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Mnevan, I'm glad you asked the question. I'm interested in hearing the answers in both threads as well. I'll link to that thread so others can easily follow as well:
viewtopic/t75788/OT-Willpowerconquering ... actor.html

I honestly can't think of a more germane nutrition and diet question than, "What's the best way to cope with counterproductive cravings". If I correctly follow some of the answers to your question (an admittedly dubious assumption), it sounds like the responses are starting to shape up in three categories:
1) understanding the origins of those counterproductive cravings (psychological versus biochemical)
2) managing or coping with a counterproductive craving when it does occur, and
3) eliminating or minimizing those intense cravings with proper diet

I think the low-carb/high-fat school of thought contends that replacing carbs snd sugar with quality fat specifically helps to eliminate most of the carb and sugar cravings.

deltadave wrote:Beef! It's What's For Dinner!

http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/carn ... 000291.htm

I didn't fully understand this until I read the book "Wheat Belly". I don't have any deep seated psychological reasons for over-eating, I'm not lazy or stupid. If I didn't eat something every two hours or so, I had a physiological hunger, and real live low blood sugar symptoms--my blood sugar, when measured would be in the low 50's. But according to glucose tolerance tests I did not have diabetes. I was told to eat small frequent amounts--crackers and fruit were recommended. I learned on my own that I could go longer by eating protein--peanut butter, cheese, almonds, deli turkey--but I'd always have something carby with it because that was the advice I was given.

These symptoms lessened when i went low carb and STOPPED when I eliminated grains. These foods spike your blood sugar and since I was already insulin resistant (PCOS) my insulin would crank and crank unio it could finally get into the cells to deal with the rising blood glucose. That would drop my glucose like a stone and I'd be hungry and shaky again.

Yes, I put the food in my mouth that made me obese--I take full responsibility for that. But a physiological process was involved and only finding the right dietary approach had a chance of success.

I will Tell you that once you "get over the hump" when starting a low carb diet (that is getting over the lousy way you feel when your body converts from burning glucose to burning ketones), no willpower is required. Cravings, hunger, blood sugar lows are GONE. Lately I've been having some issues with not eating ENOUGH, which causes some of its own problems. I'm in the crazy position of having to work hard to eat MORE calories and fat each day!

I think I will probably fall in the same catagory as Janknitz, I have lots of issues with food, including psych. ones as well as environmental. My father was a butcher back in the day, and made us kids go to the store, and the meat market, and I was exposed to all the sight and smells of meat-blood, splitting up etc. I have vivid memories of watching my father "butcher" sides of beef, disassemble chickens and pigs and package the various innards for human consumption. All of this before the age of 11 when my mother passed away, and so I turned to sugar and carbs for the past 50 years. I am committed to give the low carb "Paleo" plan a good try. I see my Dr. this week for results of my bloodwork, and breathing test to see where I have diffencies. For this to work I must go "Cold Turkey" no pun intended. Any advise is most welcome, this on line community is AWESOME!

nmevan wrote:Do you really think that just a few bad choices are what make people fat and unhealthy?
I don't think people are overweight simply because they use bread for their sandwich or like their steamed vegetables on white rice or enjoy a plate of spaghetti pasta now and again.
I believe that most people who are overweight, or have type 2 diabetes, and such diseases, because they eat a whole bag of chips at night while they watch tv...or a pint of ice cream...or they eat fries for lunch...and candy bars throughout the day...or go out to eat instead of stay in...or a whole host of other such things.
People know when they're blowing it. But they do it anyway.

So you figure that people who are fat are just weak-willed idiots?

Yeah, that's what most doctors think, too. FAT is the new pejorative. You can't use words relating to a person's ethnic or religious background, and sexual orientation is right out acoording to the Political Correctness gurus. But FAT is fair game.

"Stop stuffing your face and IT will all clear up," I was told for 25 years, as I suffered with gut dysbiosis. "Try getting a little exercise, like pushing yourself away from the table."

IT, by the way, was whatever happened to be wrong. If I fell and twisted my ankle, well, I wouldn't have fallen if I hadn't been fat. If I had bronchitis, I wouldn't have gotten it if I hadn't been fat. Tired all the time? Well, if you weren't fat, you wouldn't be tired.

Even when I lost -- and kept off -- 180 pounds, the "Real Reason" I wasn't a "normal" weight, according to the doctors, was my refusal to stop stuffing my face. We'll just skip right over the fact that I was skinny as a child, and a normal weight as a young adult, until things got screwed up by doctor-prescribed hormones.

