Obesity Epidemic

Hypothesis: obesity epidemic has a causal link to the rise in carbon dioxide level.

There is a parallel in the shape of the curve in the last fifty years roughly. Since 1960, the carbon dioxide level has been climbing. This is not the only cause, but only an environment change which we pre-1960 models were not born into, hence we did not adapt to in childhood. This reduced oxygen transfer may have reduced our energy level, and therefore our desire to be active. Food gives us a short term boost in energy and the first few ATP from sugar are easy to obtain oxygen free.

CPAP machines are often recommended for heavy people at night, and that helps many a great deal. This would drive more oxygen into those people. I was once in a weight wise group, and everyone except me was on a CPAP machine of some kind.

What kind of test could be devised to act as a proof of concept test? How about deep breathing exercise, on the hour and half hour, or as needed, about five or ten deep breaths, aka forced oxygenation?

Yes, No, Well that depends

http://www.weightymatters.ca/2017/01/first-mood-then-weight-bellletstalk.html

Yoni made a pronouncement, but it is only sometimes correct. I am operation under a hypothesis that there are multiple causes of overeating, and that mood is not one of the major driving factors; that depends on how we define mood. I define mood as a medium term temperament, that is day, days, perhaps weeks in length. It is the long term temperament of months, years, to life that is the problem. Occasional overeating is not the problem, occasional overeating creates overweight people, not obese people. But he is right that psychological, philosophical, emotional, cultural, physical, environmental, and especially addiction to food issues must be addressed before recovery from obesity issue can be overcome completely.

Is it a true addictive substance, or is it just behavior as obsessive compulsive behavior? Does it matter? 

But Yoni is wrong in that diet must be corrected in order to remove the self mediating effect of food in order that the underlying mind problem, the non physical drive to overeat can be exposed. Food addiction is a bitch of a problem, and if one happens to live in a situation where one has little control over the food available, food addiction may impossible to recover from in that environment. Food addiction is necessarily the first thing that must be beat down before recovery can occur.

Before food addiction recovery can occur, acceptance of food addiction must occur. If a human has the willpower to only eat small amounts of the addictive substance, it would not be addiction. Some of us are highly sensitive to odd things, wheat being a prime example. Some of us cannot handle any wheat, and but like the taste of wheat. It is in many prepared foods also. For those of us who cannot handle it, absence is the only logical choice.

Now what if our addiction is a physical problem like insulin overproduction?  Perhaps we need to live on no starch, no sugar diet? Yet we like, even crave, and want starches, may even require a few, which are ever present and economical? Now we have a real problem. Even worse when we have unresolved personality problems. Sleep, work, do something or eat: those are my choices. But I get tired to quickly, oh well, sleep. But I do not need to do anything, and do not want to do anything? That does not matter if I want to avoid eating. Rest, at home, will result in eating. Now what are those choice: sleep, work, do something or eat. 

Developing the skill to sit in front of food that we like, and not eat it, is not a skill I have. As I do not live alone, but with a french yettie, this is a problem. (yettie, after the polish cry "yets, yets") This is an environmental problem or the environment I inhabit. There is no point in talking about this problem further, there is just no cooperation coming. I do cook meals, but I cannot prevent more crap being bought and left out.   

       

Understanding weight loss failure

The problem is not the diet, but the inability to follow the damn diet. Hunger, cravings, desires, emotions, un-named pressures, all push us off the diet, food program, prescribed restrictions. Until we understand and treat these issues, obesity will remain long term.

For some of us, this started in childhood. It is a issue that we do not clearly know the cause, perhaps the cause is absence of emotional support, or absence of physical support, we were placed in a no win situation, and we ate to resolve the feelings, (high BG helps reducing feeling) or just to survive. This habit, behavior became "burned in" - epigenetically, and now we live with this problem.

When we read Jonice Webb, Running on Empty, it becomes apparent that this is likely the problem, but it is an unknown unknown that is driving our decisions. Now it is necessary to use a shotgun approach to identify the problem or rather the solution that works. Total reloading of the operating system. Reboot with a corrected program. But where are we to get the new "corrected" program from? Not from religion, not from the philosophers, not from the government, or psychologists? So where? Well, nobody has figured that one out yet, but many preach bits and pieces, and to every one preaching, there is much opposition, often more than are advocating any position. So the solution is reloading piecemeal, one belief, one emotional response at a time and we are soully responsible for our choice or decision.

But which unknown unknown? And we live in an environment which is beyond our control and then when the obvious solution does not depend on us? Now what? It is the unknown unknown that must be identified and relieved. Or does the obvious solution destroy all that we have built up to this point in our life? Or we need a change of environment. Or do we not have the required energy to implement and carry out the solution? Money always has the veto also. So there is no solution.


       

What Spirit

So what is the spirit of soul that the religious speak of? I just cannot identify what they speak of.

So if the body physically supports the physical mind, are the thought the soul? Or are the collective beliefs, motivations for action and all that other "software" running in the mind? But what about learned knowledge? and learned behaviors?

So does a rational person have a soul? Or is it just one more figment of the religious imagination, or something that the religious cannot define? More religious bullshit? 

Learned Obsessive Compulsive Behaviors

So why do we overeat? Is the cause physical or mental? If it is mental, than it is not a diet or food issue, therefore diet or food is just not going to fix the problem? Any calorie reduced diet will take the weight off if we are able to follow it. So if we are unable to follow the diet, where do we turn to?

