the desire to do, has become weak. I do not have the needs, the objectives if you prefer. Many of my earlier objectives have come to pass or have been abandoned or frustrated. Oh well shit happens, life goes on, and acceptance of the world around us takes place. Interests come and go. There are many things I could do, but none (few) that I want to do. That is the real problem.

Displacement of a habit is one way of change habits.  That is the process of ending a meal, then rushing off to do X, a thing with meaning, interest, engagement, flow, and if fate permits, achievement, satisfaction, stoic joy.

Enough.
picture just because: (pjb)

Brazeau, perhaps a bit of Photoshop filter Off SE corner of the dam.

Note to self

a reasonable approach to the things to eliminate and brief whys
http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2015/04/the-battle-for-bowel-flora/

Learning to live craving and/or hungry

After all these years, I am concluding that I must learn to live craving or hungry. This latest try has just created more misery. Buddha said something like "life is suffering" or "life contains suffering". That may be it for some of us. A life of craving and/or hunger. LCHF is just fine but the craving is still there. And now one more chief pusher says if it is not working you must be doing something wrong. http://www.dietdoctor.com/the-5-most-common-mistakes-on-lchf   He is selling false hope.  

There are some of us that just suffer from some unknown mental or physical defect or characteristic that leaves us craving and/or hungry.  It seems that I am one.

Enough.

Gut bacteria and overeating

"Researchers in Shanghai studied mice who had been bred to be resistant to obesity. These mice remained slim despite being fed a rich diet and being kept from exercising. However, when some of these mice were injected with the human bacterium enterobacter, they quickly became obese.

Enterobacter was first linked with obesity after being found in high quantities in the gut of a morbidly obese human volunteer, said the report from Shanghai's Jiaotong University.

The mice were injected with the bacterium for up to 10 weeks as part of the experiment.

The experiments show that the bacterium 'may causatively contribute to the development of obesity' in humans, according to the paper published in the International Society for Microbial Ecology."

Anecdotally, a couple of humans loss weight on specific diets that did not feed the bacteria, but there was no total energy input available. So did they lose weight because they ate less by willpower, or limited menu, or because of not feeding bacteria?  

Wiki :

Enterobacter is a genus of common Gram-negative, facultatively anaerobic, rod-shaped, non-spore-forming bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae. Several strains of these bacteria are pathogenic and cause opportunistic infections in immunocompromised (usually hospitalized) hosts and in those who are on mechanical ventilation. The urinary and respiratory tracts are the most common sites of infection. The genus Enterobacter is a member of the coliform group of bacteria. It does not belong to the fecal coliforms (or thermotolerant coliforms) group of bacteria, unlike Escherichia coli, because it is incapable of growth at 44.5 °C in the presence of bile salts. Some of them showed quorum sensing properties as reported before ^[1][2]



So it should not be in the gut anyway, so WTF. More useless information with respect to obesity.

Ultimately, the question becomes if one is able to remove all carbohydrates with a caloric density of say 0.2 K/gm, can I adhere to the eating plan long term and lose weight? It is the adherence that is the problem, along with overeating of meat.

Enough. add picture:

Happy Bacteria

"So when these bacteria get happy because of the quality and quantity carbohydrate available, these bacteria let loose a few peptides that they have collected up, opioid peptides, dopamine, morphine, whatever, and we like those"

 and

Reference   http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.ca/search/label/Fiaf%20%284%29%20memes%20and%20fat  Fiaf posts.

If a toxo can cause a mouse to commit suicide by cat, I guess perhaps the food driving life force could be controlled by bacteria.

Ah sure, well ok, how do I test that?

So if I never give those bacteria suitable food to collect up peptides, and never eat starches, the bacteria population should drop below some threshold level, and the craving should go away. OK.

So what does that mean.

No sugar, grain, roots, seeds, sugary fruits, dairy, nuts, processed meat beyond ground beef, very few stem.

So that leaves greens, beef, eggs, perhaps a bit of bacon, mushrooms, coconut oil, perhaps a bit of Harvest gold canola oil,

So it is a diet of beef and greens. Two clean weeks try I guess. I wonder how long before I can go two weeks clean?

Enough:

Picture just because:

How big of issue is Bacteria?

How much of cravings that I feel is Bacteria? 

http://robbwolf.com/2015/04/15/getting-to-the-root-causes-of-your-food-cravings/

Bacteria, Physical, Nutritional, Emotional, are the four areas that K Cann identifies as the cause of cravings. Bacterial is one I have not explored. The premise is that dopamine or opioid are released by the bacteria that digest sugars and starches and that is why these food become hyper-palatable or the cause of us liking them.

