Input Cycle - concept only

It seems we go through a cycle of sorts; appetite, the desire to eat; through a eating phase; and life where a number of stimuli create an appetite in time. The OA program helps identify and/or reduce those stimuli (we still need to address those issues), but there are still those chemical stimuli within the body that must be dealt with. Removal of sugar, grain, and omega 6 are a big portion of that.

We, the obese, are a subset of the population who have been naturally selected, largely due out food choices, lifestyle, genes, and time. We may be hyper sensitive to stimulus or blunt to signaling. I do not know which. 

We exist at a time of excess, and exposure to conditions to stimulate appetite. We and others know how to engineer food for palatability, to largely stimulate appetite, and we want more much of the time.

One of the choices is to philosophically go back to a time where availability and cost controlled the food choices, as with Paleo or locavore, with no sugars, grains or O6. We can limit our choices.

Meat available in the stores has become excessively lean. Regular hamburger has become hard to find. I need more fat meats, not stuff trimmed to no visible fats, that leaves me hungry. 

Stating the obvious is required. My memory is getting real bad. I need to write everything down to remember thing to the next day. Is this diet related, or just age or time of day. I do not know.

Remember that the insulin curve follows the glucose curve but is delayed in phase, so on which is the brain queuing off? Glucose, leptin or insulin, neither or all? Fat egress from fat cells occurs mainly when the insulin is lower, and blood FFA concentration is lower than the cell FFA concentration (diffusion), so there are at least two control conditions. Hunger indicates the gut likes a bit of fat. Insulin/BG deals with the energy appetite stimulus provides. But what do I know.

Perhaps, as Dr. Davis alluded to, "it is time to make glue".

Learned Behavior

Choosing what we eat is learned behavior. We, to some degree, learned what to eat from our parents, and they from there's. We then modified that due to cost and availability, like and dislike, all without thinking about it.

At the same time, those food changed, wheat became chemically fertilized, carbohydrate portion grew faster that the protein portion. New cultivars came along. Cheaper process add more sugar, and oils, and transfats.

All we need to do is go back in time, eat only what our ancestors ate, and the problem should self-correct. No sugars of any kinds, no grains, animal feed, no manufactured oils. Enough fat to keep hunger at bay, low enough carbs to keep insulin low, so that lipogenesis can occur, and the problem should go away.

The problem with O6 is two fold, one high calories, and two, it amplifies the insulin release for any defined amount of carbohydrate. (ref http://thatpaleoguy.blogspot.com/2011/09/follow-money-iii.html and his previous post and elsewhere)

Range of diet

http://www.bodybyscience.net/home.html/?p=1054 got me thinking.

"You select out for the resilient and discard those who are less adaptive, all while assuming that the training produced physical superiority rather than realizing it simply identified superior physical adaptability. There is nothing wrong with this marketing approach, but when it comes to advancing training science it ignores the plight of the non-responder."

The same thing happens with any one type of diet. That is why LCHF works so well with those who do not respond to SAD, or the ELMM, or moderation approches.

A Proposal

Dr Sharma has got me thinking:

""The question remains, however, whether enough eligible participants will in fact participate and persist with these ‘lifestyle’ changes without continuing and ongoing support (which is generally what the clinical trials have delivered). The notion that an intervention of limited duration (even twenty weeks) will lead to sustainable effects, may be a bit over optimistic, even if 10 year follow-up data from some diabetes preventions studies suggest long-term benefits even after the end of the trials.

It is also worth discussing whether or not success is actually dependent on losing weight (not a behaviour) rather than simply increasing physical activity and eating better (which are behaviours).""

I have hung around OA for a long time, and around TOPS for a while. There is no doubt that these weekly programs help, and that people will come back as long as they obtain benefit from the weekly meetings. Those programs assisted me in changing my thinking, then my lifestyle, followed by a measurable result in weight loss. Changing my knowledge about food, my thinking and attitude toward food was my key to weight loss success.