My husband went through the roof about five years ago when he found out that after one of those lectures, I was so depressed I quit eating. I ate a small dinner with him, and then drank water the rest of the time. He found out what I was doing when I passed out on him. And you know what? Two months at around 500 calories a day... and I had GAINED seventeen pounds. Why? because my body knew it was a famine and was conserving every bit of food it could.

My constant exhaustion -- which I attributed to waking up with severe hip pain 2-3 times a night -- would clear up, my GP said, if I would just stop stuffing my face, because my hips wouldn't hurt if I weren't fat. Well, guess what. When I was diagnosed with apnea, and my apnea was successfully treated, my hip pain went away.

Oh, and by the way -- when I presented with the symptoms of uterine cancer, my (now former) GP told me "Just stop stuffing your face and IT will all clear up. Try getting a little exercise, like pushing yourself away from the table and the gut cramps will go away."

Had I followed his advice, instead of being a year and a half from being declared cancer free, I would now be dead. Or dying. Fortunately, I took myself to a female gynecologist who made the correct diagnosis. A dear friend of mine was not so fortunate. By the time her doctors would admit that there was a problem, other than their own size prejudice, she was Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer. She died six months later.

I highly recommend two books which Ozij recommended to me: Beyond a Shadow of a Diet: The Therapist's Guide to Treating Compulsive Eating Disorders, and Health At Every Size.

From the HAES website:

Let’s face facts. We’ve lost the war on obesity. Fighting fat hasn’t made the fat go away. And being thinner, even if we knew how to successfully accomplish it, will not necessarily make us healthier or happier. The war on obesity has taken its toll. Extensive “collateral damage” has resulted: Food and body preoccupation, self-hatred, eating disorders, discrimination, poor health... Few of us are at peace with our bodies, whether because we’re fat or because we fear becoming fat.

Health at Every Size is the new peace movement.

Very simply, it acknowledges that good health can best be realized independent from considerations of size. It supports people—of all sizes—in addressing health directly by adopting healthy behaviors.

Oh, and just incidentally -- the eating style I follow now is the one I followed when I lost 180 pounds. I'm eating slightly less than I was then. Interestingly, several friends, who desperately needed to GAIN weight, have gained weight eating the same way.

nmevan wrote:I believe that most people who are overweight, or have type 2 diabetes, and such diseases, because they eat a whole bag of chips at night while they watch tv...or a pint of ice cream...or they eat fries for lunch...and candy bars throughout the day...or go out to eat instead of stay in...or a whole host of other such things. People know when they're blowing it. But they do it anyway.

Oh, yeah. BTW. My husband has the same 33" waist and 33" inseam he had when we got married over 35 years ago.

I'm rather larger.

I eat 1500 calories a day, and exercise three times a week. I haven't touched chips, ice cream, fries or candy bars in over ten years. No junk food, ever.

My husband eats 6000 calories a day, and maintains he's not out of shape, he was never in any shape to get out of. He has a desk job.

Well, I am about half way through Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis. So far its been a very interesting book, even though the first part is pretty much a history lesson in the evolution of Wheat and how we have played around with it, was a good bit of slow reading.

So far the most interesting thing he has talked about to me, was the ability of digested wheat products to be able to slip in through the brain barrier and activate morphine/opiate receptors. Also that this was proven to be able to be stopped by the same drug that stops other opiate highs such as Heroin dead in its tracks in the ER.

So far it's a great read thx for the heads up

Next on my list is The Paleo Diet, The Primal Blueprint, Protein Power, and Taubes's newest book 'Why we get fat and What to do about it."

Kiralynx wrote:

So you figure that people who are fat are just weak-willed idiots?

I would never call anyone an idiot. But your use of the term "weak-willed" is worth reviewing. Everyone is an individual and has their own extenuating circumstances. I guess I made the mistake in not claiming that I can only speak for myself and those people who I know personally. But as far as those who I know personally, as well as myself, are concerned, we know when we're blowing it and we do it anyway. I have a hard time believing that I reach for a pint of chunky monkey to eat while watching tv at 8pm because I made the mistake of having toast and potatoes with my eggs and bacon earlier in the day. Seems a bit more complicated than a person's body involuntarily craving a simple carb.

evan

-SWS wrote:I honestly can't think of a more germane nutrition and diet question than, "What's the best way to cope with counterproductive cravings". If I correctly follow some of the answers to your question (an admittedly dubious assumption), it sounds like the responses are starting to shape up in three categories:
1) understanding the origins of those counterproductive cravings (psychological versus biochemical)
2) managing or coping with a counterproductive craving when it does occur, and
3) eliminating or minimizing those intense cravings with proper diet

I think the low-carb/high-fat school of thought contends that replacing carbs snd sugar with quality fat specifically helps to eliminate most of the carb and sugar cravings.

