Resolve Stress Eating

How does one resolve stress eating?  There is a variety of advice out there on the net. None of it worked well for me.

First I must say that the stress we feel is not about the situation but our thinking about the situation. Second that some things are up to us and some are not. This allows us to step back from the situation that is outside of us, and let the situation go. It is all in my mind.

When I was testing soil, self employed, I would take a cone penetrometer worth $13000, and shove it into the ground, sometimes 20 metres, then withdraw it to measure soil strength. That induced considerable stress in me, for if it was loss or damaged, it was at my expense. I have the same concern stress over many things. Oh well, it is what I think, how I value money, and equipment. It is not about the situation, but my thinking about the situation. I was not in control; I was at the mercy of fate, for the lack of a better word.  That feeling was the same over much less valuable situations as well.

So to deal with stress, we can remove ourselves from the situation, or change our thinking. The situations that we are ignorant of do not cause us stress, yet they go on.  Perhaps we just need to stop caring about the situation, or just realize that the situation has nothing to do with us... and everything to do with our, my thinking about the situation.

So I need to change my thinking.

Stress Hunger

A short choppy look in the rear view.

Stress creates hunger. When we are hungry, we tend to eat. Eating leads to obesity. Eating when stressed leads to obesity. Well for some. I was taught to eat when hungry, and stress, or my reaction to the situation was relieved by eating. Therefore I ate most of the time from age 6 to 18 when I left the home I grew up in, and that habit continued. I was raised to be farm labor. That was what I saw as my reason for existence, and that is what I was told. Not a nice outlook. My main objective was to come of age so that I could leave. I had no plan for the future beyond leaving. I knew what I did not want to do, but not what I wanted to do. Is there any doubt as to why I rate "family" so low in my priorities?

So I found a job, and another, and another, then I lit in one, where I liked the work, and became comfortable enough to realize I need education, and they helped me get started on my way. The selection was made on the basis of elimination and cost. Not on skill, desired, or interest, but on what was available. That was just before electronics, computers, and technology radically changed the world we live in.

But stress has been a constant, or my reaction to the changing situation, the desire to eat. It is just stress, but eating has always been the way that I dealt with that feeling. I have always felt pushed to do more, to learn more, to desire more. I grew up harnessing horse for light jobs, through the calculator time, computer, satellite phones, cell phones, to what we have today. The Fax has come and gone. Change and pressure to change has been considerable, and my reaction was to eat or want to eat in response to the changing situation, and I reluctantly went along, but my reaction remained. I never really saw the stress until I realized that many people just live their life without any desire to grow in productivity, or improvement, like I was trained to do, aka create a situation that demanded performance, and induce stress is myself.

And my reaction to any situation I find stressing is to eat or want to eat due to what I interpret as hunger. It was not until recently that I could see this clearly. So the real problem is my reaction to the situation, and my interpretation as hunger. Obesity is the end result. But we can cut the cycle at the situation stage, or at my reaction stage.   

One More Cause

There is something about beliefs that we grow up with, and never question, that drive us like nothing else. Most of us are liberal, somewhat. There is a issue with labels, for it is each issue that needs the label, not the entire person. Some of our concepts are liberal, once we move to a society, we as a species became liberal and progressive; we always were adaptive. Some of these liberal attitudes take us too far, then we need to cut off that concept, back up the damage, and revise.

One such concept that I gathered from others is that I should never be hungry. This is problematic for me because I seem to be hungry all the time. Buddha said that "life is suffering."  This can be translated as unsatisfactory, problematic, painful, discomfort, from physical and emotional pain, stress, chaos, life in general. Hunger is just one more of those things. Is it all about learning to live hungry? Here is the first noble truth.

Unsatisfied is our natural state. We are a liberal species. The discomfort I feel is a result of my thinking about the subject, not the situation or condition. The cause are my delusion about what life should be and my expectations of what life should be. It is my thinking that is the problem, something that I did not learn as small child. I was taught to develop expectations and now need to understand that what I was taught was just wrong. It is all about our individual thinking. Much of it is just wrong, and when I considered this, one line at a time, one concept at a time, it becomes clear: life is suffering caused by my thinking. It is not the situation, but my thinking about the situation. Here is the second noble truth.

