Eating disorders

What are eating disorders?

Well the more I read, the less sure I am that anyone knows a great deal about these. Essentially, eating disorder is a loss of logical control over our intake of food in some way. The physical body or unconscious is in control. Our eating is beyond the control of our free will. The chemistry is in control. Short of locking myself away, I am going to eat when I get like that. I am one who is unable to not eat the marshmallow, unless I physically take myself away. Understand that. If there is food available I will eat it. That is an eating disorder, binge eating disorder likely. The desire to eat is in control.

How does one live life with this problem?

There are many who do not have this problem who are willing to tell me how to do it, but they and I am not the same animal. I am unable to control myself in the presence of food. That is the essential difference. The zucker rat, and the Labrador dog are likewise. 

The solution is not clear. Any system that supposes a god is just wrong as there is no god. There is no physical evidence of a god, and no miracles. We are the result of evolution and other natural processes, some of which we understand, some not so much. There is no purpose in human life beyond reproduction, and after we get well founded comfortable conditions. These are all cultural. We are opportunistic organisms living on a big rock. Some of us develop irrational desires, like myself toward food, or like the gays toward other of there same gender. We have all the *files, alcoholics, drug addicted. Not rational, any of them. Some recover, some die with the issues.

We need to somehow get our desires under control. Somehow. Control of the body is all I could ever do so far, yet after reflection, it is the desire that must go. Now desires should be within our locus of control according to Epictetus, yet perhaps not chemically/physically driven desires. That is likely the difference; some are physically/chemically driven desires, some are psychological driven. We have control of the psychologically, but not the physical. Some, like eating are likely driven by both as eating is required by the body for survival. Some eating is required, some is not.

Those that claim supernatural knowledge and authority over others, aka religious leaders, are total nut cases. Eating disorders are, at the foundation our reactions to our situation, in the presence of food. Our situation includes (included) family, social/cultural collective social behaviors and expectations, even in "unreal" but real situations. I was raised in a irrational religious environment, which I ignored, and later became agnostic for most of my working life. Now that I have time, I have sorted out my thinking in this area of my life and have become completely atheist. The conditions I was raised under caused this food issue, of that I am certain. The family religion/philosophy "don't talk, don't tell" has become "those raving religious lunatics".

So does early learned behavior get encoded into the epigenetic behavior? The simple answer is yes. So how does one undo this? Well, nobody seems to be telling? Go see a psychologist specializing in eating disorders. So I looked around and found one locally- well thirty miles away. So I set up an appointment and went. She was bigger than I was at the time... not much evidence of her ability there. So my search too me to the neighboring providence, where I found a renown psychologist who had found a solution. So I started to make an appointment, but then I recognized the voice, but not the name.  A cousin, who had never been bothered by the eating issue nor reality, she had always been batshit crazy and thin, but with a tremendous memory. So much for that line of help. 



    

C Test

How do we know if something works or not? We need to test it. So what is the criteria? What is truth anyway? Ask any religious person if the is a god, and they will say yes. Ask an atheist and they may say no so what is the truth. The truth is there is no physical evidence of one. The only place a god could hid is in the mind of the believer. So truth is to a large part dependent on the position of the person who is questioning what is truth.

Else where I have stated any group of people who try to subjugate a second group are immoral. This is typical religion subjugating their young. This is government recommending people to should follow the Canada Good Food Guide. This document is wrong for so many people, it is just a crime against humanity to continue to promote it. This week we saw a senator get in shit for stating the truth, that many benefits came from residential schools. How else is the government going to provide advanced education to the north? A town of a few hundred to a few thousand cannot afford to have schools with all subjects after say grade nine. High schools need diversity, and small schools cannot offer the diversity needed in these times. So what is the truth? Children at about age 14 should be ready to leave home and get an education. Oh well, we of European ancestry have been doing this for centuries, or millennium. 

So political correctness is subjugated truth. There was some bad, and some good, but with the current state of political correctness, one cannot speak the truth, or some kind of statistical correctness.    

Religions are fraudulent. They promise to save your souls. They are unable to deliver, and there are no souls, no self. So what is truth? 

