“
Let me ask you something, in all the years that you have...undressed in front of a gentleman has he ever asked you to leave? Has he ever walked out and left? No? It's because he doesn't care! He's in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery. I am so tired of saying no, waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before, counting every calorie I consumed so I know just how much self loathing to take into the shower. I'm going for it. I have no interest in being obese, I'm just through with the guilt. So this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to finish this pizza, and then we are going to go watch the soccer game, and tomorrow we are going to go on a little date and buy ourselves some bigger jeans.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert
“
Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers, and that's why it's come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions. It's a way of fucking yourself up while still remaining fully functional, because you have to. Fat people aren't indulging in the "luxury" of their addiction making them useless, chaotic, or a burden. Instead, they are slowly self-destructing in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone. And that's why it's so often a woman's addiction of choice. All the quietly eating mums. All the KitKats in office drawers. All the unhappy moments, late at night, caught only in the fridge light.
”
”
Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
“
If you keep on eating unhealthy food than no matter how many weight loss tips you follow, you are likely to retain weight and become obese. If only you start eating healthy food, you will be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to lose weight.
”
”
Subodh Gupta (7 habits of skinny woman)
“
Eating healthy nutritious food is the simple and right solution to get rid of excess body weight effortlessly and become slim and healthy forever.
”
”
Subodh Gupta (7 habits of skinny woman)
“
An obese ego is just about the heaviest thing you’ll ever carry. So maybe you should stop feeding it.
”
”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“
Managing perfect body weight is not a complicated rocket science. Our body is made up of food which we eat during our day to day life. If we are overweight or obese at the moment then one thing is certain that the food which we eat is unhealthy.
”
”
Subodh Gupta (7 habits of skinny woman)
“
But a radical new body of evidence shows that people are at their best—physically harder, mentally tougher, and spiritually sounder—after experiencing the same discomforts our early ancestors were exposed to every day. Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.
”
”
Michael Easter (The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self)
“
Across the country, red states are poorer and have more teen mothers, more divorce, worse health, more obesity, more trauma-related deaths, more low-birth-weight babies, and lower school enrollment. On average, people in red states die five years earlier than people in blue states. Indeed, the gap in life expectancy between Louisiana (75.7) and Connecticut (80.8) is the same as that between the United States and Nicaragua. Red states suffer more in another highly important but little-known way, one that speaks to the very biological self-interest in health and life: industrial pollution.
”
”
Arlie Russell Hochschild (Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right)
“
Obesity rates are much higher among those who sleep for less than six hours a night, in part because sleep deprivation interferes with how the brain and body use energy.
”
”
Kelly McGonigal (The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It)
“
Because I hated myself so much for my fatness, I always looked for other fat people, and especially for fatter people, to judge as harshly as the world seemed to be judging me. And you know what? There was always someone fatter who was more disgusting than I was, more not with it, and more lazy. It helped me validate myself as mis-seen, misunderstood, and misevaluated. It also helped me find some sort of weird self-esteem that I never could find when looking at myself in the mirror.
”
”
Dan Pearce (Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One)
“
People who died of starvation are not nearly as pitiful as those who died of overeating.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
Of all the dangerous ideas that health officials could have embraced while trying to understand why we get fat, they would have been hard-pressed to find one ultimately more damaging than calories-in/calories-out. That it reinforces what appears to be so obvious - obesity as the penalty for gluttony and sloth - is what makes it so alluring. But it's misleading and misconceived on so many levels that it's hard to imagine how it survived unscathed and virtually unchallenged for the last fifty years.
It has done incalculable harm. Not only is this thinking at least partly responsible for the ever-growing numbers of obese and overweight in the world - while directing attention away from the real reasons we get fat - but it has served to reinforce the perception that those who get fat have no one to blame but themselves. That eating less invariably fails as a cure for obesity is rarely perceived as the single most important reason to make us question our assumptions, as Hilde Bruch suggested half a century ago. Rather, it is taken as still more evidence that the overweight and obese are incapable of following a diet and eating in moderation. And it put the blame for their physical condition squarely on their behavior, which couldn't be further from the truth.
”
”
Gary Taubes (Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It)
“
When we take a moment to sit and breathe before we eat, we can get in touch with the real hunger in our body. We can discover if we’re eating because we’re hungry or if we’re eating because it’s the time to eat and the food is there.
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh (How to Eat (Mindfulness Essentials, #2))
“
It is easy sometimes to blame genetics, some obesity gene perhaps. But even if this were true, we’ll still be referring to the machine. Genetics are predispositions. The body is designed as a closed system, physiologically speaking and unless acted upon by an outside or higher force it maintains its functions. It is designed to sustain its own survival. The psychological (self-ordinate command) is essential for this survival because the body also belongs to a self, one that can overfeed it, starve it or kill it as may be. It is also by material urges that you seek to acquire wealth and by self command, suppose what you consider a higher more fulfilling purpose that you choose to give it all away.
The hard core truth is that despite some obesity gene, you can starve yourself to death if you want, or perhaps if you feel you have an ulterior higher purpose like an anorexic might, to look thin and beautiful in the eyes of the communal.
”
”
Dew Platt (Failure&solitude)
“
...the presence of others has become even more intolerable to me, their conversation most of all. Oh, how it all annoys and exasperates me: their attitudes, their manners, their whole way of being! The people of my world, all my unhappy peers, have come to irritate, oppress and sadden me with their noisy and empty chatter, their monstrous and boundless vanity, their even more monstrous egotism, their club gossip... the endless repetition of opinions already formed and judgments already made; the automatic vomiting forth of articles read in those morning papers which are the recognised outlet of the hopeless wilderness of their ideas; the eternal daily meal of overfamiliar cliches concerning racing stables and the stalls of fillies of the human variety... the hutches of the 'petites femmes' - another worn out phrase in the dirty usury of shapeless expression!
Oh my contemporaries, my dear contemporaries...
Their idiotic self-satisfaction; their fat and full-blown self-sufficiency: the stupid display of their good fortune; the clink of fifty- and a hundred-franc coins forever sounding out their financial prowess, according their own reckoning; their hen-like clucking and their pig-like grunting, as they pronounce the names of certain women; the obesity of their minds, the obscenity of their eyes, and the toneless-ness of their laughter! They are, in truth, handsome puppets of amour, with all the exhausted despondency of their gestures and the slackness of their chic...
Chic! A hideous word, which fits their manner like a new glove: as dejected as undertakers' mutes, as full-blown as Falstaff...
Oh my contemporaries: the ceusses of my circle, to put it in their own ignoble argot. They have all welcomed the moneylenders into their homes, and have been recruited as their clients, and they have likewise played host to the fat journalists who milk their conversations for the society columns. How I hate them; how I execrate them; how I would love to devour them liver and lights - and how well I understand the Anarchists and their bombs!