There is a solution, and that is the third noble truth. I can develop a "grateful martyr" attitude, all the while knowing that it is just a thought defense. It is a struggle to go against society predominant idea or situation, even when it is wrong. Oh well, we live until we die, and are no more. Nothing lasts. Impermanence. Change. Birth - life - death cycle, and from the remains of our spices, the next may come... or not.

The solution is to follow a plan, and ignore the discomfort, because the discomfort is from my thinking about the problem, not the actual problem. There may also be some minor discomfort from the actual problem, but this is beyond my control... but could eat... and that is the other problem... so I must choose the lesser weevil... or for the grammar police evil. Essentially, this is the fourth noble step, but the plan is a specific part of the eight fold path. Here endith the lesson for today.

Exposure on/in blogging

Thanks Val, you got me thinking about exposure.

I am not thinking about some of the there possible meanings of exposure, as the Greeks and our Amerinatives did to the newborns, for a bit of time, if they survived, they tended to them, and only the tough survived... I am thinking of exposing ourselves to the net, but fully clothed, for all to take a run at our ideas.

First we need to have an idea, and to express the idea, and have a second real human read, understand, and acknowledge the idea as real, valuable and worth considering. If they agree, already, it is just a yha, ok. Nothing further. It is only when they oppose the idea strongly that there is any comment. Even then, with the opposed, so many times, it is just "idiot", as I do with the religious, flat earth, political, and contrarians. I could well imaging if one of those locked on for any reason, and I became a target. I might need to ignore the internet for a while. I feel sorry, no pissed off at those who do this, but also realize that I could, for a bit, but then the "why bother" would set in and I would be off to my next crusade.

The next thought about this is how much of the traffic is real humans and not bots of some type, either scanning for something or looking for a place to "lay eggs" or drop little virtues. There is no way to know. If we assume that all these peak from one source are bots, then I have few that are real people. Oh well, I write because it helps me, not others. It does not matter.

Sticking to a topic may also help. I think that I have offended people over the years by some of my statements, atheist, political, environments, a-religious, etc. Too bad, reality sucks. We all have our causes, and our own reality. I doubt that the Muslims are comfortable on my sites, for 'there is no god' has been stated more than once. I also am a nihilist...depending on the definition, well there is no purpose other to produce the next generation, and we do that too well now. There is no meaning... there never was... but we can paint on a purpose and we are off to the races... no meaning required. But I digress from my food/overeating issues, which few know anything about. And I have not found a solution that really works yet. I expect there is a multitude of causes... and different treatments work for different causes... yet there is one more, that I have not explored yet.  I know this because there is still a problem.

I expect that there is some physical cause, and the only solution is not eating and learning to live hungry while surrounded with food. Such is life.

To Blog or Not TO Blog

The blog-a-sphere is shrinking. I have been blogging irregularly now for eight years and sporadically since 2006 spring, but the service provider I first used is gone, along with the first four years of posts. It does not matter. I blog primarily as a outlet, I often do not know the answer until I express it, and my memory is getting so bad; rereading a post is an new experience. Somebody said something like every author remembers ever word they have written. I do not. 

Many of the old bloggers die off, or just suddenly stop. There last post is just there last post. We have no further information. I assume they died off or similar event, and did not just stop blogging. It does not matter.... we all die off in the end.

I miss the comments though, and the though provoking statement, some of which we know are wrong... but which concept is wrong, and which are the same effect, just expressed in such different terms that it is not recognizable as being the same. Religions are likely the first coping systems, but nobody calls them that. They are group delusions, well yes, with many fanciful concepts, but in reality, they are all just coping systems... oh well, in the end we all just die anyway.

The traffic has diminished to the point that I can say anything without drawing fire, yet, as blogging is also a coping method, it does not matter. I get an audience, perhaps it is only bot clicks, but it does not matter. I have been able to express what I need to say to my imaginary friend that read this blog. It does not matter, it is just a coping mechanism, like religion. And after, I feel better, or not, it does not matter.

Sometimes I read something that I take for information, if it fits with what I already believe, or I let it go as fiction. Some will be held in abeyance until I forget it, it does not matter.