"The problem with sugar is your problem with sugar"

I find it very sad that this forum is a place where people come to for support in dieting to bolster their willpower but when people voice the fact that they don't have any they get ridiculed for it.

And I think it's strange that people with eating disorders like anorexia or bulemia are not belittled for their lack of willpower to force themselves to eat. All they have to do is decide to eat, right?

I find it very sad that this forum is a place where people come to for support in dieting to bolster their willpower but when people voice the fact that they don't have any they get ridiculed for it.

And I think it's strange that people with eating disorders like anorexia or bulemia are not belittled for their lack of willpower to force themselves to eat. All they have to do is decide to eat, right?

I don't think you're reading the same thread as me. You came in talking about will power and food addictions neither of which have anything to do with the act OP thread on Sugar and the fact that it in and of itslelf is not the issue. the issue is a person relationship with sugar. which can lead to a will power problem but still that's not the point. sugar does not make you fat and stayinf away from sugar does not make you lose weight.

are there addictions yes. are there people with food addictions? yes. are people who are overweight automatically addicted to food? no.

at the end of the day it is not what we eat but how we eat that makes us overwieght or underweight or whatever else. it's our emotional, mental , physical relationships with food that cause problems not the actual food. .

I find it very sad that this forum is a place where people come to for support in dieting to bolster their willpower but when people voice the fact that they don't have any they get ridiculed for it.

And I think it's strange that people with eating disorders like anorexia or bulemia are not belittled for their lack of willpower to force themselves to eat. All they have to do is decide to eat, right?

I think it's strange that you are comparing an overeating problem to anorexia/bulimia.

I am also fat and do not believe in food addiction. When I was fatter (clinically obese) I still did not believe in food addiction.

It's worth noting that in none of your pictures do you appear to be so now, though. How much did you weigh at your heaviest?

It's really not worth noting. I stated that I was clinically obese. You shouldn't need pictorial evidence of my high weight but to answer your question, I was in the mid 190s. I started to lose weight long before i was introduced to this site and I was not a fan of having my picture take for the years I was clinically obese.

But what's the point of even asking this question? Are you suggesting that maybe I was never "fat enough" to qualify my making the claim that I have never considered myself addicted to food?

Bolded: A good definition for moderation.

In fact, your entire reply is an argument for moderation. You don't completely abstain yet you continue to lose weight. That's moderation right there.

You're practicing what you preach against.

Basically what you are saying is that failed abstinence is moderation. Well, OK, but that's not what I'm really setting out to do.

To me, moderation means eating whatever you want whenever you want in controllable portions that keep you in your daily calorie goal. I can't do that. Or rather, I very, very seldom am able to do that.

Here is a very apropos article that came out today:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/07/health/weight-loss-tory-johnson/index.html?hpt=hp_c4

You may not have always stayed in your daily calorie goals but you obviously stayed with your weekly/monthly calorie goal since you have continued to lose weigh over the six months.

That is moderation. So you ate a bunch at one time. You then made up for it at a later time. It's the first step toward real moderation. The next is spreading out that bunch into smaller, more frequent portions. I still don't understand why you say you can't do it. You are doing it. You're losing weight and still occasionally indulge in the foods you love (hungry or pleasure causes or not).

I'd read that article before since it made the rounds around the forums. I agree with this line and it's exactly what I've been going on about.

" I came to conclude that diets simply pause bad behavior, and this time merely pausing wasn't good enough."

Taggin in to read later. :bigsmile:

*snip*
How much did you weigh at your heaviest?

Is this the part where you tell people they weren't fat enough/you don't believe they were fat and thus their opinions don't count?

I myself was 200+ pounds (I'm only 5'3") at point in my life. Never addicted to food. Just greedy and lazy

You say this yet you yourself can't even abstain. How would you know if learning moderation is harder when you haven't even shown that you can master abstinence.

I've been mostly doing it for the last 6 months. Trust me, if I kept "bad foods" around the house, I'd probably be eating them more often than not. Sometimes I still fail, so I guess you are right that at least total abstinence hasn't worked. My willpower just isn't that strong.

let's see... i have pizza and bagels in the house. cinnamon & raisin bagels are my kryptonite. i had one slice of pizza for breakfast at 8:15AM. i had a banana about 2 hours later. i'm sitting here wasting time on MFP and yet these yummy foods are in my house and i'm not eating them. why exactly am i able to resist going downstairs and eating all of the pizza and bagels and you are not?... that's a didactic question. the answer is that i don't blame the food, i understand that i can and do eat those foods, and i am able to control the amounts i do eat because i'm not constantly depriving myself of them (and thus obsessing over them). try changing your mindset. i bet it will work better for you than what you're currently doing, because "dieting" is never the answer... changing your relationship with food is.