”
”
Jean Lorrain (Monsieur de Phocas)
“
Every time I saw Lacey, she'd gained five more pounds. She was turning into the kind of obese girl who does her hair like a forties pinup and wears bright red lipstick, a blue polka-dot dress with a white doily collar, colorful tattoos across her huge, smushed cleavage, as if these considerations would distract us from how fat and miserable she'd become.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (Homesick for Another World)
“
Die of humanity, not of obesity.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Earthquakin' Egalitarian: I Die Everyday So Your Children Can Live)
“
Gluttony is simply eating more than you need to keep yourself alive. When you have overeaten to the point of obesity, another sin - pride - will motivate you to regain an appearance that will renew your self-respect.
”
”
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Satanic Bible)
“
She had no idea of her weight and no interest in learning it. She knew she could be thinner, and of course when she was younger she was indeed much thinner, but she was generally happy with her body as long as it wasn’t giving her pain, and bored by all the different ways women droned on about the subject of weight, as if it were one of the great mysteries of life. The recent weight-losers, evangelical about whatever method had worked for them, the thin women who called themselves fat, the average women who called themselves obese, the ones desperate for her to join in their lavish self-loathing. “Oh, Frances, isn’t it just so depressing when you see young, thin girls like that!” “Not especially,” Frances would say, adding extra butter to her bread roll.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (Nine Perfect Strangers)
“
In 1990, no state in the nation had an obesity rate equal to or higher than 15 percent. By 1999, eighteen states had a rate between 20 and 24 percent, but still no state had a rate equal to or higher than 25 percent. By 2009, only one state (Colorado) and the District of Columbia had a rate lower than 20 percent, and thirty-three states had a rate of 25 percent or higher.
”
”
Kelly McGonigal (The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It)
“
Every day I wake up and re-commit to my health. This is a very important step for me. I let the past be the past. I try not to dwell on the mistakes I've made, because those kinds of thoughts only bring me down. I wake up every day with the thought that this is a new day. That today I am going to eat well, I am going to exercise, and I'm going to focus on being healthy and happy.
”
”
Stephen Cremen (Battle Scars: My Journey from Obesity to Health and Happiness, Fifteen Years and Counting!)
“
As every close observer of the deadlocks arising from the political correctness knows, the separation of legal justice from moral Goodness –which should be relativized and historicized- ends up in an oppressive moralism brimming with resentment. Without any “organic” social substance grounding the standards of what Orwell approvingly called “common decency” (all such standards having been dismissed as subordinating individual freedoms to proto-Fascist social forms), the minimalist program of laws intended simply to prevent individuals from encroaching upon one another (annoying or “harassing” each other) turns into an explosion of legal and moral rules, an endless process (a “spurious infinity” in Hegel’s sense) of legalization and moralization, known as “the fight against all forms of discrimination.” If there are no shared mores in place to influence the law, only the basic fact of subjects “harassing other subjects, who-in the absence of mores- is to decide what counts as “harassment”? In France, there are associations of obese people demanding all the public campaigns against obesity and in favor of healthy eating be stopped, since they damage the self-esteem of obese persons. The militants of Veggie Pride condemn the speciesism” of meat-eaters (who discriminate against animals, privileging the human animal-for them, a particularly disgusting form of “fascism”) and demand that “vegeto-phobia” should be treated as a kind of xenophobia and proclaimed a crime. And we could extend the list to include those fighting for the right of incest marriage, consensual murder, cannibalism . . .
The problem here is the obvious arbitrariness of the ever-new rule. Take child sexuality, for example: one could argue that its criminalization is an unwarranted discrimination, but one could also argue that children should be protected from sexual molestation by adults. And we could go on: the same people who advocate the legalization of soft drugs usually support the prohibition of smoking in public places; the same people who protest the patriarchal abuse of small children in our societies worry when someone condemns a member of certain minority cultures for doing exactly this (say, the Roma preventing their children from attending public schools), claiming that this is a case od meddling with other “ways of life”. It is thus for necessary structural reasons that the “fight against discrimination” is an endless process which interminably postpones its final point: namely a society freed from all moral prejudices which, as Michea puts it, “would be on this very account a society condemned to see crimes everywhere.
”
”
Slavoj Žižek (Living in the End Times)
“
I know I don't have all the answers about weight loss; this is an evolving challenge, and I know I'll always be learning new things. I don't feel like I've uncovered some big mystery, but I've learned what it takes to overcome being overweight--and that it's not just about the food. It's about becoming the person you are meant to be in all aspects of your life. It's about removing the fears in life that keep us blocked. It's about being brave and learning to love yourself--no matter how you may feel about yourself.
”
”
Stephen Cremen (Battle Scars: My Journey from Obesity to Health and Happiness, Fifteen Years and Counting!)
“
I could see beauty in a moral code that emphasized self-control, resistance to temptation, cultivation of one’s higher, nobler self, and negation of the self’s desires. I could see the dark side of this ethic too: once you allow visceral feelings of disgust to guide your conception of what God wants, then minorities who trigger even a hint of disgust in the majority (such as homosexuals or obese people) can be ostracized and treated cruelly. The ethic of divinity is sometimes incompatible with compassion, egalitarianism, and basic human rights.
”
”
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
“
Strong emotional feelings don't just go away overnight. In fact, they may never go away. The fears of feeling disliked, or that I wasn't going to fit in, all quickly bubbled up to the surface. but it was the choices I made when I was faced with challenges that really mattered. I had to continually tell myself that I was always in control. If someone was pressuring me to do something that I knew was not good for me, I had the power to simply say no. No one can ever take that power away from me. If someone was upset or didn't like me for saying no, that was someone that I really didn't need in my life.
”
”
Stephen Cremen (Battle Scars: My Journey from Obesity to Health and Happiness, Fifteen Years and Counting!)
“
Every action flick depicts the destruction of civilization as some kind of crash-boom-bang, a nuclear war or hurtling comet or a self-aware-cyborg uprising, but the true cataclysm may already be creeping up right under our eyes: because of rampant obesity, one in three children born in the United States is at risk of diabetes—meaning, we could be the first generation of Americans to outlive our own children. Maybe the ancient Hindus were better crystal-ball-gazers than Hollywood when they predicted the world would end not with a bang but with a big old yawn. Shiva the Destroyer would snuff us out by doing … nothing. Lazing out. Withdrawing his hot-blooded force from our bodies. Letting us become slugs. Coach
”
”
Christopher McDougall (Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen)
“
In nearly all of the country’s nineteen thousand municipalities,117 declining or stagnant property tax revenues, along with mounting costs, have reached crisis proportions. The opioid crisis, the mass shootings, the rising rates of suicide, especially among middle-aged white males, the morbid obesity, the obsession with gambling, the investment of our emotional and intellectual life in tawdry spectacles, and the allure of magical thinking, from the absurd promises of the Christian right to the belief that reality is never an impediment to our desires, are the pathologies of a diseased culture. They have risen from a decayed world where opportunity, which confers status, self-esteem, and dignity, has dried up for most Americans. They are expressions of morbidity.