I will volunteer to assemble a program and deliver the first series if you or anyone will provide the space in South Edmonton, as a trial to see if if actually helps. I will suggest Thursdays evenings at the Gray Nuns in one of the class rooms. It would require some promotion, which Weight Wise could provide. It would need to have ongoing development, as what I believe are the needs may prove to be wrong. All I know is what I require. I would even be willing to work with any group of  other people needing to maintain recovery. I will require an knowledgeable editor, and someone to dress up a few graphics, as my abilities in those areas are deficient.

The objective must be to foster lifestyle change in a positive manner, to assist in weight loss and living at a lower weight. Much of my recovery has come as a result of self directed study of information freely available on the internet and various diet books. I know some of it is actually wrong, but the results work. aka doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. The whole thing must be educational.

Dr. Sharma's time frame is of twenty week is not particularly supportive, for some will require years of support to recover and ongoing occasional support for the remainder of there life; however, they will be able to provide support to others in other areas. It must support all diet concepts, including LCHF in some form, not just your government approved plan.

Absolutes must be supported, like no sugar, no grains, no Omega 6. Support does not mean recommending. The participants must be free to choose, not be dictated to. There is nothing that will destroy a weekly group faster than a control freak in charge.

There should be an educational feature at each meeting, ranging from someone like Jim telling the lessons they learned during there weight loss, to professional who struggles with the weight control issue, or basic bio-chemistry, bio-physics, psychology solutions, to philosophy.  There message may not agree with your approach, but education is not always correct. It would need to be open to the public, anyone who was in the need of losing substantial weight, or has lost considerable weight.  It need to be an all encompassing altruistic movement. 

This is just a proposal. Should anyone want such a thing, or to be part of movement or the development, you know how to contact me.

Off Topic

Divide between West, Muslim societies 'irreconcilable': poll... the headline says it all. 

Christians and Muslims cannot agree.  My view is simple. They are both wrong. Religions, all of them are just a system of ideas, that were use to explain what they did not know. There is much that we do not know, but we now know how to deal with the unknown knows, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns. Until we accept that these are all just ideas, and no idea is worth killing over. 

Until the world population can rap their mind around a philosophy or religion is simply a system of concepts, there will be no piece. Or they can go on living in a state of illusion and delusion, happy that they are right.

Eating Cycle

As I lay awake last night, it came to me that our eating is a cycle.

As it is a cycle, the start point is arbitrary, and each step has a number of decisions that we make, actions we take, and all this is based on knowledge, availability, physical needs and wants, cerebral influence, (not control, or absolute control). As someone said, we are talking to a brain stem.

The main step or blocks:

Appetite, the desire to eat.
Meal preparation, with associated food and food - body interaction knowledge
Eating
Followed by life, the time between.
Appetite stimulation that occurs during the life phase, hunger, cravings, compulsions, and all to other things.
Back to Appetite. We go through this cycle at least three times a day.

The only things that we can influence in diet are, the frequency, the foods, and the amounts. Some of the time the brain stem just takes over.

Each phase has potential issues that could cause obesity, and as I work through recovery, I learn more, and unlearn some stuff. Something I can change, some thing do not matter, and some just need to be accepted. Such is life.

There is one third of the population now that has no food issues, and 50 years it was 98 percent, and I was one of the 2% that had issues. Since there is one third of the population that has no issues, beyond the physical issues of sugar, grain and omega 6 oils, there must be something in my thinking, my philosophy that is a problem.

There are two distinctly different approaches, one is to severely limit calories, lose the weight, and then resume the former life. This is doomed to weight regain. The other is to adopt a new lifestyle, and eating philosophy, a set of rules, then be happy with what ever weight that we stabilize at. The goal becomes following a food philosophy, not one of weight.

LCHF is a simple approach, which is in general agreement with most of the low carb/Paleo/Primal world. It has been proven in Sweden, and is generally what I have been doing. A few vegetable carb rich meals in season may also work into the system, once we recognize that BG will go high, insulin will go high, fat will go into the fat cells, and not come out.