Until truth can be defined objectively, we are at a loss to say what is right. The ancients used virtue to escape this, for a virtue is always good. Well, until Aristotle realized that virtues were between two extremes, that even virtues can be abusive in excess. So what is the ultimate test. If it benefits us, as individuals, there is no reason to reject it unless it does harm to others. Buddha said something on this: Do not accept anything by mere tradition ... Do not accept anything just because it accords with your scriptures ... Do not accept anything merely because it agrees with your pre-conceived notions ... But when you know for yourselves—these things are moral, these things are blameless, these things are praised by the wise, these things, when performed and undertaken, conduce to well-being and happiness—then do you live acting accordingly.

So we are left with your own evaluation, and what we think is right. Not a straight forward when everything is in flux and change. All we can do is evaluate everything for ourselves, and if we find it immoral to indoctrinate others with wrong information, well then perhaps Buddha had the right idea how to live well. Right intent and knowledge, right action, speech, and livelihood, right concentration, effort and mindfulness, and we are responsible for all our decisions.  

 

B Act

Recovery is all about action, action leads to recovery. Right action, right behavior, and who decides what is right action? The person making the action. We live in an overpopulated world. Wrong action may lead to our death, or our suffering. It does not matter. No one knows what is correct anyway.

Religion always tells of great altruism, and great act of self sacrifice, and yet the pope says it is selfish to not have children in this overpopulated world. He says birth control and abortion is wrong, yet is unable and/or unable to step up to take care of the people, yet speaks of his great altruism. Something is wrong here. His conception of what is right and wrong is warped. So who decides what is right and wrong?

The government has laws for now, where they are willing to spend money to prosecute some "crimes" but not others. They are reluctant to prosecute fraud, or even condemn it. Why? Could it be that so many of them are on the take from the proceeds of fraud? What is fraud? Charging for something that you know will never be provided. So is selling good government and providing poor government fraud?

The LDS church says one must tithe, even if your children do not have enough, because they need the money more. Is this right? 

We allow free market of psychic advice, and numerous similar bullshit. Some of it is just entertainment, even for those who cannot afford entertainment. They would be better off going to the library and reading, or spending that money on a reality education. Oh well, some can be fooled all the time. But it is the person making the action that decides on what is right and what is not.

We see vegetarians wailing about the conditions that farm animals are raised in, and I will admit that some of the factory farms are vicious, but the historical and traditional farms are better, but the animals have a choice of produce or go extinct. We all do. The veggies wail about eating meat and suffer from protein deficiency, fat soluble vitamin deficiencies, slow muscle development, slow mental development, high frequency of autism and similar veggie issues. Yet they do not see the problem as nutritional issue. We have to many people on this earth. We can never be satisfied, as it is dissatisfaction that drives the human population forward. More education, more choice, more and better space at home, and all the time we need more work to provide the money for more stuff. Stop the world, I want to get off. Go minimal and see the world.

The whole issue of overeating is about lack of contentment. Physical, mental, and gut satiation. That is what this life is short on. Not activities, money, or social involvement. We can keep ourselves running in circles, or we can sit back and watch the world run by.

Religions are parasitic organization also, and commit fraud ever time they pass around a collection plate. There are no souls to save, the meme parasites reside in all the old books that are used as a foundation for the religion.

Enough.  

A Plan

SMART has a plan. Motivation, controlling cravings, managing thoughts, improving lifestyle. With this outline they claim to be able to fix alcohol, drug and food issues. Yet at all the meetings, it is common to push sugar 'treats'. So if one is motivated enough, clear thinking enough, well enough controlled thinking, and living a good lifestyle, on should not have a problem. Yet we look around and 2/3 of the people have issues. So when one looks at the problem, well then all we need to double down and worker harder. Bullshit. There is a problem, and if we did not overeat, we would not have the problem. All well and good, but with food the cravings never leave. As we get older, we will be less active, and need to cut our food further. Then one day we realizes that the experts have missed something. Reality. Genetics. Environment. We are born with a desire to eat, cultured within a society that overeats, live in an environment that food is always on offer, in a society that is all about greed. The population is a mixture of stages of evolution, and there are some have little desire to eat; others the flip side; we are never satisfied; it is these thin people who are driving the discussion, and they do not have the same desire to eat. They do not have the problem, and are not able to solve it.