”
”
Chris Hedges (America: The Farewell Tour)
“
Some researchers, such as psychologist Jean Twenge, say this new world where compliments are better than sex and pizza, in which the self-enhancing bias has been unchained and allowed to gorge unfettered, has led to a new normal in which the positive illusions of several generations have now mutated into full-blown narcissism. In her book The Narcissism Epidemic, Twenge says her research shows that since the mid-1980s, clinically defined narcissism rates in the United States have increased in the population at the same rate as obesity. She used the same test used by psychiatrists to test for narcissism in patients and found that, in 2006, one in four U.S. college students tested positive. That’s real narcissism, the kind that leads to diagnoses of personality disorders. In her estimation, this is a dangerous trend, and it shows signs of acceleration. Narcissistic overconfidence crosses a line, says Twenge, and taints those things improved by a skosh of confidence. Over that line, you become less concerned with the well-being of others, more materialistic, and obsessed with status in addition to losing all the restraint normally preventing you from tragically overestimating your ability to manage or even survive risky situations. In her book, Twenge connects this trend to the housing market crash of the mid-2000s and the stark increase in reality programming during that same decade. According to Twenge, the drive to be famous for nothing went from being strange to predictable thanks to a generation or two of people raised by parents who artificially boosted self-esteem to ’roidtastic levels and then released them into a culture filled with new technologies that emerged right when those people needed them most to prop up their self-enhancement biases. By the time Twenge’s research was published, reality programming had spent twenty years perfecting itself, and the modern stars of those shows represent a tiny portion of the population who not only want to be on those shows, but who also know what they are getting into and still want to participate. Producers with the experience to know who will provide the best television entertainment to millions then cull that small group. The result is a new generation of celebrities with positive illusions so robust and potent that the narcissistic overconfidence of the modern American teenager by comparison is now much easier to see as normal.
”
”
David McRaney (You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself)
“
We did not evolve in such a world, where every waking moment carries its own microemergency. Prolonged exposure to such conditions tends to confuse our ancient protective mechanisms, exhausting the body’s stress-arousal systems and lowering resistance to disease. And yet despite these warning signs, we press on. Drawn forward by debt, desire, or both, Americans are emerging as the first addicts of the technological age, driven still by some ancient instinct for self-preservation that in our time of affluence is misplaced. Ironically, we are better tuned physiologically to face the privations and dangers inherent in an unexpected terrorist attack than we are to endure the relentless propositions and stressful abundance of our consumer society. It is in this blind pursuit of material prosperity that Americans have begun to push the boundaries of human adaptation, as is evidenced by rising levels of greed, anxiety, and obesity. In
”
”
Peter C. Whybrow (American Mania: When More is Not Enough)
“
The strongest evidence yet was published in 2010. In a painstaking long-term study, much larger and more thorough than anything done previously, an international team of researchers tracked one thousand children in New Zealand from birth until the age of thirty-two. Each child’s self-control was rated in a variety of ways (through observations by researchers as well as in reports of problems from parents, teachers, and the children themselves). This produced an especially reliable measure of children’s self-control, and the researchers were able to check it against an extraordinarily wide array of outcomes through adolescence and into adulthood. The children with high self-control grew up into adults who had better physical health, including lower rates of obesity, fewer sexually transmitted diseases, and even healthier teeth. (Apparently, good self-control includes brushing and flossing.) Self-control was irrelevant to adult depression, but its lack made people more prone to alcohol and drug problems. The children with poor self-control tended to wind up poorer financially. They worked in relatively low-paying jobs, had little money in the bank, and were less likely to own a home or have money set aside for retirement. They also grew up to have more children being raised in single-parent households, presumably because they had a harder time adapting to the discipline required for a long-term relationship. The children with good self-control were much more likely to wind up in a stable marriage and raise children in a two-parent home. Last, but certainly not least, the children with poor self-control were more likely to end up in prison. Among those with the lowest levels of self-control, more than 40 percent had a criminal conviction by the age of thirty-two, compared with just 12 percent of the people who had been toward the high end of the self-control distribution in their youth.
”
”
Roy F. Baumeister (Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength)
“
One of our greatest epidemics today is obesity. It is estimated that more than 500 million people suffer from obesity worldwide today, and that it kills more than three million people each year. In comparison, about 55,000 people are killed in war each year, which of course in no way suggests that we are overestimating the horror and seriousness of war – how could we? – but the little attention we give to obesity in comparison does suggest, however, that we are not taking the “war” we should be waging against obesity seriously. It seems that we overlook what a merciless killer and cause of pain that obesity and the overeating that leads to it really is: it increases the risk of heart disease (the most common cause of death worldwide), many kinds of cancer, type 2 diabetes, degenerative joint disease and mental problems such as depression and low self-esteem.[27] Fortunately, a lot seems to imply that we have a powerful and peaceful weapon at our hands that can help us overcome obesity: a vegan diet.
”
”
Magnus Vinding (Why We Should Go Vegan)
“
One of my colleagues in Duke, Ralph Keeney, noted that America's top killer isn't cancer or heart disease, nor is it smoking or obesity. It's our inability to make smart choices and overcome our own self-destructive behaviours. Ralph estimates that about half of us will make a lifestyle decision that will ultimately lead us to an early grave. And as if this were not bad enough, it seems that the rate at which we make these deadly decisions is increasing at an alarming pace.
I suspect that over the next few decades, real improvements in life expectancy and quality are less likely to be driven by medical technology than by improved decision making. Since focusing on long-term benefits is not our natural tendency, we need to more carefully examine the cases in which we repeatedly fail, and try to come up with some remedies for these situations. For an overweight movie loved, the key might be to enjoy watching a film while walking on the treadmill. The trick is to find the right behavioural antidote for each problem. By pairing something that we love with something that we dislike but that is good for us, we might be able to harness desire with outcome - and thus overcome some of the problems with self-control we face every day.