Important Video

This is an important video. I tried to hang a link on Dr. Sharma website, but he edited the link off. Oh well. We know how he makes money by not providing a workable diet solution to the obese and grossly obese. Classification of the problem is more important through EOSS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSeSTq-N4U4&feature  

This is AHS11 presentation of Andreas Eenfeldt, MD. demonstrating the changes in Sweden "Test population". Note the downturn in obesity in the last year.

Stimulation of Appetite

Stimulation of appetite is counter productive in weight loss efforts. Blogs with pictures of food, recipes and the like will just be skipped, as I do not need appetite stimulus.  In fact, I am not sure that that is not a major problem of all this studying obesity, that is stimulation of my own appetite.

The majority of weight loss occurs in the hours shortly before the next meal. Anything we do to extend the time between meals and snacks will help with weight loss. Weight loss is the result of a group of new behaviors extending the time between meals, reducing the amount of food, and reducing insulin levels, and avoiding hunger, and food cravings. Add to this effective dealing with food pushers (drug pushers) and food pushing social functions, and I should have more weight loss.

Weight loss diets

http://perfecthealthdiet.com/?page_id=8 Present their idea of the perfect diet.

To lose weight I need to remove pleasure foods, most of the starches, and keep the protein to about 70 grams of protein, that is 2 eggs, two 120 gram meats or fish and a bit here and there-  potatoes, flax, cottage cheese.

Their recommended quantity of starch is unreasonably large for the non physical worker/ extreme athletic, the sedentary person, inactive person, who does a minor amount of 10000 steps a day, and has a slower metabolism.

The real problem with starches; carbohydrates in general, is the other job of insulin, to inhibit lipolysis, in addiction to helping glucose into cells, and carbohydrates force the rise of insulin, as the body cannot tolerate  raised blood glucose. The inhibiting lipolysis makes us hungry, rather than using stored fats for energy. There may also be a rate of lipolysis issue when we are depleted of visceral fat.

Satiety , Protein: 0, Fat 1

Which causes satiation and maintains satiety, protein or fat?

There has been a bit of debate whether protein is satiating or fats.

Popular press says protein, as does Dukan. Bernstein says fat.

My N=1 says fat is much more satiating, protein stimulates blood glucose therefore insulin. It may be that the included fats in meat are sufficient fat for satiation in some people. I have tried coconut oil, fat soup, salad with dressing as fat with no protein. The dressing contained Canola oil, but it is mono, 15% O6, 7%O3 and a bit of saturated. The least damaging of the manufactured oils, but without the taste of olive oil. I do not like olive oil's taste.

Ham and pork sausages were the leanest meat I could find, and these are not very effective at satiation. Fat beef burgers are sometimes satiating, and less some days. There is a relationship with the color, aka fat content, regardless of what the package says. Some of the lean is not so lean, and some of the regular is not so fat. I would not be surprised to find the difference was the label some days.

Fat wins. Salad with dressing is a doable lunch, without proteins.

Beth; your suggestion of coconut oil works well, and got me started on this bent.

It is my conclusion that since the hunger sensation that I feel is removed by fat; I will just consider it a call for fats. It may be just the stomach or liver first cry for energy. These two usually have the first pass effect, taking their fuel first from the food intake, hence, are in a good place, well positioned, to call for food.

Any comments? Which do you think is more satiating?

Taubes, Guyenet, and the Obesity Solution

These people assume that there is a underlying physical cause for the obesity epidemic. What if they really are studying how the body deals with overeating and the actual cause is cerebral, not physical. What if there are a large number of causes and contributing factors?

I seem to be developing, or just observing what appears to be a binge eating disorder in myself. An overwhelming desire to eat, whatever is available, and acting on that urge is a classical description of binge eating disorder. Perhaps, yes, it has existed all along, but was reduced through the weight loss phase. Thinking back, binges have been part of the problem. Donuts. Wieners. Nuts. Cheese. Roast Beef. Fruit in season. Green raw peas in season, on the vine. Grapes. Corn, raw on the cob, fresh in the garden, just like a raccoon. They got the blame, even though they are rare around here.

