Priorities

Priorities need to be adjusted from time to time and we need to list our priorities from time to time. Religions like Christianity and Islam have the religion itself as there first priority. That is just wrong, the religion should serve the people, not the other way. Stoicism has rationality as the first priority, at least that is the individual, following our true nature, and living a virtuous life; that is all fine and good but it puts wisdom top on the virtuous. One needs to become older to develop wisdom, hence it is suitable to age into stoicism. Buddhist put truth, peace and loving kindness or compassion as there top three. Confucianism places respect for others as their top priority, respect for family, up and down generation, for the society, governance, and like as the top. That covers a great deal of territory in one shot, and that is something that is lacking in North America in general.

Respect must flow both ways, and must be seen by both to flow both ways. When our political types get arrogant, there is no room for respect. Respect is not just speech patterns, but also more actions that any phrasing. When a Beaumont, Alberta, RCMP approaches a car in a routine traffic stop with his hand on his gun, it does not show respect, trust, but likely fear on the part of the RCMP, especially with a senior.

Lack of respect for traffic law show up in many places; consider those plastic reflective plates over license plates, psychopath screens. They say that the driver/owner intends on speeding and not taking responsibility for there actions. Of course, street design on new rebuilt roadway that impedes traffic flow also lack of respect for the traffic on the part of the Town Council, the dinosaurs, as they have become to be known. Respect must flow both ways for it to work for much.

The whole Canadian Government, from the Senate down would need to be cleaned up if respect was to become a cultural norm. Would respect for one's self make a big difference toward our self treatment? I think it might reduce many of our societies problems, and perhaps reduce our dependence on the processed food. If we respected ourselves more, we would not eat it and perhaps recognize those merchants of not respecting we humans as people, and perhaps this disrespect of them, and our own self respect could provide that last push away from the bad foods. It is respect flowing both ways, that has allowed the Chinese to flourish under Communism. 

Respect must flow both ways, once again. I do not respect religion, for these are based on logically impossible events thousand or more of years ago, that we are supposed to care, and live that way. There patrons pass the gullibility test on regular basis. Grab onto something and give your head a good shake. Look around at the Catholic Church and there frequent pedophilia and alcohol abuse problem among priests. They need to get there house in order first, but they are a property rich, cash flow poor organization.  New Earth types defy science and logic.

Today my priority must be self respect, to not dip into the insulin overshot foods, not to allow psychological cravings to start or let myself into a situation where lack of impulse control can start a slide.

Oh well, respect, truth, peace, compassion should be the first virtues in the priority. The Cardinal Virtues will just need to weight for now.

   

Most Religion is Fraud

And the truth shall set us free. Schopenhauer figured that we have two biological drives: food and sex, aka reproduction, perhaps at times a bit of desire for companionship, but after those are satisfied, there is boredom, unless we pick a purpose for our life and go just do it. Does that need a god? Not in the least.

Half of our existence, our biological drives, our genetic roots, is about food. So if we are short of success in reproduction or beyond our best by date, are we driven to the area where we can have success in, that being the consumption of food?

What does religions have to say about all this. It is sin. We were born to do wrong. What a negative point of view! It is moral failure. It is greed. It is lack of self control. We now know that it is mostly chemical and biological driven in an environment that does not force us to do labor as it once did. We are biologically doomed, and those who survive will be the ones with genes that are better suited to this abundant environment. Religions may distract the unthinking and short lived from reality, but they do not fix the basic problem. We reproduce to fast to maintain stable populations. Religion is the original dream merchants. We now have more information.

Our present bleeding heart political system will not lay down the hard facts on any of these issues. Over population, dangerous foods, mostly created by processing and preservatives, but taste wonderful, are being heavily marketed to a gullible population. How gullible? Look at the hold of religion, the original gullible test. So what do we need to do to create a truthful, and honest environment where those of us with food and eating issues can flourish?

First, we must provide ourselves with a new purpose, to define and build such an environment. A year around stable and suitable local food source/system must be defined. Here in Northern Alberta, it can be done, at least on a small scale (I grew up that way), but it is not economic, considering that a can get a jar of pickles from India for the same price as a resealable jar here. That is the problem, economy of shipping from cheap labor countries.

We would need a physical community of like minded people. There is not that. Being a free thinker, clear reasoning atheist, makes that much more difficult, for the religious all shun the atheist free thinkers. This country may claim to be Christian, but they run from the atheists. The next revolution will be a religious cleaning of the belief system of the population. It will not be political, but truth and reason from first principles of science to a new culture. A supply of good food will only be one of the issues.

It will be interesting times in the future for sure, just as it has been throughout my working life. I grew up working some with horses, dirt roads, root cellars, no electricity, back country ways. The Gerstetner was a high tec machine as was the fax, both come and gone. The computer and internet have become a essential tools, complete with antivirus and anti-add software, encryption up the was-zoo, and the like. Free cloud storage for the non-valuable stuff, and off line off premises back up for all valuable stuff. I wonder if this whole era will be lost to history as the technology changes and everything becomes obsolete.    