”
”
Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions)
“
PRESCRIPTION 5 Low Back and Trunk This prescription can be used to treat these symptoms and restrictions: Abdominal pain Compromised breathing Hip extension range of motion Hip pain Low back pain Sciatica Spinal rotation, flexion and extension range of motion Overview Methods: Contract and relax Pressure wave Smash and floss Tools: Small ball Large ball Small bouncy ball or under-inflated soccer/volleyball Total time: 14 minutes This prescription is great for treating low back pain and supporting the hardworking muscles of your trunk. We’ve established that poor spinal mechanics and sitting can cause adaptive stiffness and irritation in the discs, ligaments, and muscles around your spine and trunk. And when that happens, low back pain is often the result. Although there are other contributing factors to consider, like previous injuries, arthritis, obesity, and stress, we would argue that one of the leading causes of low back pain and trunk-related problems stems from poor posture, prolonged sitting, and a lack of basic self-maintenance. Having spent the majority of this book outlining a protocol for preventing and resolving the issue from a mechanical standpoint, let’s turn our attention to the maintenance side of things. This prescription targets the muscles that are responsible for keeping your spine braced, as well as the muscles that may get stiff when you move poorly or sit for too long.
”
”
Kelly Starrett (Deskbound: Standing Up to a Sitting World)
“
The proof that the One Stone Solution is political lies in what women
feel when they eat “too much”: guilt. Why should guilt be the operative
emotion, and female fat be a moral issue articulated with words like
good and bad? If our culture’s fixation on female fatness or thinness
were about sex, it would be a private issue between a woman and her
lover; if it were about health, between a woman and herself. Public
debate would be far more hysterically focused on male fat than on female,
since more men (40 percent) are medically overweight than women
(32 percent) and too much fat is far more dangerous for men than
for women. In fact, “there is very little evidence to support the claim
that fatness causes poor health among women…. The results of recent
studies have suggested that women may in fact live longer and be generally healthier if they weigh ten to fifteen percent above the life-insurance figures and they refrain from dieting,” asserts Radiance; when poor health is correlated to fatness in women, it is due to chronic dieting and the emotional stress of self-hatred. The National Institutes of Health studies that linked obesity to heart disease and stroke were based on male subjects; when a study of females was finally published in 1990, it showed that weight made only a fraction of the difference for women that it made for men. The film The Famine Within cites a sixteen-country study that fails to correlate fatness to ill health. Female fat is not in itself unhealthy.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
“
But here’s the dilemma: Why is “how-to” so alluring when, truthfully, we already know “how to” yet we’re still standing in the same place longing for more joy, connection, and meaning? Most everyone reading this book knows how to eat healthy. I can tell you the Weight Watcher points for every food in the grocery store. I can recite the South Beach Phase I grocery shopping list and the glycemic index like they’re the Pledge of Allegiance. We know how to eat healthy. We also know how to make good choices with our money. We know how to take care of our emotional needs. We know all of this, yet … We are the most obese, medicated, addicted, and in-debt Americans EVER. Why? We have more access to information, more books, and more good science—why are we struggling like never before? Because we don’t talk about the things that get in the way of doing what we know is best for us, our children, our families, our organizations, and our communities. I can know everything there is to know about eating healthy, but if it’s one of those days when Ellen is struggling with a school project and Charlie’s home sick from school and I’m trying to make a writing deadline and Homeland Security increased the threat level and our grass is dying and my jeans don’t fit and the economy is tanking and the Internet is down and we’re out of poop bags for the dog—forget it! All I want to do is snuff out the sizzling anxiety with a pumpkin muffin, a bag of chips, and chocolate. We don’t talk about what keeps us eating until we’re sick, busy beyond human scale, desperate to numb and take the edge off, and full of so much anxiety and self-doubt that we can’t act on what we know is best for us. We don’t talk about the hustle for worthiness that’s become such a part of our lives that we don’t even realize that we’re dancing. When I’m having one of those days that I just described, some of the anxiety is just a part of living, but there are days when most of my anxiety grows out of the expectations I put on myself. I want Ellen’s project to be amazing. I want to take care of Charlie without worrying about my own deadlines. I want to show the world how great I am at balancing my family and career. I want our yard to look beautiful. I want people to see us picking up our dog’s poop in biodegradable bags and think, My God! They are such outstanding citizens. There are days when I can fight the urge to be everything to everyone, and there are days when it gets the best of me.
”
”
Brené Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are)
“
Social epidemics—like the spread of obesity or smoking—follow a pattern of complex contagion . It is not enough to come into contact with a person who is a “carrier” of the behavior. Your relationship to that person matters.
”
”
Kelly McGonigal (The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It)
“
One study found that healthy teenagers of normal weight who just perceived themselves as overweight were more likely to become obese later in life.
”
”
Ian Tuhovsky (The Science of Self Talk: How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence and Stop Getting in Your Own Way (Master Your Self Discipline Book 5))
“
nation: In my own lifetime the divorce rate has doubled, the rates of teen suicide and violent crime have both tripled, and births out of wedlock have sextupled. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the US has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners (about the same number as Russia and China combined). We have become accustomed to homeless people sleeping in parks and under bridges, something virtually unknown in my childhood. The leading causes of death are self-inflicted, the side-effects of tobacco, obesity, alcohol, sexually transmitted diseases, drugs, and violence.
”
”
David Jeremiah (The Book of Signs: 31 Undeniable Prophecies of the Apocalypse)
“
In longtime meditators, such as Tibetan monks who have meditated for over 10,000 hours, the parietal lobe shows greatly reduced activity during meditation. While the brain’s energy usage only fluctuates around 5% up or down each day, in these adepts it drops up to 40% as they enter an altered state of consciousness. People who are isolated and lonely show the opposite effect. Their parietal lobes may be highly active. Feelings of loneliness and isolation are increasing in our fragmented society, according to a number of studies, and they have detrimental effects on our health. We are social beings, and a sense of connectedness translates into overall physical and emotional well-being. In a meta-analysis of 148 studies with a total of 308,849 participants, the researchers found “a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. This finding remained consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death, and follow up.” Even when the researchers corrected for behaviors such as smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise, the effect remained consistent. Think back to the times of your life when you were happiest. For most of us, special moments with family and friends come to mind. We may have been on vacation with loved ones or enjoying a meal or a joke with friends. It may have been singing carols during the holidays, when billions of people join in affirming “peace on earth, goodwill to men.” What’s common to all those happy times is that your attention was fully in the present moment, the “timelessness” of Chapter 2. You weren’t worrying about the past or stressing over the future, the way you might be doing if you didn’t have precious people to engage your thoughts. Time and space receded as the love-filled present occupied your attention. Only in the present moment can you escape the demon’s obsession with the mistakes of the past and the problems of tomorrow. Experiences of timelessness, as the parietal lobe shuts down, shape our perception of the world and how we act in it. A Stanford study of people who experienced “the deep now” found that it changed their behavior. They “felt they had more time available . . . and were less impatient . . . more willing to volunteer their time to help others . . . preferred experiences over material products . . . and experienced a greater boost in life satisfaction.” A quiet parietal lobe promotes empathy, compassion, relaxation, appreciation, connectedness, and self-esteem.