We see this fixity of ideas in religion also. There is no physical evidence for any sort of god, so the only place left for a god to hide is in the mind of the believers, and having been infected with that parasitic meme, are unable to realize that religions are parasitic memes. They are fixated on these life controlling concepts that are historical cultural group think, and are actually wrong. Overcoming overeating is all about control of behavior, of self behavior. Knowing the correct behavior is one part, and doing the correct behavior is the other part. Unless walking is part of work, or can be made into part of work, weight control is not possible. 15000 steps is three hours. Working 50 to 70 hours a week in our working life tires us out to the point we cannot continue once we become aged. Many of us never took the time required to develop a proper life skills; we were to busy earning a living; those that did or were able to develop adequate life skills do not have the problems, and cannot understand those of us with the problem, and certainly do not have a solution.

There is no physical evidence of a soul, so when we die, it is all over. And in the end we all just die anyway. Death is none of my concern, as when death has arrives, I am no more, but as long as I am, there is no death. These are not so common of beliefs but the correct one. More evidence that many of the collective concepts are just wrong.

Back quite a number of years, John Powell, a disreputed Jesuit, suggested that we should review all our beliefs and throw out those that cause us problems, are wrong, or do not help us function. I started then, and got rid of many "beliefs of youth". Since then occasionally I have used that testing philosophy to clean up more beliefs, replacing with understand, and concepts of no god, no soul, no self, virtue as I define it, and much more. I realized that many people have a wrong understanding of what is right for me, what good virtues are, and what many disabilities really are. We only need to allow others to prosper, there is no obligation to help them more than we help ourselves. Religions are just group opinions, it does not make them right, and in many cases they are just wrong.

The food and diet science is just about as bad. Shortage of carbohydrate can also cause cravings. So what we need is a plan that can work, and if it works stick to it but evaluate and adjust in a never ending feedback loop.

So what is the solution? next day.

      

Genetic / Plastic brain / Epigenetics

So working my way through Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained, I realized the amount of bullshit that is written and sold as facts, when so much is speculation, and then something else comes along that does not fit, and we start back around again. So much of life is like Dennetts multiple  drafts, around and around we go in a infinite braided feed back loop, that changes as we learn more. At some point we need to do something so we do it, with incomplete information, with partial awareness, and we get something out of it...maybe. Much without purpose, without results or not. Awareness is the last thing that came and we may only be aware, after the fact, but if it is a rational level decision, and not pressed into service before the concept has reached maturity... well then, but it does not matter, for time rushes on and in the end we all just die anyway.

We all just swim upstream or stand still, or drift with the current of time. We make minor decisions, and perhaps we change a bit or not. Time keeps rushing by. Nap and an afternoon can be gone.

The other night, in the middle of the night, I realized that I was conscious, but not awake. I was aware of my thoughts, but not awake. It is like the sensation in meditation the first time I felt sound, not heard it. It is surreal, but real. It is the split between unconsciousness and sleep. It is dream like but not a dream, paralyzed, but aware of self, of my thoughts, and the goings on about the sleeping mass of self. The consciousness was unable to awake the self. Not out of body but locked in the body, unable to break free. Fear instantly arose, but subsided enough to realize what was happening or subsided as I realized what had happened. So what does this have to do with anything and can I repeat this experience? Perhaps it is a way to rest my aged self and keep my mind active.

So how would one induce this experience again. Well, perhaps like mediating myself to sleep by using a root consciousness as the point of return when the mind wanders. Well the first test resulted in a quiet a few returns to consciousness, good nap, quick to drift off.

Back to Dennett and Plastic brain concepts. Some brains are predisposed to being better at some function than others, and have some benefit to those that have those talents, hence survive better within there closed environment. In five thousand years we see the Indus valley developing mathematics, and it spread. Some areas developed an aptitude for mathematics, while the test cases, the fringe population of the Americas did not. As a result today, the frequency of occupations requiring high drive and heavily mathematic dependent are rare among there members. Yet the visual arts has a high numbers of native members.

So do the farmer based populations and their decedents have high numbers of heavy people?

We were frequently driven home with the concept of not wasting food. The plate must be cleaned. Nothing was permitted to be wasted. A life time of not wasting food is now a fixed characteristic which we cannot overcome. If food lands on the plate, it will be eaten, so it must be kept off the plate. Is this habit, cultural, familial, or genetic or epigenetic? We certinally learned this as children, and parents do not want to leave children hungry. So overeating can be learned as children, carried on ever after, except for those few that do not overeat, and often leave food on there plates.

I was out at a self serve country diner theater last night, and I noted that the a few 'normal" sized people left food on there plate. I doubt that any overeating disordered person would do that. So is their enough plasticity in the brain of a senior to change? There has not been much evidence of that over here yet.