Why am I fat? Because my self-esteem is crushed.
 

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/0...rges/?emc=eta1

This is it. This is the WHOLE GODDAMN THING. It's not about fast food. It's not about the dumb food pyramid. It's not about high fructose corn syrup. It's not about not knowing what to eat. It's not about what foods are cheap.

It's about being a broken human being. It's about being self-destructive. Why be healthy when you feel worthless?

ah... go have a cheeseburger and forget it

It's a viscous cycle. 75W90

FIRST a fifth of vodka, THEN the cheeseburger.

Great.
Now I'm not just fat I am broken also.

Just call me Humpty Dumpty.

Well don't drink diet soda. It just shoves you further into the blackhole that is addiction.

Probably if you drink a lot of water too. Or, you're addicted to breathing air.

Buncha addicts.

;)

But what if... I'm not saying it's like this for everybody, but I know from experience it's like this for me... what if, just like drinking alcohol can affect your emotional and mental state, eating food that's bad for you can, in fact, make you feel worthless? Not just because you ate the food and you've been taught to feel guilty about that, but because we're really just a bag of chemical reactions when you get right down to it, and it turns out that chemical A results in neurological state B?

For my money, the chain is: the type of food we eat directly affects our emotional/psychological state, and that state then affects how much of the food we continue to eat, which then leads to the weight gain. It's like no one can take just a little heroin, you know? And why bother to take less heroin when you feel worthless? But if you could really break the cycle and were taking no heroin at all...

Boooo!! Boooo!! We God-fearing, Hummer-driving Americans are SICK of this hippie bullcrap about how food affects the human body or whatever. Food is just a flavor that you chew up and swallow--your body doesn’t care what it is! A bag of potato chips fills you up just as well as a cheeseburger, doesn’t it? And what is chemical reactions anyway? Some made-up “science” stuff that they lie to your kids to get ‘em to turn gay. Or muslim. I don’t know which is worse. I sure as hell ain’t believe in no neurological whatsit is because I didn’t eat enough rabbit food for the Obama hitler vegan satan atheist faggots from "Jew York" city. Who hate America.

I suspect you're right.

At the same time, it flips: the mind/body connection is so strong that if you believe the food you're eating is good for you, you will feel better, no matter what its actual nutritional value is. This is proven time and time again.

You'll feel better right up until you can't fit through the door.

I only eat from the top of the food pyramid, because the top of a pyramid is still a pyramid. The bottom of the food pyramid is the food trapezoid, and that can't be good for you.

Then you are eating a healthy diet, albeit a small one, because the new food pyramid is proportional from top to bottom.

Have you ever seriously followed a really balanced and healthy diet long enough to know the difference?

My own experience doesn't count as it would be anecdotal by definition.

If you think the reason you're fat is that your self esteem has been crushed, you should ask yourself why your self esteem is crushed. And I think you'll find that the answer is that you sat your fat ass on it. Put it in your front pocket next time.

Oh and there is no such thing - and never has been - as the food pyramid. Look at it, people. It's a goddamn TRIANGLE!!!!111!

The food thing is rectangular. Hums a lot. Used to always be white, but now dark browm and stainless steel are pretty common

I have experienced the feeling of general well being derived from a healthy diet. I can tell the difference. So, even though I can try to mind fuck myself into feeling good about eating poorly, I will always know better.

I'm sure that's often the case, as things like poor glycemic handling leads to lethargy and such;

But a lot of the benefits of healthy eating are long term. Having had the belief that what you were eating "healthy", you determined that you "felt good". Did the good feeling come from the healthy food, or the belief that you had done something good for your body?

Moreover, is "feeling good" an indicator of health? As a chronic anxiety sufferer, I can tell you, I've spent a great deal of time "feeling bad" when it was merely a brain chemistry problem that brought about temporary physical symptoms.

Does MSG give you a headache?

No, it doesn't! Turns out it occurs naturally in many common foods:
As the article points out, all of Asia is brimming with the stuff, and all of Asia doesn't have a headache. And a four-cheese pizza has as much glutamate as any chinese meal. What's up with that?

So: without doing blind studies on ourselves, we are terribly bad at evaluating ourselves. We can convince ourselves of anything, and often do.

(sorry for the novel i just cannot help myself)

Well, my conclusion only came about after I got married and stopped the diet and I had been on it for two years. I still haven't really managed to get back on the diet full-fledged since, but damn I want to because I now realize that it did eliminate a lot of body aches, head aches, sinus congestion, crankiness, digestive upsets, and the like. It also helped me to manage my depression better.

I don't believe I mind-fucked myself out of those things. I truly believe that if you eat in a way that regulates your insulin response throughout the day, you will be better off.

Ya know I don't get headaches from MSG, but I will if I chew some mint flavored gums.

See there's ya correlation for ya :)

It doesn't matter to my body what I eat,( except for supplements, they make a difference food no) but for my kid caffeine and sugar can cause plenty of wakeful nights. It isn't good for him or anybody to be a night owl, but for me, I think, wow, I could get so much done! I wish caffeine and sugar did that for me!



Yes, I agree. I've witnessed it. I know two people whose anxieties increase with sugar.


So what is up with that? Do I not really get headaches after eating msg?

One of the things I like about the Cellar is that people here can use words like anecdotal in a conversation.

I know! I remember one time, this one dwellar and this other dwellar...

:lol:

:D and :corn: -- because this thread is fun.

Watch out. That popcorn will make you fat, and then all the beautiful SoCaliens will make fun of you.

