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Add to that our sedentary but stressful lifestyle. When I am backpacking for a few days I don't eat much and have almost no food cravings. But as soon as I am i

Add to that our sedentary but stressful lifestyle. When I am backpacking for a few days I don't eat much and have almost no food cravings. But as soon as I am in the office I start eating all kinds of crap I would normally never touch. I think the same happens to kids in school being forced to sit still for hours. "Almost every obese person out there is someone who's had their natural feedback loop completely destroyed by learned behavior. They don't feel "full" the way people without eating issues do. " I am really sorry for kids that grow up on frozen dinners and junk food. I have read that your food tastes develop in the first few years so if your parents have bad food habits you have a very good chance to be imprinted with them for a life time.

logfromblammo 7y ago
I have had some mild success with "do not talk to me about food except at mealtimes" in conjunction with "canonical mealtime is between 6 and 8 PM, and absolutely nothing past 10 PM". What I really need now is an AR ad-blocker--like Joo-Janta context-sensitive sunglasses--that will detect food-related advertisements and displays in the real world and blot them out with black rectangles and/or white noise. Being hungry stimulates appetite, but so too does just thinking about food. And after priming my awareness of it, nearly everyone around me does something or other to make me think about food, and quite a lot are doing it intentionally, to get at my money. (Even just reading this thread is sort of screwing me up for the rest of the day.) I get the sense that Pavlov's dogs might get fat if someone followed them around all the time, continually ringing that bell. Even my office has that stupid kitchenette right outside the door, with people frequently in there messing with the coffee and fridge and microwave. So then I close my door and blot out the world, and I can easily ride out hours 11 through 20 of fasting. Unless someone sends "donuts in the lab" over e-mail, or "Food Truck X is in the parking lot until 12:00". Aargh. So now I'm sitting here with one part of my brain telling itself, "No, you are not really hungry. That's the spoiled punk asshole part of your brain trying to get you to eat by injecting obsessive thoughts about food." Any little thing can set that douchebag off, and then it's a fight for the entire rest of the day. When out alone in the wild, or isolated in a sealed box, no one cares whether you eat or starve, so that "go eat something" lobe never gets triggered externally. But the instant you're back, there's that 20-foot-tall Big Mac on a billboard telling you what exit to take. Even if you don't get off and buy one, it wakes up the appetite jerk, who starts offering unhelpful alternative suggestions. And it only shuts up after continuously whining for many hours, or when sleeping.

logfromblammo 7y ago

I have had some mild success with "do not talk to me about food except at mealtimes" in conjunction with "canonical mealtime is between 6 and 8 PM, and absolutely nothing past 10 PM". What I really need now is an AR ad-blocker--like Joo-Janta context-sensitive sunglasses--that will detect food-related advertisements and displays in the real world and blot them out with black rectangles and/or white noise. Being hungry stimulates appetite, but so too does just thinking about food. And after priming my awareness of it, nearly everyone around me does something or other to make me think about food, and quite a lot are doing it intentionally, to get at my money. (Even just reading this thread is sort of screwing me up for the rest of the day.) I get the sense that Pavlov's dogs might get fat if someone followed them around all the time, continually ringing that bell. Even my office has that stupid kitchenette right outside the door, with people frequently in there messing with the coffee and fridge and microwave. So then I close my door and blot out the world, and I can easily ride out hours 11 through 20 of fasting. Unless someone sends "donuts in the lab" over e-mail, or "Food Truck X is in the parking lot until 12:00". Aargh. So now I'm sitting here with one part of my brain telling itself, "No, you are not really hungry. That's the spoiled punk asshole part of your brain trying to get you to eat by injecting obsessive thoughts about food." Any little thing can set that douchebag off, and then it's a fight for the entire rest of the day. When out alone in the wild, or isolated in a sealed box, no one cares whether you eat or starve, so that "go eat something" lobe never gets triggered externally. But the instant you're back, there's that 20-foot-tall Big Mac on a billboard telling you what exit to take. Even if you don't get off and buy one, it wakes up the appetite jerk, who starts offering unhelpful alternative suggestions. And it only shuts up after continuously whining for many hours, or when sleeping.