Ok, so it can also be physical, that for what ever reason we like them. So if it is bacterial, and we do not eat any of these, that is we starve out the bacteria, we should not crave. But in the past, the cravings have only reduced. Perhaps I need to try cleaner low carb? Is this not the same as trying something and when it does not work, assuming we must be doing something wrong. How is this really different than "Candis overgrowth"? Ok, Candis is a yeast, not a bacteria.

So what evidence is there for bacteria producing opioid that we like? Opioid is a peptide, and it can be split from protein under the right conditions; bacteria plus suitable protein, as in the case of wheat. Perhaps a few others, but it is unlikely to come from carbohydrates. So I call bullshit on that part. I cannot deny the possibility sugars causing the release of morphine like molecules from the gut or bacteria, but proteins are also needed as raw material. I think this is just one more theory. The fact remains that carbohydrate drives insulin production, and insulin is the storage hormone.

It all come back to some things are up to us and some are not. I can choose to eat, or I can choose not to eat.

Enough. A picture just because:

 PS
Thanks Tess, I either forgot or never read it. http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.ca/search/label/Fiaf

So the bugs made me do it.

More Idiots

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/04/13/warning-about-new-hormone-reset-diet/

So you can criticize but can you offer a cure? No. just more of the same old tired shit.

The diet they are critizing:

Dump sugar
Get enough sleep
De-stress
Consider modified intermittent fasting (IF)
Exercise different
Up your aminos
Detox- Dump processed food and chemicals


and they pick on...


"go meatless and eliminate alcohol. Get rid of fruit to reset the hunger hormone, leptin. Toss out grains to reset your thyroid, and remove dairy to address your growth hormone levels."

Much of the right advise is for the wrong reasons, as is anyone who just looks at calories, but I do not care anymore.

Getting rid of sugar and processed foods is the best thing we can do for ourselves. An weight loss will make us tired, we will need more that average sleep. Overeating is often driven by stress, so how do we de-stress. Change our attitude, stop caring. Less engagement. Reduce, or let go of our expectations, turn of TV, radio, get off the net, stop being part of society that expects, demands performance. Become a "type B", give stress to others rather than taking on stress. Oh well shit happens. Stop eating for a day or two at days a time. Do something you enjoy that requires energy. Eats lots of meat with real fats, not much starch. How can one not lose weight like that. That leaves veggies and little else.

I grew up among many hogs. Note that pigs, who'd digestive system is much like humans, really like any starch foods. A bit of meat is also just fine for them. Dead horse, dead cow, no pig though. They will go after grain over potatoes long term, but do well on potatoes short term and like potatoes for a change. When I was a kid, there was a big field of potatoes for the extended family. The excess, damaged, knobbly, excess smalls, and massive got dumped to the hogs. They lived of them until they were gone. Note that we can grow much more tonnage of potatoes on land than grains, but potatoes need more care in keeping than grains. Potatoes could be cooked (baked whole), dried and fed year around. But what do I know?

and a picture just because

Meanders a bit, does the Bow. Wide glacial melt water eroded valley. Saskatoon bushes grow along the river in areas, which is what the Plains Cree used for making bows, hence the name.

 

Maladaptive Behavior

 This post was motivated by Val's comment on the last post, which parallels my own experience.

 "I know in my family, food was treated as a sacrament as well as our curse...
A celebratory meal was our answer to any major or minor life event; my mother self-medicated w/snacks for stress, for depression, for anxiety & I obviously learned my lessons well!"

Maladaptive behavior is any behavior which is not useful or is seen by others as wrong. or   "Maladaptive behaviors refer to types of behaviors that inhibit a person’s ability to adjust to particular situations. This type of behavior is often used to reduce one’s anxiety, but the result is dysfunctional and non-productive."

OK, but overeating produces high blood glucose, high insulin, and both are a relaxant for some of us, and for others, it puts them in hyper-drive. So what is the difference in physiology? Is it in the amount of adrenaline produced? That does not matter, in my case, it is a relaxant, and that s why I overate to get rid of the anxiety. Now I separate anxiety from stress. Anxiety, in my case the fear of not being good enough to satisfy parental expectations, because that was what I was repeatedly told, produces a future consequences, while stress is a current consequences. Anxiety could have be dealt with by removing the cause, ongoing parental abuse, but it was continued until they died off, as did my once a year visit for an hour perhaps. Overcoming such a negative environment is not easy, but I learned to deal with anxiety by not putting myself into such a situation. There are better ways like some things are up to me and some are not. I cannot be responsible for the actions of others or what little mental capacity I was born with. Live with it you abusive people.