Actually, based on what I have seen over the 10+ years I've been working with SCDers,

1) understanding the origins of those counterproductive cravings (psychological versus biochemical)


isn't quite correct, because cravings can be BOTH psychological and biochemical. It can have to do with the brain/bowel connection. Gut dysbiosis can be profoundly linked to mental disturbance -- just ask the 3000+ parents who have or are recovering their autistic children using SCD.

The majority of folks with gut issues who come to the BTVC-SCD list are starch addicts. There is an element of cultural and psychological addiction to it -- if every family gathering includes lots of rice (as for a Asian person) or pasta (as for a person of Italian heritage) or rice again (for a Cajun) or buttered popcorn for every person who goes to the movies.

Many people have what I dub "the termite syndrome." That is, their guts are damaged, and they can't digest normally, with enzymes and so forth, the way humans are supposed to. Instead, they have "rumen" digestion, where the bacteria in the gut break down the food, take what they want, and leave the rest for the host. Termites cannot digest wood, btw, without certain species of bacteria in their guts.

When people go cold turkey off the starch, the bacteria which live on starch start dying off in massive numbers. Some people are lucky and don't get side-effects from this. Others aren't. If not lucky, die-off can cause physical symptoms ranging from flu-like feelings, to nausea, to vertigo, to utter exhaustion and beyond. In people who have IBS, Crohn's, or ulcerative colitis, this die-off can cause a flare-up of symptoms, too. (We also see parents or spouses who go on the diet to support a partner or child who needs it, and who THOUGHT they had a healthy gut, manifesting die-off symptoms.) The usual reaction is, "This diet doesn't work! I thought I would feel better, and I feel worse!" But if they can struggle through, they'll start improving, and really feel good for about two to two and a half months.

Then they hit what is called in the group, "the three month flare." This is the point at which the weak sisters among the bad bacteria have been starved out. The stronger ones remain, and they are demanding their accustomed foods. Symptoms can include the die-off ones, or a flare of the disease. And cravings. Plenty of people dream about eating mountains of pasta or rice or bread. It's critical for people to hold fast and not give in, because if you feed the stronger bacteria, they will multiply, and it will be that much harder to starve them out. Knowing that the cravings are the bacteria talking, and not them being a wimp with no will power is a benefit to many. Some can't -- I know of one girl who has struggled with this for over a year -- each time she hits three months, she caves.

This "flare," btw, can occur at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months. After that, it's usually more-or-less okay.

Dr. Samuel Gee said, "That which the patient takes, beyond his ability to digest, does harm."

The problem is that if these bad bacteria -- it usually takes from 2-3 years symptom free before one can potentially add the occasional treat of starch, be it potatoes, bread, rice, or pasta, or maybe a small amount of ice cream -- get fed enough to wake up, you'll be back where you started, only worse, because now you have a strong and waiting bunch of bacteria who would like to get back at you for murder.

How to handle with diet?

Well, eating easy to digest foods is the best way. This can range from SCD-legals only to the full Weston-Price traditional foods. Lacto-fermented veggies, pastured meats and dairy. And make that full-fat dairy. None of this washed out fat-free junk where they substitute gums and starch for the fat they removed.

I can probably think of more, later.

nmevan wrote:

Kiralynx wrote:

So you figure that people who are fat are just weak-willed idiots?

I would never call anyone an idiot. But your use of the term "weak-willed" is worth reviewing. Everyone is an individual and has their own extenuating circumstances. I guess I made the mistake in not claiming that I can only speak for myself and those people who I know personally. But as far as those who I know personally, as well as myself, are concerned, we know when we're blowing it and we do it anyway. I have a hard time believing that I reach for a pint of chunky monkey to eat while watching tv at 8pm because I made the mistake of having toast and potatoes with my eggs and bacon earlier in the day. Seems a bit more complicated than a person's body involuntarily craving a simple carb.

evan

Then if you find it hard to believe do some research, you know that funny thing people do called cracking open a book. Figure out for yourself if its all bunk or not. That's what this whole thread is about.