The only treatment offered is cognitive behavior therapy. Know thy self, be aware, and stop doing the behavior. Such a solution. Back to "it is my fault. It usually is, for I am a man."  The power of the mind to make us do something is amazing.

When the appetite strikes, the desire to eat, there is little that I can do except go away, and do something else more interesting. The wife brought home a big package of grapes, something she does not eat, and left them there. She know I would eat them. Sabotage. Abuse. If I say anything, I will be in more shit. Is there a real solution beyond living alone? She has been asked not to do that so many times now, but still she does it. I have to stop her from buying any groceries, I guess.

This gets me thinking about the food input phase. First there is the desire to eat, the appetite. It is worse if we are physically hungry. Back to the metered meals I guess. weighted, measured, calories computed, revised, everything cleaned up, before eating. Compulsion is a bitch.

The second issue in the input cycle, where control can exist is controlling the availability of food. All frozen, uncooked, or in the store until needed. This may seem excessive, but for some of us it seem necessary, to control our intake. Acceptance of all things in my life that is beyond my control is also necessary, and then working to change the ones that I can change has brought considerably more peace, but how do we change behavior of ourselves, let alone getting someone else to change?

There is much advise, but most of it near useless, or I am too thick to understand what is being said. First is recognizing the problem behavior, followed by the willingness to change, the urgency to change, what to change, how to change it, and then some form of learning the new behavior, unlearning the old behavior, to a new and workable solution. If the solution cannot be seen to be working, what was the point.  Then exhaustion or frustration (physical and/or mental) sets in and nothing happens.

Taubes, Guyenet, and the Obesity Solution

Yoni raised the question, what do we think, so this is my full response.

Taubes and Guyenet theories are both contributing factors to the problem, but neither have recovered from gross obesity, and are both missing many of the critical elements.

That obesity map (Beth's pointer) (also on my sites list) kinda shows part of the problem, but not the solution. The main part of the problem is misinformation, and wrong information, along with interference of hunger/ satiety signaling by the man made foods... Sugars especially fructose; grains, especially wheat (see Wheat Belly); and omega 6 industrial oils. These should be considered lubricants and poisons, not part of the human foods.

Those that are serious enough about recovery to eliminate those foods will then need to tweak their diet to get the minerals and vitamins that they need. Addictions must be dealt with, and our social eating must be ended. They will need to learn to listen to their bodies, and respond to what there body is telling them. Hunger feeling is removed by a first pass effect, not beyond the liver. Cravings are another issue.

Once I got off all these, I could listen to the body signaling, and that helped. Responding correctly to the signaling, aka -learning what the signal is saying- is also a problem, given our social, environmental, food availability, and schedule fixation culture. It has been an education - sorting real information and marketing information - an ongoing struggle. Such is my life today. I am grateful for those who went before and left an trail to follow, and those others that explain the why it works. I am also really pissed at those great many who lead me and others down the blind alley with their bullshit.

Recovery from gross obesity is different than those who need to lose a few pounds. These are different animals, perhaps of the same family, but far different. Obesity developed in our youth is also different from adult onset obesity. There is no one solution.

Dr. Sharma' hunger/emotional eating

http://www.drsharma.ca/obesity-assessment-hunger-and-disorganized-eating.html

Hunger and Disorganized Eating (colors are Fredt comments)

Most patients and clinicians think of hunger as the physical pangs felt in the vicinity of the stomach (growling, moving, gurgling, constricting) combined with a desire to eat. We refer to this as physical or homeostatic hunger.

Many patients will deny that they ever feel physical hunger, and yet they find themselves eating in a manner that is inconsistent with their weight-management goals. These patients often refer to themselves as “emotional eaters” or “stress eaters” and commonly blame their lack of dietary control on abstract factors such as willpower, stress, depression, anxiety, boredom, and habit.

Emotional eating is the practice of consuming comfort foods or junk foods (ft.. or for some us any thing ready available) in response to feelings other than physical hunger. This can best be described as emotional or hedonistic hunger. We can call it appetite. (ft.. appetite is normally the desire to eat..ok.)