What do I know?  Perhaps a new religion based on truth, peace, and compassion, but not any bullshit.

Impulse Control and Meditation

In resent years, I have come to recognize that my overeating problem is a group of problems, and that low impulse control, temptations, are part of the overall problem. Impulse control is one of those separate issues.   

Impulse Control for overeating issue can help when the issue is impulse and temptations are available. It is easier to remove myself from the temptation situation, but that is not always practical. Does meditation help? The answer is yes, at least when the low impulse control is active, and while the meditation practice is active.  So it is not yet clear if it is the meditation or displacement that is effective, that is to say that meditation can be a form of displacement.

Displacement is simply the act of going or doing something where we take our bodies to a location of activity or to a place where food is not an issue. It is difficult be be interested in food in a barn, sewer plant, dump, dusty field, root patch, rock patch, or anywhere we busy and want to be. Work is a great place for some, hell for others.

Meditation practice can be conducted in a environment where one is not being attached by conversation, TV, Radio, or other intrusive conditions, and attention can be diverted from the surroundings for an extended period of time. Nothing special is required, but quiet really helps, as does comfortable body position. The physical position is not critical for short term meditation, but if you intend to sit for times where hours would be the appropriate way to measure time, some of the elements of position becomes important.

Meditation is a state of mind, regardless of how we get there. It is a form of concentrated directed contemplation, or just contemplation. The ease that various people can drop into this is variable; some have difficulty, and for others it is near automatic. The depth varies and changes over time. After a bit we start to see thought objects and the gaps between thought objects, feel sound, and learn to look where thought objects come from. We may even learn to deselect thought objects and put them in other places. I do not have the vocabulary to describe some of these effects. It is not of the physical world, but seems very real and is in the realm of concepts and concept objects, X files sort of stuff, but short of fancies. It needs to be experienced, not intellectualized. It is a state of mind.  

So what does this all have to do with overcoming food issues. The solution may be to go meditate on it. But what do I know?

The process

I have struggled with cravings all my life, and various people have given me bits of guidance, which never helped. One day I realized that there is one more problem, and I will call that psychological cravings. 
A search of the web shows lots of chat about this problem, more or less, assuming it is the same problem but little on overcoming this issue. There is a lot of advise that does not work for me, so does this mean I have a different problem or the advise does not work.
Then I went exploring the cause of cravings, and well the Buddhist have a fix, but it takes some mind work. So will that work?
Short term, it does have an effect.

We cannot treat something that we do not understand.

So I put together bit of a table about this whole overeating/addiction issue and realized that if there are psychological/mental driven cravings, these too are separate and need to be address.

But what do I know?

Causal groups of overeating	Development	Recovery
Social / family overfeeding /Sugar overload	1	1
Physical Cravings, Insulin resistance induced cellular hunger	2	2
Emotional / Psychological distress	3	3
Development / Learning of Maladaptive Eating Behaviors	4	4
Psychological Cravings	5	5
Belief System / Philosophy	6	4
Environmental	7	6
Chemical Dependence	8	2
Food Knowledge / Exercise correction/ learning proper eating habits 301/		1
Emotional Coping Methods		3
Philosophical correction		4
Recovery from Psychological Cravings		5 or 1

Sugar Addiction

We have all heard that sugar lights up the brain just like cocaine. Or should that be alcohol?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz9Cp8L0jA8

Is it dopamine that drive overeating?

So how does one not eat any carbohydrates to test addiction to carbohydrates theory?

Childhood Obesity

In the last while there has been a great deal of yap about childhood obesity. Yes, sugar, wheat, starches, junk food are part of the problem. I was an obese child, without junk food but an oversupply of good food. And there is also a psychological problem, I was not adapting to the insane environment I was being raised in.

http://www.drsharma.ca/is-childhood-obesity-driven-by-genetic-differences-in-appetite
http://www.webmd.com/children/news/20160211/varied-diets-may-not-curb-childhood-obesity-study-suggests

I expect it is the same today. It is or will become the child's responsibility to adapt to it's environment. If he/she/it does not adapt, obesity may occur as a side effect of one of the releases. High insulin, high blood glucose level cause relaxation and eases sleep, and result in obesity. Once the habit is established... it becomes part of there characteristics... now what?

Correction of childhood obesity, during childhood would save a lifetime of struggle, but then what would I know? I just lived through the problem. There is not enough recognition that some people are just not skilled at raising children. Oh well, those children that survive become the next generation of parents, and the cycle continues, until someone recognizes the problem and applies the fix.

But then what do I know?  

Just because one is behind a pay wall:

Kids given more food diversity might be heavier, researchers find

WebMD News from HealthDay

By Kathleen Doheny

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Feb. 11, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Eating a greater variety of healthy foods may reduce the odds of being overweight in adults. But, a surprising new study suggests that a greater diversity of foods might not have the same effect in very young, poorer children, and may even increase their risk of becoming overweight.

