[ExI] Effects of low/no calorie diets, was Re: bug eating again

[William Flynn Wallace]

Ballard wrote:
So sure, physical hunger may dissipate, but psychological hunger becomes a
driving fixation.

Very interesting!  I agree that total starvation is drastic.  I know of one
person who died trying this - in a hospital!  Here is a better way:

Hunger comes built-in, but over time and the right feeding it can become
classically conditioned a la Pavlov  The key is simply to feed a baby or a
person at any age, on a regular schedule.  I don't know what the current
recommendations are for babies, but feeding on a regular schedule would
mean that the baby will complain at the feeding times, and that will be
more convenient for the feeders.  At those times his hunger system will be
sending signals to eat at those times at which he was fed, anticipating
food.

To break this conditioning (extinction) means moving to an irregular
schedule.  Start eating between meals - no, not cookies!  A salad, say, or
an apple.  Very gradually cut down the amount of food at meals.  Then
gradually move to a random schedule.  Your body will stop expecting food at
the regular times and if you feel hungry it won't be a lot.  Some would
recommend eating more than three times a day - including me.  Some call
this grazing.

You will not feel a great deal of hunger and thus will not be urged to eat
a lot by your body.  When this is complete you might not even be able to
eat a big meal without feeling bloated.

Then you can gradually decrease the overall amount of food without feeling
deprived, physiologically or psychologically.  Pushbacks - from the table.

This might not be very convenient re family meals.  If you have big
sit-down meals, eat maybe 1/3 of a meal an hour earlier.  As Gargantua said
"Drink always before the thirst."  And it will never come upon you, or
words to that effect.  Same for food.

I have personally never had to go on a diet of any kind, so my
understanding of the emotional effects et al is poor.  But I have studied
dieting for nearly 50 years, and the above stands as my recommendation for
people who want to lose weight.  (Initially I wanted to understand why I
couldn't gain weight.)

I simply do not know why doctors won't prescribe Synthroid for dieters.  I
take an overdose because of a thyroid cancer and I never, ever feel
hungry.  Skipping a meal is just nothing to me.  I can eat a muffin in the
morning and nothing until 9 p.m. and then only a bowl of ice cream.  The
obese, with their high blood pressure and threat of diabetes, need to lose
weight and Synthroid would do it.  Far safer than staying obese, it seems
to me.

As for the food, high-fat, low carbs - Atkins, South Beach,
paleo.............No French fries ever!  Frying replaces the water in the
potato with oil - maybe the wrong kind too.

Did you know that vitamins like D3 and K2 need to be taken with fat?  I use
whole milk.

bill w



On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 10:15 PM, SR Ballard <sen.otaku at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On May 27, 2017, at 11:22, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> ----------you will gain insights on why so many
> weight-loss programs fail.  Your instinct will overpower your will power.
>  spike
> -------
> Now Spike, you are right, of course.  But consider:  obese Ss were put on
> a starvation diet.  Hunger went away and stayed away after three days.
> Hard to do?  Yes.  Impossible?  Not at all.  If you can outlast a headache
> you can outlast hunger.  It does go away after a while.
>
> Will power is another term that defies definition.
>
>
> bill w
>
>
> I think that hunger going away after the third day is greatly exaggerated.
> Hunger pangs and physical hunger go away, more or less, but the
> psychological aspects of hunger intensify. And it is the psychological
> component that tends to make people obese or morbidly obese.
>
> If you are interested in some of the effects, psychologically speaking, of
> that mental hunger, I can very easily point you in the direction of quite
> informative, detailed, online discussions of the topic from laypersons
> engaging in this behavior.
>
> But if you've not experienced it very acutely recently, let me give a
> brief view: restlessness and distractability. A light, euphoric floating
> feeling like you are quite drunk that can easily turn to viscous
> irritation. An impulse to somewhat claw at the throat or mouth, as well as
> cupboards and the outside of fridges. Searching for photos of food or
> looking at and touching it but not eating. Imagining "food pornography"
> which is to say vividly imagining buying, cooking, playing, and consuming
> foods. Your sense of smell is drastically improved to the point you can
> sometimes tell when someone a long way off is eating or has recently eaten.
> Trouble sleeping. Tiredness.
>
> Now the increased sense of smell maybe a physical response, but all the
> others are probably primarily psychological, as if someone knows they will
> not be eating for a period of time, they can show up extremely quickly
> (think just 2-3 hours) whereas a person often needs longer than that to
> become hungry.
>
> So sure, physical hunger may disappate, but psychological hunger becomes a
> driving fixation.
>
> Beyond that, a fast, after the initial water and fecal weight is lost, in
> many people is about 1lb per day (more if extremely overweight). So a very
> heavy person would need to fast for quite a long time, which introduces
> many possible issues, such as: blood sugar, blood salts, ketones, blood
> pressure drops (fainting/partial black outs), anemia, etc.
>
> Also, breaking a long fast like this by gorging on high-fat foods is a
> recipient for disaster. First of all, gorging is an appropriate term for
> how some will eat, consuming (possibly) mind boggling amounts of food. It
> is physically possible to bust your stomach from doing this, though not
> likely in a one time event. Secondly, you've been starving yourself, and
> your digestive system has quietly been shutting down shop. Eating a high
> volume of complex food is going to introduce extreme gastrointestinal
> distress, including but not limited to: vomiting, swelling of the abdomen,
> delayed gastric emptying, constipation/diarrhea, and flatulence, as well as
> cramping, which can be excruciating.
>
> But, more worryingly than that (which can be so serious that it can lead
> to hospitalization, and in extreme/rare cases even death), this obese
> person may have already had a messed up relationship with food, and have
> now been exposed to a very eating-disordered pattern (fasting and
> subsequent binging). Developing a full-blown eating disorder like bulimia
> would be much more detrimental to their health than being even moderately
> obese ever could have been.
>
> -Sophia
>
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