Some of us have changed our relationship with food. We broke it off. The foods I choose not to eat are in my house, at my job, in every grocery store and restaurant I go to. I can eat them morning, noon, and night, if I CHOOSE to and do not obsess over them. I have free will. I choose to exercise it in the way the suits me best. I do not feel deprived, I feel EMPOWERED. Obviously in the same way you do. And most likely we would find our day to day behaviors were not that much different from one another. Except when it comes to wine. But that is another story.

And maybe in the same way that some who feels that they are addicted and successful in abstinence does. There is obviously more than one path to success...

lol i just wanted to bump for further reading but i see this thread turned into a clusterf*** while i was away :laugh:

You say this yet you yourself can't even abstain. How would you know if learning moderation is harder when you haven't even shown that you can master abstinence.

I've been mostly doing it for the last 6 months. Trust me, if I kept "bad foods" around the house, I'd probably be eating them more often than not. Sometimes I still fail, so I guess you are right that at least total abstinence hasn't worked. My willpower just isn't that strong.

let's see... i have pizza and bagels in the house. cinnamon & raisin bagels are my kryptonite. i had one slice of pizza for breakfast at 8:15AM. i had a banana about 2 hours later. i'm sitting here wasting time on MFP and yet these yummy foods are in my house and i'm not eating them. why exactly am i able to resist going downstairs and eating all of the pizza and bagels and you are not?... that's a didactic question. the answer is that i don't blame the food, i understand that i can and do eat those foods, and i am able to control the amounts i do eat because i'm not constantly depriving myself of them (and thus obsessing over them). try changing your mindset. i bet it will work better for you than what you're currently doing, because "dieting" is never the answer... changing your relationship with food is.

Some of us have changed our relationship with food. We broke it off. The foods I choose not to eat are in my house, at my job, in every grocery store and restaurant I go to. I can eat them morning, noon, and night, if I CHOOSE to and do not obsess over them. I have free will. I choose to exercise it in the way the suits me best. I do not feel deprived, I feel EMPOWERED. Obviously in the same way you do. And most likely we would find our day to day behaviors were not that much different from one another. Except when it comes to wine. But that is another story.

And maybe in the same way that some who feels that they are addicted and successful in abstinence does. There is obviously more than one path to success...

This says it beautifully.

Remember all the talk about Oreos a few pages back? I used to be able to down half a package of them in a sitting. I no longer touch them and don't really miss them. I don't obsess over them just because I've stopped eating them. I can walk by them in the grocery store and not be compelled to pick any up. I can even have them in the house and not feel compelled to eat any. The thought of them hadn't even occurred to me until it got brought up here. I have found, though, that if I do eat one, the craving for more is there. So I don't eat any. Besides, I'd rather spend my calorie allotment on good chocolate.

Also, the processed sources of sugar, such as Oreos, are actually engineered to cause a physiological addictive response (these are known as "highly palatable foods"). They're made to have just the right combinations of sugar, salt, and fat to maximize the dopamine response. It's that dopamine high that addicts of all sorts chase. And just like those who frequently take drugs, those who eat the highly palatable foods in order to get the dopamine response have to consume more to get the same response. Likewise, if you cut off the supply for a length of time, and try to consume at the amounts that you had, previously, you end up with worse effects (in the case of highly palatable foods, that's often an upset stomach at amounts that didn't used to affect you). Additionally, like drugs, the highly palatable foods (and all stimulation, really) alter the neural pathways in the brain, and consuming the item in question reinforces those pathways. Abstaining from them helps diminish them, but whether a person can reintroduce the item depends on how strong and easily re-established those pathways are.

It may be also worth noting that people who go from a high carb intake to a low carb intake almost invariably experience some level of "carb flu," which has symptoms not unlike what's seen in other withdrawal situations, and that these symptoms are often worse when going from a diet heavy in highly processed carbs (ie - lots of the "junk food" and not much in the way of vegetable and fruit based carbs) to one that is primarily naturally-sourced carbs (which don't provide the same dopamine response, even at the same levels of carbs).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/health/23well.html?_r=0
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/drugs/

"The problem with sugar is your problem with sugar"

Yep, I'll take that. Although HFCS /the highly processed sugars we have today are a completely different creature to the naturally occurring sugars found in fruit.