"We found that among low-income, preschool-age children in the U.S., dietary variety and diversity were not associated with [overall] body mass index," said study author Dr. Julie Lumeng. She is an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School and School of Public Health in Ann Arbor.

However, from year-to-year, the researchers found that greater overall food variety, healthy food variety and dietary diversity were linked to greater annual increases in body mass index (BMI) in the youngsters studied.

BMI is a rough estimate of a person's body fat based on weight and height measurements. In children, age and gender also play a role in BMI calculations. In general, the higher the BMI, the more fat someone has, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The researchers said the annual changes in BMI in the children studied were small, but were "notable" because they were unexpected. Lumeng and her team had thought that a greater variety of foods, particularly healthy foods, would lead to improvements in BMI scores.

Because the findings were so counterintuitive, the researchers said it's too soon to make any dietary guideline changes based on the results. And the study was only designed to show an association between food variety and BMI, not cause-and-effect.

Lumeng and her colleagues decided to look at the effect of dietary diversity in young children because of the prevalence of obesity in children and a lack of research on the topic. Nearly 23 percent of U.S. preschoolers are overweight or obese, and that figure rises to 30 percent in low-income families, the study authors said.

The researchers evaluated 340 preschoolers, who were all 4 years old when the study began. They were also enrolled in Head Start, a federally funded program for low-income children.

The researchers weighed children and their primary caregivers. They also asked the caregivers to complete a dietary survey to get an idea of the variety and diversity of the youngsters' diets. Variety is defined as the number of foods eaten from a predetermined list over a given time period. Diversity includes not only variety but their relative distribution in the diet, and how well people stick with recommended dietary patterns, the researchers said.

The study authors were able to get follow-up information on 264 children from the original group two years later.

The study is published in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Dr. Susan Baker, professor of pediatrics at the University at Buffalo, reviewed the findings and wrote an editorial to accompany the study. She was also surprised by the study's outcome.

Although she can't explain why greater variety and diversity in the youngsters' diets didn't lead to improved BMIs, Baker did note that the study has some limitations, as many studies do.

"The major limitation was the use of self-reported food intake data," she said. Experts know that overweight people under-report what they've eaten and underweight over-report, she said.

Until more research is in, Lumeng said, "It's still important to focus on ensuring that your child has a diverse range of foods in their diet. However, if you are concerned as a parent about obesity or preventing obesity, increasing dietary variety and diversity may not be the most important thing to be doing."

More important, in Lumeng's view, is to think about limiting portion sizes, reducing time spent in front of the television and other screens, and avoiding sugar-sweetened beverages.

The research may actually be good news for fretful parents of picky eaters, she said. While she's not encouraging picky eating, of course, Lumeng said parents often worry about it. "When you look at the literature, kids who eat a smaller variety [of foods] tend to be thinner, picky eaters," she said.

Totes watevs

Humor plus a bit of information makes the message go down better.

Examples:
 http://carefactorcritical.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-race-to-bottom.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymxAg4XWnxc

Irreverence

Bless me father for I have sinned, it has been two weeks since my last post... 
I could not resist, I just started reading AC Grayling, The Good Book... along with a secular Buddhist book....

Anyways, the first thing I realized that Buddhism teaches patience in a big way, but never bothers to state that. Secondly, with the habit of reflecting AM and PM... where have we heard that before? Buddhism, as practiced by Buddha was primarily a well organized philosophy, his followers converted it into a religion.

Buddhism teaches truth is a virtue, but never bothers to define that word, or what that really means. Casting about for a definition, like I was casting to hook a swamp shark, I fine little as a clear definition.  In accordance with fact or reality... ok.

So I set about to find a heavy duty definition of truth. Well we can eliminate anything that can be demonstrated to be untrue, or that doubt can be raised. That eliminated a great deal. Secondly, we must believe that it is true. We must be able to justify the truth, belief is not enough. It must be believed by others to be true....untrue. What others believe may be in fact untrue, just traditional or folk wisdom, but it may also be true.  So to recap, not demonstrably untrue, believed true, justifiable.  

So it is not about truth exactly, but what they believe to be true mostly. So a belief in any specific god is untrue, as there are many specific gods, which makes a true god demonstrable untrue to some. 

So what does this all have to do with not eating. We all need something to keep our minds and bodies busy. Expanding our minds is part of a full and flourishing life.  This same argument can be made against any diet that speaks of optimum diet. Without summing over a lifetime, there is no way of figuring an optimum, so these are false claims. There can therefore be no best. There are areas where people did tend to live longer, but some of that is in genes, and some is in memes. 

There is no doubt that I feel better on a Paleoish diet, without grains and sugars, but I am unable to say it is "better" for everyone. I also know I feel hunger at a "no weight gain, weight maintenance" level of intake. That is a problem for me, long term.

But what do I know?