It strikes me that mental issues need mental solutions, and who can tell us how to think? Well the philosophy guys are of some help with emotion type problems, and the psychologists if is a common problem, but how to they figure out what the problem is? Well when we read Running on Empty, it is apparent the most of the world is just getting by. so can those just getting by really help when someone realizes they have a mild form of Obsessive Compulsive Behavior that cannot be called OCD or OCPD? What if we just "take the treatment"?

Obsession is a reoccurring thought like "I am hungry", and the compulsion is a vain try to find something to take away that obsession. Well no compulsion or consumption can remove an obsession. The treatment is first identify that hunger feeling as an mental obsession, and realize no food intake can remove that feeling. That feeling can only be displaced by other feelings. It is just an obsession. Call it an obsession. It has no value and can be ignored. No obsession was ever removed by compulsion.

Now consider an emotional cause, where eating is used to remove a stress. High sugar/high insulin is a condition that causes a relaxation, after many calories. We are mistaking stress for hunger; we also may be hungry as well. There is a desire to re-feed after stress that is natural, perhaps even necessary for the thin. Glycogen in short supply calls for replenishing for the thin. We need to separate these feelings, but until we can?

Well there is a book that describes the treatment for obsessive- compulsive treatment: Brain Lock by Schwartz, so may the schwartz be with you.  

New Year, New Direction

For a while now I have been feeling in need of a change but I am unsure of what that change should be. I am bored, well not really bored, but no energy to do much, and no interest in doing much. Not really discontent, but not really motivated to do anything. I have lots I could do, but nothing I care about, or for that matter, nothing anyone else cares about much either. When I get sarcasm, I just stop. Oh well, she will just need to learn to live with unfinished projects.

So now I need a change, but the question is to what? The days get long sometimes when I do not have enough to do, yet do not want to do much. Such is retirement. I could change this blog into a rant or wail against selected "stupidities of man kind" or some such attention getting crier. There is no shortage of subjects: religion, environment, waste, ego spending, massive houses used as places to sleep while everybody works to pay for the house, money management, or the lack of such, dying jobs and career paths, shipping jobs offshore aka buying foreign goods, lack or economic choice of some products, politics, bad political decisions, bad decisions made for good reasons, decisions that make Alberta noncompetitive in the current market, but made for environmental reasons, bad faith decisions, stupid decisions to not support carbon capture efforts, even when some carbon capture is revenue generating, but not profitable enough to be self sustaining, and the list could go on.

I could dig out 20 to 40 year old slides and scan them, hang them on the web for all to see, but why?
I could make slides of most anything for the microscope and look at them, but why?
I could finish any number of started project, but she has not yet learned.
I could go to the garage and do something, but why?

One of those old philosophers, Epictetus in the Fragments is quoted as saying "never do anything without a reason" or something to that effect. "We should not lift a finger without reason," perhaps "without reason we should not lift a finger". I have no reason, beyond the need to do something. Is that sufficient reason? Perhaps it is.

There is a space between perception and analysis, a bigger space between analysis and decision, and a third space between decision and action, or so there should be according to some. This seems to be what many of the old masters of mediation suggest, and even the new masters, and that is also what a good few psychologists suggests. Perhaps I could pass my days in any of the many forms of meditation. But without any desire to....  

Will Trump become president? If he does, how will his presidency end? Natural term? resignation? impeachment? assassination? natural death or medical issue? Civil unrest? Civil War? Invasion of X or by Y? Nuclear war?... I will bet on impeachment and or medical issue. His ego would never let himself to admit into being wrong, and resigning. I doubt that he will make four years without some effort of relieving us of him, but the security will be tight.  He will infuriate the existing establishment and executive of Security Industry.  I could see him getting into serious difficulties and then fining a medical escape issue short of impeachment. Oh well, he will only likely upset NAFTA, softwood lumber, border security, free trade, auto industry, environment issues, drugs and health care, gyproc trade, beef, pork, food, housing, in Canada. It may be good for Canada also as we may need to start producing our own stuff in Canada in answer to the restrictions imposed.

Enough in the end we all just die anyway, just as the 110 billion who went before us.  





   

Is Overeating a "learned behavior"

Yes, well since we do it, it is a learned behavior. The question is more complex; was it learned as a result of direct teaching or was it self learned as a coping method for a bad situation or a inability to cope with some problem? Does that problem still exist?

So if my personality/attitude puts me into conflict with those around me, and I overeat to sooth myself, then I must learn to deal with those around me or I have no change of lasting recovery. So how does one learn to deal with people who are just wrong? An atheist living among the religious?

A grumpy wife?

The Potato

The Potato has been a traditional food for many for years. I was raised on them. It is difficult to give up a traditional food entirely, especially when I have grown them for years.

There is the observation: two eggs and two bacon, and I can go all day. Two eggs and a fingerling, and I get hungry by noon. Two eggs and two bacon, and fingerling, and I am hungry by noon. That is just not reasonable. So what is the cause? Is it the same sort of issue as with wheat, so described by William Davis in Wheat Belly? Is it a protein breaking into a peptide, that is causing an allergic reaction and surge in adrenaline? Is it a leak gut problem? The solution is obvious; swear off potatoes for now and ever.