Emotional eating has a partially biological basis in that it appears to involve serotonin-releasing brain neurons — and the release of serotonin is controlled by food intake. Carbohydrate consumption in particular leads to the secretion of insulin, and the resultant insulin-mediated change in the body’s plasma tryptophan ratio increases the release of serotonin.Protein intake does not stimulate insulin production (as much as carbs) and consequently does not produce the same effect. Because serotonin release is also involved in functions such as falling asleep, sensitivity to pain, blood pressure regulation, and mood control, many patients learn to overeat carbohydrates (particularly snack foods like potato chips or pastries, which are rich in both carbohydrates and fats) (ft.. or whatever) to make themselves feel better. Such patients are, in effect, self-medicating with food. This tendency appears in patients who gain weight during stressful periods of life, in women with severe premenstrual syndrome, in patients with SAD or depression, and in patients who are trying to stop smoking. (Nicotine, like dietary carbohydrates, increases brain serotonin secretion, while nicotine withdrawal decreases it.) (so we have addiction like problem)


Other central neurotransmitters like the endocannabinoid system and the dopaminergic system may also be involved in the impulse to ingest certain foods to improve mood or alleviate physical symptoms.


Interestingly, most patients report having a time of day at which they find it most challenging to maintain dietary control, and other times of day at which they have no difficulties whatsoever.


Based on anecdotal evidence from many patients, we wonder whether emotional eaters should be divided into primary and secondary sub-groups. The majority of self-proclaimed emotional eaters would fall into the secondary sub-group, who only tend to eat emotionally from mid-afternoon onwards. While these individuals may have a heightened physiologic response to carbohydrates and use food to self-medicate, the fact that they do not struggle with emotional eating in the mornings suggests that some other factor is needed to trigger their eating behaviours. Many of these secondary emotional eaters admit to skipping or having very light breakfasts, no mid-morning snack, and sometimes light lunches. (or after specific foods, sugar, wheat, to much beef.... anything that raises BG & insulin) We wonder whether or not it is possible that these secondary emotional eaters require the combination of an emotion with a physiologic mechanism such as increased ghrelin, generated as a result of their disordered eating patterns that combine synergistically to trigger binge behaviours.( and for me it is only some days)


Given the incredibly important role of eating in the evolutionary development of every organism, we are tempted to expand the definition of hunger to include not only overt physical symptoms, but also appetite-mediated food cravings and food compulsiveness that trigger behaviours such as binge eating, emotional eating, and night eating in predisposed individuals. These behaviours often involve a loss of restraint, and individuals with a predisposition to this type of temporal disinhibition may be manifesting heritable mechanisms that evolved to allow for excess intake during times when food was only intermittently available.


Primary emotional eaters, on the other hand, self-medicate with food all day long in response to emotions and stressors. Rarer than secondary emotional eaters, these individuals are often much more difficult to treat and may well benefit from counselling from a clinical psychologist.

end of quote
Protein intake does not stimulate insulin production and consequently does not produce the same effect. 
This statement is misleading. Fat does not stimulate insulin but protein does stimulate some insulin and some glucagon, but not near as much insulin as carbohydrates. The obvious question is why not just leave out most of the charbohydrates, the dense carbohydrates at least?

Sunscreen

http://www.drbriffa.com/2011/09/02/british-doctor-concerned-about-calls-to-protect-children-from-sunlight/

Quote:

Then he casts a critical eye over melanoma and its relationship with sunlight. He makes the point that melanoma most commonly occurs in places that are less sun exposed. He also alludes to the fact that melanoma is more common in indoor workers than outdoor workers. He doesn’t mention this, but I think it’s also worth bearing in mind that most melanomas do not occur in typically sun-exposed parts of the body. Dr Spence does point out, though, that there is scant evidence that sun protection reduces the risk of melanoma, and none at all that it saves lives.

therefore: Sunscreen is more marketing bullshit.