Ummm, that's definitively causation, in my book. :D

Nope. Enjoy it at will.

Only the commie-nazis would have you believe otherwise.

Why am I crushed?

Because my self-esteem is fat.

But even if this is 100% the case, isn't a placebo effect better than nothing? You know you'll never really convince yourself that eating junk food is good for you, so that option is out. And you know in your heart that eating healthy food is better for you, whether the gains are immediate or long term--so if you did manage it, and immediately felt better, why would you care whether it was psychological or real? You'd still feel better.

It is your current psychological self--the one you admit feels worthless, crushed, and broken--telling you that the benefits of change would not be real, they'd only be you convincing yourself that it was real. But your convinced psychological self would feel very differently. You would not feel that it was fake, you would feel that it was real. You would feel better. If there is a part of you that is enough above the broken self to recognize it for what it is, then there is a part of you that can take the decision-making role away from the broken self, even if, for right now, you don't believe it will work.

I'm lost, can you restate?

If good, do.

Simple, this is your brain, downhill and with a a tailwind:
http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/photos...nail-21973.jpg

this is clodfobble's brain when she's half asleep in frog pajamas:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...eCatchFish.jpg

Who's the fish?



Oh my God...is it me?

The fish is jebus, it's always jebus.

Clodfobble's brain looks pissed.

It's all business, it's not personal

Or, as Dio would say, LOOK OUT!

You have suggested that many people who eat a healthier diet only feel better because they have convinced themselves that they will feel better. I'm saying that maybe it doesn't matter how it happened, wouldn't you like to feel better regardless?

sure

But you can't get over the motivational hump to do it, because your self-esteem is crushed? (I'm genuinely trying to understand and find a workable angle here. This is foreign to me because while I've had plenty of self-loathing in my life, I also take no pleasure in food so it's never been my personal avenue of self-destruction.)

Couldn't forcing yourself to eat things you don't like kind of be its own form of self-loathing and punishment?

Here's the self esteem catch-22:

I don't think it's all that possible for one to will ones' self to be psychologically different.

Unless, that is, you're Charlie Sheen.

you serious? aside from the charlie sheen part, I mean.

how else can you change your own psychology but by will?

I agree with Jim here. It is definitely possible to change the way you think (aside from chemical problems in the brain).

How else do people give up smoking for instance? Or decide and actually succeed at losing weight and getting fit?

It's a change of thinking.

eta: to define one's psychology, it's something like the 'internal monologue we have with ourselves', which is of course, the way we think, both consiously and subconsiously.

if it's possible to go crazy, it's possible to go un-crazy.

just sayin'

But I'm not suggesting you should will yourself to be psychologically different--quite the opposite. I'm suggesting that if you force your behavior to change, even if your psychology totally doesn't agree with it, then the psychology will change on its own after the behavior is in place. I think this is why a lot of people do well on diets that have unnecessarily strict rules, because it means that they don't have to work to make the "right" decision every time an opportunity presents itself. Mr. Clod had a coworker who figured out a rather silly set of rules that worked best for him: he stocked a bunch of fruit in his house, and nothing else. There was a Wendy's near their office, and one near his house. The rule was, whenever he was hungry he could go eat a cup of Wendy's chili. That was it. He could have chili, or fruit at home, or nothing. He didn't actually like fruit, his plan was just to make himself sick of the chili so that he would simply eat less food. But of course shortly into this process, the fruit started tasting really fucking good. He started bringing it to work and having some at his desk too, though he still ate a lot of Wendy's chili. Over time he was inspired to add vegetables at home, then allowed himself to make chili at home, but vegetarian only, etc... Ultimately he dropped from about 350 pounds to under 200. Anyway, the point is he artificially forced his behavior to change so that he didn't have to change his psychology. By the end his self-esteem was through the roof without even trying to address it.

OK, awright, that could work.

A while back I read a book "Magic" by Butler, written early 1900s, part of the Golden Dawn movement.
It started out fishing around for a suitable definition of magic and settled on:

"The art and practise of causing changes in consciousness at will".

It develops this by explaining in terms along the lines of training yourself to make Pavlovian-type associations, and then goes further.

One example in my life is that I get sympathetic nausea. If I even hear someone vomiting the urge to vomit becomes strong. I have found that thinking about lemons fights this (I know, I'm a bit odd) and now whenever I feel sympathetic nausea I know all I have to do is think of lemons and it passes.

I don't know if or how this could help people fighting weight, but it is an example of willing a change in consciousness by a programmed tool.

Maybe every time you eat, you smash your hand with a hammer. Soon, whenever you feel hungry, think about hammers...

Oooh... I'm gonna try that. I can't handle the sound of someone retching, my gag reflex kicks in hard.

mint

You're saying you think of mint to avoid a gag-reflex, or you actually use mint?

when I feel queasy, I want mint. It helps... I'm not sure when that starts... might be that just thinking about it begins the settling. I totally buy this kind of thing, so it might just.

Peppermint is an old time remedy for stomach problems.

yes, this is known. But is visualizing mint helpful?

next time I feel queasy, I'm going to try it without the tea or cough drop.

quick. someone gross me out

We need a lemon smiley and a mint smiley.

go to the flesh eating bacteria link I put on the neat links thread the other day.

:o

I was just thinking that maybe you were conditioned for it from a young age when your granny would make you chew Doublemint when you complained of a tummy ache.

Maybe.

:D

that could very well be. Ginger ale too...