No one is saying will power is not a part of the equation but its been proven that Will Power can be undermined by physical reasons as well as mental, especially if your not even aware that its going on. Drinking, Drugs, and other addictive products are in large part things that are ingested in one form or another, food is part of that same process. Would you call an alcoholic weak willed if he can't handle a drink or 2 ? or better yet take someone who is a alcoholic and slip them alcoholic without them knowing it and then call them Weak Willed when they start drinking again? You might not react the same to a "simple" carb as someone else does. That "simple" carb might send a diabetic into a world of hurt. Would you slip someone with a peanut allergy a "simple" peanut carb and call them Weak Willed?

nmevan wrote: I have a hard time believing that I reach for a pint of chunky monkey to eat while watching tv at 8pm because I made the mistake of having toast and potatoes with my eggs and bacon earlier in the day. Seems a bit more complicated than a person's body involuntarily craving a simple carb.

evan

That is because of the effect of the wheat and carbs on your brain. No different from nicotine or heroin or alcohol cravings.

Willpower, self discipline will get you through an emergency or a week or two. It will not last you longer because it uses up incredible amounts of emotional energy and creates stress hormones which will defeat you (the hormones will cause you to crave your "comfort food"). Will power gets you back on a horse but the horse can tell the difference immediately and will ignore you. Same goes for will power dieting, until you relax and find your centre you can't ride the horse or become one with your lifestyle.

By using will power you set yourself up for failure.

nmevan wrote:

Kiralynx wrote:

So you figure that people who are fat are just weak-willed idiots?

I would never call anyone an idiot. But your use of the term "weak-willed" is worth reviewing. Everyone is an individual and has their own extenuating circumstances. I guess I made the mistake in not claiming that I can only speak for myself and those people who I know personally. But as far as those who I know personally, as well as myself, are concerned, we know when we're blowing it and we do it anyway. I have a hard time believing that I reach for a pint of chunky monkey to eat while watching tv at 8pm because I made the mistake of having toast and potatoes with my eggs and bacon earlier in the day. Seems a bit more complicated than a person's body involuntarily craving a simple carb.

evan

Perhaps a simple illustration will help.

Imagine that the water system of your body (in many ways a much simpler system than the energy system) suddenly went haywire in such a way that you never got the urge to urinate and you never got thirsty. Or that you constantly had the urge to urinate and were constantly thirsty. Imagine that you were forced then to consciously keep track of exactly how much sweating you did during the day (factoring in temperature and relative humidity) and how much urine you eliminated (by measuring it exactly) and then had to formulate to the milliliter how much water to take in to match what you put out day-to-day. Imagine that if you got it wrong, that water would be stored in a dangerous way inside your body somewhere over time in a way that made it difficult to get to later, or that a series of miscalculations that led to a shortage would, over time, grind you to a halt. How easy would it be for you to keep track of all that consciously and to decide how to act on it moment to moment?

Fortunately, we don't have to do that. For must of us, the body's water system is working properly, and the system isn't that touchy, sensitive, and critical on that level. We have thirst and a bladder and a nervous system and hormones that pretty much keep track of the water inside us and take care of things automatically, and we are able to read our signals and react accordingly under most normal circumstances. And even when we get it wrong, the body helps tip us off and the excess water is eventually released easily enough or the water shortages get solved in short measure with a few gulps.

The energy system in some humans is almost as efficient as that. It is mostly automatic in a way that they don't have to think about it. They get hungry when they need calories, they crave the correct foods, and their bodies are efficient at getting nutrients from what they eat and then getting rid of what is not needed. That is great. We should all be happy for the people like that. Good for them. But when a human body develops certain problems and sicknesses, that very complicated system can go awry. When people get overly tired and sleepy and stressed and panicked, some of them have bodies that interpret that as a lack of energy and then send constant, loud signals demanding high-energy foods. The body may develop cravings for certain nutrients but then isn't able to clearly get a message to the conscious mind about what exactly, and the wrong foods are eaten. Then the body screams out for the person to try some other food, or to simply eat more, to see if it can get what it needs from that. Over and over. Then some bodies go into a panic mode and start storing when they should be eliminating. When it all gets out of whack far enough, a person finds himself in a position where he can't trust any of the messages being sent him from his body. It is all short-circuited. Then he cannot, like the humans without that problem, live his life normally at all. No one has the mental and emotional energy, or the ability, to completely ignore every signal from his own body. If he did, he wouldn't eat at all, or he would eat all the time, or he would have no idea when, what, or in what amount to eat, since nothing quiets the screams. And measuring water to the milliliter based on sweat and urine would be infinitely simpler than what it would take to keep track of every nutrient the body needs and what it would take to meet the energy needs moment-to-moment all day long consciously.