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Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
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Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.
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Michael Easter (The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self)
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US hospitals may be excellent, but there must be something profoundly wrong with our health care system if we fall near the bottom of the heap among developed nations on life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, self-reported health, obesity, drug overdoses, suicide, homicides, disability rates, traffic deaths, almost any indicator you can think of. Lack of access to medical care deserves much of the blame, but even educated, insured, well-off Americans are less healthy than their peers in other rich nations
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Susan Levenstein (Dottoressa: An American Doctor in Rome)
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Studies of children in Japan, Canada, and Australia found that kids who get less than eight hours of sleep per night have a 300 percent higher obesity rate than kids who sleep ten hours.11 In Houston, a study of teens showed that the chance of obesity increased 80 percent for each hour of lost sleep.12 If teens are sleep deprived, they’re also likely to get sick a lot more, as sleep deprivation suppresses immune function.13 Sleep loss also leads to a significant decrease in cancer-killing cells, enough for the American Cancer Society to classify night-shift work as a probable carcinogen.
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William Stixrud (The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives)
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Let's consider an overweight person, who is obese not because of a medical condition, but simply through eating junk food and being a couch potato. If that person checks their weight, looks in the bathroom mirror, and says, "Look at me, I'm fat and ugly. I'll never lose this weight." Then that person has just shut themselves in the prison of their own negativity. Their prophecy will be self-fulfilling. They will continue to live a lifestyle of excess, thinking "What's the point, might as well enjoy it!
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Michael T. Stevens (The Art Of Psychological Warfare: How To Skillfully Influence People Undetected And How To Mentally Subdue Your Enemies In Stealth Mode)
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Most people today rarely step outside their comfort zones. We are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged, safety-netted lives. And it’s limiting the degree to which we experience our “one wild and precious life,” as poet Mary Oliver put it. But a radical new body of evidence shows that people are at their best—physically harder, mentally tougher, and spiritually sounder—after experiencing the same discomforts our early ancestors were exposed to every day. Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.
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Michael Easter (The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self)
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During [extended time without food], the body doesn’t shut down, it ramps up,” Dr. Jason Fung, a nephrologist and author of The Obesity Code, told me. “Think about a hungry wolf versus a lion who just ate. Which one is more focused? The hungry wolf.
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Michael Easter (The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self)
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Kashey explained his thoughts on obesity genes like this: “Whether or not you have some obesity gene, you treat the condition in the exact same way you would if you didn’t have that gene. You eat better and move more. So why are we even talking about this?” he said. “Is it perhaps harder for some people to lose weight than others? Maybe. Will those people have to work harder? Maybe. But life isn’t fair, and by harping on genes, people just give themselves an excuse to fail.
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Michael Easter (The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self)
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Flora’s morbidly obese. She self-harms. She’s got a drink problem. She’s on so many anti-depressants she barely knows what day it is.’ ‘She’s trying to block out something terrible,’ said Robin. ‘She witnessed something most of us will never witness. At best, it was gross negligence manslaughter. At worst, it was murder.
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Robert Galbraith (The Running Grave (Cormoran Strike, #7))
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And all you touch and all you see Is all your life will ever be
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Sharon French (How to Overcome Obesity Excuses - Your Weight Loss Journey: Gain focus, energy, self-esteem. Use psychology to calm and inspire. Improve body image. Stop guilty binge eating!)
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In 1925, an advertisement began appearing in newspapers and magazines across America. It depicted a slim woman with short hair standing on a diving board, clad in a one-piece bathing suit, looking pleased with her herself. But next to her, in shadow, stood her future self: dowdy and obese. “This Is You Five Years From Now!” read the caption. “When Tempted to Over-indulge, Reach for a Lucky Instead.” The ad, for Lucky Strike cigarettes, was made by American Tobacco, which was the first cigarette manufacturer to realize that obesity could be used as a marketing cudgel. Until then, smoking had been an overwhelmingly male pastime. But in looking to expand sales, the cigarette manufacturers began pitching tobacco to women as an appetite suppressant.
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Anonymous
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Adam and Eve each denied their own responsibility when confronted by God because they saw themselves as too important to be wrong, to be weak, to be vulnerable to the shrewdness of a mere serpent. The dramatic increase in self-importance over the turn of the millennium, occurring alongside a steady increase in divorce, white-collar crime, morbid obesity, and high-profile falls from grace, smacks of a similar stink. We’re too important for silly rules. We can’t be expected to keep promises we made after circumstances change. Give us enough time, and we’ll figure out who’s really to blame for the trouble we find ourselves in. Jake
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David A. Zimmerman (Deliver Us From Me-Ville)
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Age itself is a risk for getting cancer. Our cells replicate constantly during our lives. The more times they replicate, the greater the chances that an aberration will occur. However, the body is remarkable at self-correcting and it takes many aberrations for cancer to grow. Diet, smoking, exercise, stress, obesity, asbestos, pollution, radiation, geography, immune system changes, alcohol, infection and chemicals – all of these are linked to cancer but no one knows for sure in what way. Nobody can tell you definitely how much exposure to any of these might cause you to develop cancer or whether you ever will. One of
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Ranjana Srivastava (So It's Cancer: Now What?)
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Two hormones, leptin and ghrelin, are secreted in a natural biorhythm. When the stomach is empty, its cells secrete ghrelin, sending a message to the brain that you register as feeling hungry. When you’ve had enough to eat, that’s the result of a message from leptin, secreted by fat cells, which balances the hunger-satiation rhythm. In fact, obesity and leptin have both been implicated in risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Epidemiological (i.e., population) studies have shown higher circulating leptin levels to be associated with lower risk of Alzheimer’s, while lower circulating levels of leptin have been found in patients already suffering from the disease. Leptin receptors are highly expressed in the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for short-term memory, which is ravaged by Alzheimer’s. Leptin supplementation actually led to less Alzheimer’s pathology in this brain region in mouse studies of the disease. This is yet further evidence strengthening the link between the gut and the brain.