You think I have poor judgement, well teach me how to have better or hire someone to teach me. Put up the cash or shut up. Teach me how to deal with abuse and isolation, or leave me alone, like I am anyway, without the verbal abuse. I grew up a farm slave, and did not work as fast or as well as they would have liked. That may be why I can relate to Epictetus so well. Family slavery still exist today, but with TV and radio, it is difficult to keep the young in as much isolation as when I was young. The only thing that was plentiful was food, and we were allowed to eat freely so that is what I did for relief. It is difficult to see survival behaviors as maladaptive, while the situation remains and the behavior provides relief. Afterwords, when I escaped that environment, it was maladaptive behavior, it was habit, it was food addiction, it was chemical dependence, it was an any stress cooping mechanism, it was an any emotion cooping method. I worked or hid and ate. Very little play time, or social time, and that remains my "preferred behavior," likely trained in, not natural. I remain low social need. Now onto recovery.

In each stage of life we need to pick up new skills, and stop practicing old ones. Consider the big five personality characteristics: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. How could one grow up normal is such an environment? I had to start living above Maslow's hierarchy  bottom two levels before I could change, ( Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belongingness" and "love", "esteem", "self-actualization", and "self-transcendence") That is how I ended up introverted, quiet, secretive, closed, busy working, highly conscientious, and in general neurotic. The philosophy helped me see all this, and know how to live according to some of Epictetus's concepts, but not according to the current mob culture. There is no god beyond nature, so that part gets rumbled over.  Retirement has provided me the time to study and think these things through, and much of modern culture is horseshit, or natural fertilizer.

I have found that depression can be relieved by knowing what is what, and alone time is not the same as lonely, I keep a dog and a wife for that. Much patience, tolerance and understanding is necessary.

Enough
Picture just because:

  

Idiots, find the cause and remove the cause

This article linked through Weight Matters demonstrates the basic misunderstanding of child obesity.

http://www.weightymatters.ca/2015/04/saturday-stories-protein-racist-nobel.html

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/31/tips-parents-fat-kid-unable-recognise-obesity

Remove all processed foods is necessary for recovery but not sufficient. You also need to remove the cause of overeating. If the child suffers from anxiety, stress, isolation, boredom, abuse, neglect, oppressive over control, insecurity, etc, those problems must be dealt with in some manner. The driving force must be removed or the child must be taught to deal with the driver. If the parent does not do this, someone else may, and that may show the ignorance or arrogance of the parent. If the parent is the driving force, and the child recognizes this, there will be a strained or absent adult to adult relationship.

It is easy to point to the child, and think mental illness, maladjustment, or the like. But is it the child or there environment? The child may just be using food as a mild sedative. High blood glucose/high insulin is a mild sedative.  Perhaps the child need to learn stoic philosophy as a means of dealing with his/her environment.

Enough.

And a picture just because

Adequate Impression

Proof of moose in the garden

What is an adequate impression? This moose print is adequate for me to form the impression that there was, once again a moose in my garden, but the moose print is not the kind of impression I am speaking of. (and just for the English major, another sentence ended with a proposition.)

An impression is a mental object that correlates to a person, place, thing or concept, thought or other perceived subsisting item in life. But what makes it adequate?

The object may be real or imaginary (seems real but is not) in life and our mental impression may be a true representation, or it may be off a bit. We could represent this with a 2X2 matrix, but in general, we have a true true, true false, false true, false false decision. Now only the true true is real and is an adequate impression. Most situations in relationships are one of the other three as are frequently communications. Word are dull pointers. There are six objects in a finger pointing at the moon.

So what does this all have to do with food?

Well, it seems to me that nature has given us too much food drive in general as a population, and not enough motivation to do things. It seems if we want to push the limits of our existence to the maximum nature will permit, we need to limit our intake to less that we desire and do more.  Of course nature either wills or permits everything that happens, but there again we can put nature's will on one side and our will on the other for the 2x2 matrix, and come up with four options. It is obvious that natures will is not an exact amount, but it has limits and we individuals can push to one side or the other within those limits. As we get closer to the natural  limit, it should logically become more difficult.

Am I right that nature has given us all too much food drive? That would explain population obesity/overweight issues. It is not genetics, but rather a species problem, given adequate food and processing to make the food more available, produce higher palatablity, quicker digestion and adsorption. Quicker digestion and absorption may be the real issue of processed foods.

So what does this all mean? I guess perhaps only that I need to do more and eat less for long life, and it is not just me but a species thing.