Reward

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/09/book-review-end-of-overeating.html does a book review

Quotes follow;

Kessler's book focuses on 1) the ability of food with a high palatability/reward value to cause overeating and obesity, 2) the systematic efforts of the food industry to maximize food palatability/reward to increase sales in a competitive market, and 3) what to do about it.

                        perhaps we should add grains   v

Kessler starts out by making the case that sugar, salt and fat cause overeating, and that much of the food industry is based around finding novel ways of packing more of these three ingredients into food to maximize palatability. He repeats an idea that is common in the food reward literature, that reward and pleasure circuits in the brain override circuits that are designed to stabilize body fat stores (body fat homeostasis), establishing a higher "settling point". I have a minor quibble with this; my belief is that excessive reward does not override homeostatic circuits, but re-regulates them to defend body fatness at a higher level. This is why overweight/obese people essentially mount a starvation response when they try to lose fat by deliberately restricting calories, making the process difficult and often destined for failure.

In everyday language, we call food palatable if it has an agreeable taste. But when scientists say a food is palatable, they are referring primarily to its capacity to stimulate the appetite and prompt us to eat more. Palatability does involve taste, of course, but, crucially, it also involves the motivation to pursue that taste. It is the reason we want more.

Palatability is the hedonic, or pleasure value of food. The motivation to pursue food, "the reason we want more", is due to the reward or reinforcing value of the food. As far as I know, those are the accepted scientific definitions, although some people do use the term reward more broadly to include hedonic value*.

Another quibble I have is that he focuses too persistently on sugar, fat and salt. These are clearly major reward factors, but so are calorie density, certain textures, free glutamate, starch and a few others. In addition, many other cues (particularly flavors) become rewarding as they are associated with those factors.

Kessler provides practical advice for fat loss based on the food reward ideas. It mostly revolves around learning how to wean yourself off junk food, using an approach similar to drug rehab strategies.

By this definition, reward has a hedonic (pleasure) component and a motivational component. Researchers sometimes call these "wanting" and "liking" (1). I may switch to this definition at some point, because it's widely accepted and easier than saying "reward" and "palatability" separately every time I want to mention these ideas.

"It's very important that we emphasise this: eating has to be pleasurable, it has to be rewarding"
"...if anything you need to focus on foods you like MORE than the fat, sugar and salt."

end of quotes

I think they got it.  Book is likely worth a read.

I also think grain, a sugar, after enzymes get to it should be specifically named. Salt is required and speeds the absorption of glucose in the gut wall. The salt in the product increases the speed of absorption.  

Coffee

In the last few days, in the blog world, there has been chatter about coffee. I gave it up due to some of its effects. Here is the list.

On the negative side:

It is a vector for empty calories, ie sugar, processed whiteners, and dairy whitener.
It contains caffeine, which does some of the following other things:
It is a diuretic, which should lower blood pressure, but this effect is blunted by the other effects. Also note that if you are on a diuretic already, or put on one, the diuretics effect will be reduced.
It causes the small blood vessels to contract, raising blood pressure, and restricting blood flow. This will make arthritis, recovery from strong exercise, and inflammations much worse. When I gave up coffee my diagnosed " arthritis " almost disappeared. 
It is a appetite stimulus, adrenalin stimulus, and affects blood glucose through at least diuretic effect and adrenalin effect. Blood sugar drives insulin, that effects fat storage and energy choice, causing glucose to be taken into the cells. Glucose is toxic to the body, and must be disposed of.

On the positive side:

Taste
Social excuse

You decide if coffee is worth drinking.

  

What is needed?

The public first must learn what nutrition is, and they are not going to "get it" through the popular press. They need to understand concepts like caloric density, nutrition density, BMR, and diet design, nutritional requirement of the human body. It is difficult to learn from marketing grade misinformation.

There is a lot to know before we, the lay persons, can make informed decisions about food, and have the confidence to say that most of the public have a deluded concept of what is healthy food.

The government has failed badly at getting the correct information to the public. What is need is a Real Food Guide, where manufactured eatable products are not considered food.