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Deepak Chopra (The Healing Self: Supercharge your immune system and stay well for life)
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When you attempt to change, if you’re part of the 92%, this happens: 1. You decide to change. 2. You are scared of the change, but determined to do it. 3. You start. 4. You hit a wall. 5. You stop your new action and fail to achieve change. This almost always happens at the beginning. You don’t really know what to do; you lack skills and/or knowledge. You are destined to struggle at first. After the first failure, your doubts awaken anxiousness. You try again, you fail again. Your doubts get stronger, your resolve weakens. You lose your enthusiasm for the change, and your efforts from this point are half-hearted. Half-hearted attempts have even less likelihood of succeeding, so you fail again and your negative attitude is reinforced. The problem is that you expected significant results too soon. That’s the curse of instant gratification at work. It’s completely unrealistic to expect a visible change in your body shape two weeks after starting a new diet. If it’s a balanced diet, not some Tic-Tac hardcore regime (only two calories), you can reasonably expect to lose maybe four pounds. Two is more realistic. Let’s say three on average. Even if you are a skinny fellow like me, three pounds is just 2% of your body weight. That loss will be almost invisible. That result may not seem enough for the effort you are making. Well, it is actually a great result. If you keep that pace, you would lose 78 pounds in a year. That’s visible even on obese people. However, you’ve set your internal evaluating mechanism to expect much more in a shorter time. You had the picture of your skinny bikini or 6-pack self in your mind, but all you see in the mirror is your same old flabby self. What is more, you’ll usually take intensive action when you begin something. You’re keen! You want results! You use this initial enthusiasm to apply massive effort. A very restrictive diet! A lot of exercises! It’s no wonder that after two weeks of such hard work you decide (at least subconsciously) that it’s not worth it. Do you see what’s happening?
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Michal Stawicki (The Art of Persistence: Stop Quitting, Ignore Shiny Objects and Climb Your Way to Success)
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1983, Jules Hirsch of Rockefeller University framed this enigma in the form of two alternative hypotheses. One was the common belief “that obesity is the result of a willful descent into self-gratification.” The other was the “alternative hypothesis that there is something ‘biologic’ about obesity, some alteration of hormones, enzymes or other biochemical control systems which leads to obesity.” Because no such biologic abnormality had been unambiguously identified, Hirsch believed, “it is perhaps better to maintain the illusion that obesity is not an illness. It is more pleasant to believe that it is no more than an error of good judgment and that better judgments and choices will eventually lead” to a better outcome.
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Gary Taubes (Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease)
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Obesity is not about a lack of willpower or an individual who has no self respect. Obesity is about science and malfunctions in the body that are creating the excess weight.
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T.C. Hale (Kick Your Fat in the Nuts)
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I wish we taught the modern generation the true meaning of "love" and the human race. The love for all people regardless of their religion, race, culture or Political beliefs.The love of justice in the face of injustice.The love of wisdom in the face of ignorance, the love of country in the midst of unpatriotic beings and the love of self in the face of wanna be's.
I wish we showed them that racism is not something that "Human Beings" should accept or brand. I hope we teach them that character matters more than race. I wish we taught them that "Islam" is not the biggest problem that America faces and vengeance, itself, is harm!
In this time of divides, we have seen what the media can do. It has the power to uplift and break a candidate. In this uncertain times, we must be courageous as Americans and stand for what's right, not what the media think is.
In this time, President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders or Donald J. Trump will not and can not change this country. It will take you, as an American to liberate your minds from "HATE", racial divides, injustice, and discrimination. It will take you as an American to rethink Islam, Health Care issues, Free Education for all, Unemployment, Environment and Climate Change, Obesity, Foreign Relations, Illegal Immigration, Equality Between Men and Women, and Individual Liberty vs. Government Control#Movebeyonddisparities.
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Henry Johnson Jr (Liberian Son)
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There was a study by Ralph Keeney showing that if you estimate what percentage of human mortality comes from bad decision-making it will be about 10 percent for people a hundred years ago. If you look at it these days, it is a little bit more than 40 percent. Why? Because as we invent new technologies, we also invent new ways to kill ourselves. Think about obesity. Think about smoking. Think about texting and driving. All of those are self-control problems. Self-control
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Jocelyn K. Glei (Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind)
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The great American government, with its spirit of free enterprise, had imposed communism on the Native Peoples, and like the system the Bolsheviks had imposed on the Soviet Union, it had yielded the same harvest. The once-proud native people learned to accept government handouts, then to rely upon them. The subsequent loss of pride, self-reliance, and initiative led inevitably to the current plague of alcoholism, obesity, and hopelessness infecting modern tribal societies.
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Richard Phillips (Wormhole (The Rho Agenda, #3))
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promoting human emotions like love, forgiveness, compassion, understanding, empathy, loyalty and patience. Kapha-dominant people are tenacious but calm, strong but loving and are blessed with wise tolerance. But, when this energy is out of balance, it can result in obesity, diabetes, insecurity, sinus problems and gallbladder diseases.
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Joseph Shivan (Ayurveda: A Complete Ayurvedic Guide To Self-Healing And Improved Health)
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Studies conducted by the American Psychological Association, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, and various major universities support the assertion that there is a direct correlation between frequent family meals and children who are less likely to use illegal drugs, drink alcohol, and be sexually promiscuous. In addition, these children usually have better success in school, higher self-esteem, fewer problems with depression, and a lower incidence of obesity.
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J. Natalie Winch (Ditching the Drive-Thru)
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As if to confirm the difference between Korean and European anti-Americanism, Salman Rushdie sees parallel patterns in the difference between the anti-Americanism of the Muslim and European worlds. The former, according to Rushdie, chiefly enlists political reasons for its antipathy to America, but the latter is anti-American in its essence and entire behavior: These days there seem to be as many of these accusers outside the Muslim world as inside it. Anybody who has visited Britain and Europe, or followed the public conversation there during the past five months, will have been struck, even shocked, by the depth of antiAmerican feeling among large segments of the population. Western anti-Americanism is an altogether more petulant phenomenon than its Islamic counterpart and far more personalized. Muslim countries don’t like America’s power, its “arrogance,” its success; but in the nonAmerican West, the main objection seems to be to American people. Night after night, I have found myself listening to Londoners’ diatribes against the sheer weirdness of the American citizenry. The attacks on America are routinely discounted. . . . American patriotism, obesity, emotionality, self-centeredness: these are the crucial issues.”37
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Andrei S. Markovits (Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (The Public Square Book 5))
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possible.Several studies have shown a connection between breast-feeding and reduced childhood obesity. The mechanisms for this link aren’t clear, but it may have to do with the ability of breast-fed babies to self-regulate their intake of milk. In other words, baby decides when to stop eating. If you’re bottle-feeding, try to follow your baby’s cues that he or she is full. Don’t make your baby finish a bottle just because the milk is there.
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Walter J. Cook (Mayo Clinic Guide to Your Baby's First Years: Newborn to Age 3)
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If we don’t give back to the society, we'll die of obesity.
