Re: Visit With My Friend...

Helen Back wrote:

Obesity has spiralled out of control in the UK (let alone around the world). Our government has considered giving morbidly obese people radical surgery to stapel their guts and gawd knows what else. The quick fix solution.

Havent they ever considered that some obese people simply have triggered mechanisms in the brain that make them non-proactive. Denial and the inability to crack the nut of their non-proactiveness? They need to get past the self-pity factor of being so overweight they cant move. They got themselves in this in the first place, they need to be the one to get out of it.

Radical counselling (there are as many emotional triggers for becoming self-destructive, as there may be physiological) to sort out the *denial* factor would be a much safer and long-term solution, surely?

Do you remember what hunger felt like before your bg was controlled? I remember it being *painful* - enough so that it would wake me from a dead sleep.

I have some willpower. I had a baby when I was a single 21 year old and went through college and grad school on welfare and standing in line for government cheese. Put my mind to it and I can do nearly anything; I'm a typical Type A overachiever.

But I couldn't not eat when that kind of hunger hit me; it literally hurt. Maybe I could summon willpower sometimes, but not ALL the time. And sometimes, that hunger caused insane stuff... like eating nearly an entire pizza - eating until my stomach literally hurt and STILL being painfully hungry.

I remember once eating two big BLT sandwiches at lunch, coming back to work, and being ravenous. I got chocolate bar from the vending machine and then passed out at my desk.

With my bg controlled, hunger is this minor feeling that is easily ignored. I can go all day and just forget entirely about eating. I haven't eaten today yet and have been up for 5 hours. The little stomach growling thing is such a minor feeling that it's easy to get busy and forget it. It's not like the pain of cells starving in a wash of glucose that they can't use, where your whole body is SCREAMING at you to eat.

It can be very difficult to get from having high bg with painful appetite to having your bg controlled and having a normal appetite. For me, it takes 3-4 days and my willpower has to be on "high" the whole time as no matter how much meat and eggs I eat, I have massive cravings for bread and pasta.

On the other side, it's really easy to eat properly as the pain is gone.

I eat properly now. I eat around 1500 kilocalories per day and the bulk of my food is fruit and vegetables. It's easy to stick to that with my bg controlled.

I know it's exactly what I eat because I write everything down and calculate insulin doses for each bite of food that goes in my mouth. When I started doing that, I lost 10 lbs in spite of the insulin. I thought that writing everything down must be controlling whatever cheating I was doing before, eh?

But I still weigh significantly more than someone eating 1500 calories per day is supposed to weigh and am not losing weight the past few months at all.

This stuff is not always as simple as people make it out to be.

--
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/
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Relevant Pages

  • Re: A disappointing week
    ... > not limiting their intake (ie watching how much they are eating)." ... > on the sleep part alone for the production of these hormones. ... > people can have significant differences in the hunger, or not, impulse. ... does not help one determine when and how much to eat. ...
    (sci.med)
  • Re: A disappointing week
    ... > not limiting their intake (ie watching how much they are eating)." ... > on the sleep part alone for the production of these hormones. ... > people can have significant differences in the hunger, or not, impulse. ... does not help one determine when and how much to eat. ...
    (sci.med.cardiology)
  • Re: Visit With My Friend...
    ... I can go all day and just forget entirely about eating. ... you to eat. ... calculate insulin doses for each bite of food that goes in my mouth. ... thought that writing everything down must be controlling whatever ...
    (alt.support.diabetes)
  • Re: hunger is wonderful and so is pain
    ... So I sat there and worked for a while and continued to feel miserable but I figured maybe a little self delusion was good...maybe hunger truly was wonderful...after 4 hours of that I said....I am hungry and I am miserable and the people in my life would prefer we to be happy. ... Pain is wonderful because it tells you something ... food and there is no virtue in not eating. ... Hunger means eat ...
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  • Re: Hunger management strategies
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