A person whose body is not having that problem can decide to eat ice-cream and not worry. His body can handle it and will adjust the messages it sends later accordingly. No willpower involved or needed. And willpower alone is enough for him if an occasional errant message is received. He ignores it awhile and it goes away. His body isn't sending him completely haywire signals loudly all day long that would take truck-loads of extra-human willpower to ignore or to reinterpret. Someone who has not experienced what it is like to live in that kind of malfunctioning body has no idea what it is like and may assume that all humans have as efficient and as easy-to-manage an energy system as his body has. I cut those people slack when they don't understand the tribulations of those with medical conditions that cause energy problems. There is no way they can understand what it is like. Their ignorance is understandable. If they had any idea how stupid they sound telling other people what they need to do to manage their energy system, when it is nothing like theirs, they would know to be embarrassed by their own words. But they don't know. So just ignore them. Or laugh. Or stick your tongue out at them when they aren't looking. They aren't idiots any more than we are. Just ignorant. How could they possibly understand that not everyone is like them?

A low-carb diet, especially if it has a temporary drastic phase to it, has been shown, anecdotally, to be a useful tool for some for resetting their bodies' communication system as it relates to energy intake. It works for some. Not for others. But anyone who has to consciously decide what to eat and how much and when, because his body's energy-communication system has been damaged or circumvented internally, needs to make sure he is careful and balanced and getting the right nutrients long-term if he decides to consciously do things to lose weight. That is true of any diet in which the conscious mind has to play a large role in overruling the messages from within, not just the various low-carb diets.

In my opinion.

nmevan wrote:[snip] I have a hard time believing that I reach for a pint of chunky monkey to eat while watching tv at 8pm because I made the mistake of having toast and potatoes with my eggs and bacon earlier in the day. Seems a bit more complicated than a person's body involuntarily craving a simple carb.
evan

Then you need to read Dr. William Davis' book, Wheat Belly http://www.amazon.com/Wheat-Belly-Lose- ... 873&sr=8-1. I can't find the actual quote because I lent the book to a friend, but Dr. Davis goes into some detail making a case for the addictive properties of wheat, specifically wheat gluten proteins. He talks about a drug that is used to quash a heroin addict's cravings. When administered to subjects undergoing carb cravings, those cravings vanish. That indicates our yearning for a cookie shares the same mechanism that causes the heroin addict to crave the needle. Dr. Robert Lustig, in his video Sugar: the Bitter Truth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM cites that interesting fact, too.

Davis goes on to explain that the wheat our ancestors ate was little changed for thousands of years. There were a few hybridizations made a long time ago, but the changes weren't great. During the post-war (WWII) years there was a lot of effort put into hybridizing wheat, which resulted in the modern dwarf variety that stands 18" tall so it is less prone to wind and storm damage, is more amenable to mechanical harvesting, and yields 10 times per acre what its wild progenitor did. Consequently, while in days gone by one could look out on the fruited plane and sing of "amber waves of grain," you won't see the wind blowing waves through a wheat field today. Is it coincidence that the epidemic of obesity and its related diseases started during the 1950s- 1960s?

Davis goes on to say, the modern dwarf wheat has 48 chromosomes in its cells, while its taller wild progenitor had only 14 chromosomes. Davis questions what the 34 new chromosomes might be doing besides making the stalks short and the yield so much greater.

Here, steady me while I get up on my soapbox for a moment:

[Soapbox mode: ENABLE] There's been a lot of acrimony injected to the controversy surrounding so-called GM foods in recent years. Genetically modified (GM) foods are made by the insertion or deletion of certain bits of genetic material (DNA) within the plant's own DNA, forever altering its genome. In the laboratory, modern techniques allow the genome of a plant to be modified rapidly without involving years of selective breeding, as had been the case previously. But the result is the same: the genome has been modified. Yet nobody protests the big agri-businesses for raising hybrid wheat or corn, so long as the hybridization is done in the field. And nobody calls for labeling foods made with flower from dwarf hybrid wheat that evidence indicates might be truly addictive, either. Perhaps they should. Okay, I'll step down. [Soapbox mode: NORMAL]

Again, Dr. Davis' book is worth reading.

This thread is very interesting, confusing, but interesting, after the previous post by jnk, I can relate! In a shorter version,....my husband and I can eat the same meal, same moderate portion, he is expelling it within 30 minutes, me, well, I won't even tell you how long it takes my body to process that meal. Let's just say I listened to my used to be doctor for far too many years than I should have. What I do know is that I want to feel better, some weight loss will be a bonus. I have been very thin and felt just as awful as I have always felt.

Wheat Belly is also available in audio format. I got it from my library on a "PlayAway". It was about 7 hours I think.