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Abhijit Naskar (Ain't Enough to Look Human)
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Why do so many people who experience violence in childhood feel the same way? Why does it lead many of them to self-destructive behavior, like obesity, or hardcore addiction, or suicide? I have spent a lot of time thinking about this. When you’re a child, you have very little power to change your environment. You can’t move away, or force somebody to stop hurting you. So you have two choices. You can admit to yourself that you are powerless—that at any moment, you could be badly hurt, and there’s simply nothing you can do about it. Or you can tell yourself it’s your fault. If you do that, you actually gain some power—at least in your own mind. If it’s your fault, then there’s something you can do that might make it different. You aren’t a pinball being smacked around a pinball machine. You’re the person controlling the machine. You have your hands on the dangerous levers. In this way, just like obesity protected those women from the men they feared would rape them, blaming yourself for your childhood traumas protects you from seeing how vulnerable you were and are. You can become the powerful one. If it’s your fault, it’s under your control. But that comes at a cost. If you were responsible for being hurt, then at some level, you have to think you deserved it. A person who thinks they deserved to be injured as a child isn’t going to think they deserve much as an adult, either.
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Johann Hari (Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions)
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Not only does our individual and societal sanity depend on connection; so does our physical health. Because we are biopsychosocial creatures, the rising loneliness epidemic in Western culture is much more than just a psychological phenomenon: it is a public health crisis.
A preeminent scholar of loneliness, the late neuroscientist John Cacioppo and his colleague and spouse, Stephania Cacioppo, published a letter in the Lancet only a month before his death in 2018. "Imagine," they wrote, "a condition that makes a person irritable, depressed, and self-centered, and is associated with a 26% increase in the risk of premature mortality. Imagine too that in industrialized countries around a third of people are affected by this condition, with one person in 12 affected severely, and that these proportions are increasing. Income, education, sex, and ethnicity are not protective, and the condition is contagious. The effects of the condition are not attributable to some peculiarity of the character of a subset of individuals, they are a result of the condition affecting ordinary people. Such a condition exists — loneliness."
We now know without doubt that chronic loneliness is associated with an elevated risk of illness and early death. It has been shown to increase mortality from cancer and other diseases and has been compared to the harm of smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. According to research presented at the American Psychological Association's annual convention in 2015, the loneliness epidemic is a public health risk at least as great as the burgeoning rates of obesity.
Loneliness, the researcher Steven Cole told me, can impair genetic functioning. And no wonder: even in parrots isolation impairs DNA repair by shortening chromosome-protecting telomeres. Social isolation inhibits the immune system, promotes inflammation, agitates the stress apparatus, and increases the risk of death from heart disease and strokes. Here I am referring to social isolation in the pre COVID-19 sense, though the pandemic has grievously exacerbated the problem, at great cost to the well-being of many.
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Gabor Maté (The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture)
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Typical Cock Extremists might pursue a sadomasochist individual to cope with a damaged past. Some Cock Extremists will seek what is referred to as irrumation. It is when unknown individuals try to suffocate a Cock Extremist with their penis by forcing it down their throat until they vomit. Cock Extremists also will drink the urine of several strangers. It takes a lot of courage to be at the mercy of a complete stranger, which is why they are referred to as Typical Cock Extremists, but these humiliatrix victims do have a demonic name. There is no happy place for the mind and body of a Typical Cock Extremist to rest. It is quite common that they be slightly obese due to oral fixation. Many of them have low self-esteem and look to food as comfort. Caressing emptiness and the lack of companionship by overeating is not the best solution. It barely fills the void of insignificance from a damaged past.
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Lordess Demonica (DEMONSAPIENISM & True Cock Worship)
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Over the years I’ve seen my body as an enemy to be conquered, deprived, and beaten into submission—that is, into the smallest possible shape and size. Occasionally I felt proud of its strength and curviness. But more often I saw it as a symbol of my personal weakness and shame, an outward manifestation of my inadequacies and failures. Catching sight of myself in a mirror—an experience I tried to avoid—could send me into a dark place for hours. I spent years wallowing in self-hatred because of the size of my thighs. My weight went up and down over those decades, from the low side of “normal” to mildly obese, but my level of despair and self-loathing stayed sky-high.
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Harriet Brown (Body of Truth: How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight—and What We Can Do about It)
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The results were unambiguous: Compared with girls of the same age, race, and social circumstances, sexually abused girls suffer from a large range of profoundly negative effects, including cognitive deficits, depression, dissociative symptoms, troubled sexual development, high rates of obesity, and self-mutilation. They
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Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
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Hypnosis probably taps into physiological pathways similar to those involved in the placebo effect, says Kirsch. For one thing, the medical conditions that the two can improve are similar, and both are underpinned by suggestion and expectation—in other words, believing in a particular outcome. The downside is that some people do not respond as strongly to hypnosis as others. Most clinical trials involving hypnosis are small, largely because of a lack of funding, but they suggest that hypnosis may help pain management, anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, obesity, asthma and skin conditions such as psoriasis and warts.10 Finding a good hypnotherapist can be tricky, as the profession is not regulated, but hypnotizing yourself seems to work just as well. “Self-hypnosis is the most important part,” says Whorwell.
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Jeremy Webb (Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion)
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FOREWORD When Commander Perry opened up to the occidental world that shut-tight little island Kingdom, Japan, he did more than merely contact for our manufacturers a people who bought "Nifty Clothes," with two pair of pants. He gave us an insight into a world that was thoroughly organized and civilized long before Columbus discovered West where the East should have been. The Japanese learned much from the so-called civilized world, -but they taught us something we could never have learned from intercourse with any other nation. They gave our governmental forces of law and order a weapon that aided materially in the suppression of disorderly elements throughout our great cities. It took time, of course, to break down the prejudices that our early enforcement officers, in common with our then wild and wooly population, had against anything that was foreign. But when the great police forces of our largest metropolises realized that guns and billies alone would not be proof against big, burly lawbreakers, and that to instil respect in the hearts of "bruisers" they needed something other than armaments—pistols that could not be drawn fast enough,—they then discovered the wonder of Jiu-jitsu. They found that the wily little brown man depended on brain instead of brawn and that he had developed a Science and an Art that utilized another's strength to his own undoing. Strangely enough it was the layman who first appreciated the potential value of Jiu-jitsu. For many years before the Police Forces of our cities put a study of this Science into the training of every rookie policeman, there were physical culture experts in America who advocated the use of it by everyone who had any respect for physical prowess but who found the spirit more willing than the flesh. They showed that it needed no possession of unusual strength to overcome an opponent that depended entirely on his bulk and ferocious appearance to cow the meeker ones of the earth into submission. The Japanese, by the very fact of their small stature, are compelled to place more emphasis on strategy than on force. Thus they have thoroughly developed Jiu-jitsu and there is barely a saffron-hued tot in Japan that doesn't know something about the "Gentle-Art" as it is known. President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, one of the world's greatest educators, who, together with millions of his enlightened and progressive countrymen, is a firm believer in "a strong mind in a strong body," sought to teach every schoolboy in his country some knowledge of the wisest of all physical sciences. While it does not itself develop and build muscle, it is an invaluable aid to the sensible use of the body. It is a form of wrestling that combines the cunning of the fox with the lithe grace and agility of the panther. It sharpens the brain and quickens the nerve centers. The man or woman who has self-respect must not sit by and permit our people to become a nation of spectators watching athletic specialists perform, while we become obese and ungainly applauders. Jiu-jitsu gives the man, woman and child, denied by nature a great frame, the opportunity to walk without fear, to resist successfully the bullies of their particular world, and the self-confidence which only a "well-armed" athlete can have. By its use, differences in weight, height and reach are practically wiped out, so that he who knows, may smilingly face superior odds and conquer.