If I could cheaply buy pot, coke & Ecstasy pretty much EVERYWHERE I would have a problem with them too.

Well, not so much a problem as just a minimal relationship with sobriety.

"The problem with sugar is your problem with sugar"

Yep, I'll take that. Although HFCS /the highly processed sugars we have today are a completely different creature to the naturally occurring sugars found in fruit.

If I could cheaply buy pot, coke & Ecstasy pretty much EVERYWHERE I would have a problem with them too.

Well, not so much a problem as just a minimal relationship with sobriety.

Where do you live that pot isn't cheap and readily available?

And aside from that, the only thing keeping you from smoking pot or doing coke and X is that it costs too much/is too hard to get? Sheesh.

You say this yet you yourself can't even abstain. How would you know if learning moderation is harder when you haven't even shown that you can master abstinence.

I've been mostly doing it for the last 6 months. Trust me, if I kept "bad foods" around the house, I'd probably be eating them more often than not. Sometimes I still fail, so I guess you are right that at least total abstinence hasn't worked. My willpower just isn't that strong.

let's see... i have pizza and bagels in the house. cinnamon & raisin bagels are my kryptonite. i had one slice of pizza for breakfast at 8:15AM. i had a banana about 2 hours later. i'm sitting here wasting time on MFP and yet these yummy foods are in my house and i'm not eating them. why exactly am i able to resist going downstairs and eating all of the pizza and bagels and you are not?... that's a didactic question. the answer is that i don't blame the food, i understand that i can and do eat those foods, and i am able to control the amounts i do eat because i'm not constantly depriving myself of them (and thus obsessing over them). try changing your mindset. i bet it will work better for you than what you're currently doing, because "dieting" is never the answer... changing your relationship with food is.

Some of us have changed our relationship with food. We broke it off. The foods I choose not to eat are in my house, at my job, in every grocery store and restaurant I go to. I can eat them morning, noon, and night, if I CHOOSE to and do not obsess over them. I have free will. I choose to exercise it in the way the suits me best. I do not feel deprived, I feel EMPOWERED. Obviously in the same way you do. And most likely we would find our day to day behaviors were not that much different from one another. Except when it comes to wine. But that is another story.

And maybe in the same way that some who feels that they are addicted and successful in abstinence does. There is obviously more than one path to success...

This says it beautifully.

Remember all the talk about Oreos a few pages back? I used to be able to down half a package of them in a sitting. I no longer touch them and don't really miss them. I don't obsess over them just because I've stopped eating them. I can walk by them in the grocery store and not be compelled to pick any up. I can even have them in the house and not feel compelled to eat any. The thought of them hadn't even occurred to me until it got brought up here. I have found, though, that if I do eat one, the craving for more is there. So I don't eat any. Besides, I'd rather spend my calorie allotment on good chocolate.

Also, the processed sources of sugar, such as Oreos, are actually engineered to cause a physiological addictive response (these are known as "highly palatable foods"). They're made to have just the right combinations of sugar, salt, and fat to maximize the dopamine response. It's that dopamine high that addicts of all sorts chase. And just like those who frequently take drugs, those who eat the highly palatable foods in order to get the dopamine response have to consume more to get the same response. Likewise, if you cut off the supply for a length of time, and try to consume at the amounts that you had, previously, you end up with worse effects (in the case of highly palatable foods, that's often an upset stomach at amounts that didn't used to affect you). Additionally, like drugs, the highly palatable foods (and all stimulation, really) alter the neural pathways in the brain, and consuming the item in question reinforces those pathways. Abstaining from them helps diminish them, but whether a person can reintroduce the item depends on how strong and easily re-established those pathways are.

It may be also worth noting that people who go from a high carb intake to a low carb intake almost invariably experience some level of "carb flu," which has symptoms not unlike what's seen in other withdrawal situations, and that these symptoms are often worse when going from a diet heavy in highly processed carbs (ie - lots of the "junk food" and not much in the way of vegetable and fruit based carbs) to one that is primarily naturally-sourced carbs (which don't provide the same dopamine response, even at the same levels of carbs).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/health/23well.html?_r=0
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/drugs/

the oreo was invented in 1912. i highly doubt anyone was "engineering foods to cause a physiological addictive response" more than 100 years ago.

This should be required reading (the article, not this thread).