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Louis Shomer (Police Jiu-Jitsu: and Vital Holds In Wrestling)
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SO WE KNOW that insulin causes insulin resistance. But insulin resistance also causes high insulin—a classic vicious or self-reinforcing, cycle. The higher the insulin levels, the greater the insulin resistance. The greater the resistance, the higher the levels. The cycle keeps going around and around, one element reinforcing the other, until insulin is driven up to extremes. The longer the cycle continues, the worse it becomes—that’s why obesity is so time dependent. People who are stuck in this vicious cycle for decades develop significant insulin resistance. That resistance leads to high insulin levels that are independent of that person’s diet. Even if you were to change your diet, the resistance would still keep your insulin levels high. If your insulin levels stay high, then your body set weight stays high. The thermostat is set high, and your weight will be drawn irresistibly upward. The fat get fatter. The longer you are obese, the harder it is to eradicate.
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Jason Fung (The Obesity Code)
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The worldwide obesity epidemic is a marker of the international stress epidemic discussed in our previous chapters, and of the attendant lifestyle challenges endemic to our modern era: lack of time, lack of exercise, growing insecurity, lack of family connection, loss of community, and erosion of the social network. There are many aspects of life that drive people to follow unhealthy diets and engage in self-harming habits, the main culprits being emotional pain, stress, and social dislocation.
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Gabor Maté (The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture)
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Yet consider the self-discipline and dedication needed to complete an undergraduate degree, medical school, internship, residency and fellowship. It is hardly conceivable that overweight doctors simply lack the willpower to follow their own advice.
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Jason Fung (The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss (Why Intermittent Fasting Is the Key to Controlling Your Weight))
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Gary Taubes, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (New York: Anchor Books, 2010). For an expanded discussion of Taubes’s arguments, see Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (New York: Anchor Books, 2008). It includes a helpful summary of Taubes’s conclusions (p. 454): 1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization. 2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis—the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight, and well-being. 3. Sugars—sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup, specifically—are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates. 4. Through their direct effect on insulin and blood sugar, refined carbohydrates, starches, and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and the other chronic diseases of civilization. 5. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating, and not sedentary behavior. 6. Consuming excess calories does not cause us to grow fatter, any more than it causes a child to grow taller. Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss; it leads to hunger. 7. Fattening and obesity are caused by an imbalance—a disequilibrium—in the hormonal regulation of adipose tissue and fat metabolism. Fat synthesis and storage exceed the mobilization of fat from the adipose tissue and its subsequent oxidation. We become leaner when the hormonal regulation of the fat tissue reverses this balance. 8. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage. When insulin levels are elevated—either chronically or after a meal—we accumulate fat in our fat tissue. When insulin levels fall, we release fat from our fat tissue and use it for fuel. 9. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity. The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be. 10. By driving fat accumulation, carbohydrates also increase hunger and decrease the amount of energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity. For a fascinating discussion of the role of fat in a healthy diet, see also Nina Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).
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Gretchen Rubin (Better Than Before: How to Make and Break Habits - and Build a Happier Life from the no.1 New York Times Bestselling Queen of Self-Help)
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All kinds of attributes make one less able. Illiteracy and poverty are disabilities, and so are stupidity, obesity, and boringness. Extreme age and extreme youth are both disabilities. Faith is a disability insofar as it constrains you from self-interest; atheism is a disability inasmuch as it shields you from hope. One might see power as a disability, too, for the isolation in which it imprisons those who wield it.
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Andrew Solomon (Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity)
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Children as young as three repeat popular stereotypes suggesting that the obese are lazy, stupid, unsuccessful, and lacking in self-control.
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Sandra Aamodt (Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession With Weight Loss)
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America’s top killer isn’t cancer or heart disease, nor is it smoking or obesity. It’s our inability to make smart choices and overcome our own self-destructive behaviors.
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Dan Ariely (The Irrational Bundle: Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty)
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Once we have reached a conclusion, we start justifying our conclusions about the individual. Consider meeting an obese and sweaty man for the first time. Many would typically think, ‘He is an individual with no self-control (to allow himself to become so fat)’ and then start looking for corroborating evidence of his lack of self-control. Rather than logically piecing together the evaluation to form a conclusion we use Core Beliefs to reach the conclusion and then collect data and justify our point of view. This process is called a self-justifying reframe of empirical data.
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Peter Burow (Core Beliefs, Harnessing the Power)
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Now take a few moments to consider how obesity has affected you. Complete your first activity: on the following page, write your personal story of obesity, making sure to include how obesity affects you emotionally, how long you’ve lived with obesity, how your excess weight interferes with your life, and any obesity-related health problems you experience.
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Doreen A. Samelson (The Weight Loss Surgery Workbook: Deciding on Bariatric Surgery, Preparing for the Procedure, and Changing Habits for Post-Surgery Success (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook))
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Consider how obesity has affected your social life. Are there social activities you avoid? How are your relationships affected by your weight? In the following space, describe how obesity affects your social interactions. My obesity affects my social interactions by:
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Doreen A. Samelson (The Weight Loss Surgery Workbook: Deciding on Bariatric Surgery, Preparing for the Procedure, and Changing Habits for Post-Surgery Success (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook))
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Below, write about how you perceive your health. Do you feel unhealthy because of your weight? If you do feel unhealthy, what is it about being obese that makes you feel unhealthy?
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Doreen A. Samelson (The Weight Loss Surgery Workbook: Deciding on Bariatric Surgery, Preparing for the Procedure, and Changing Habits for Post-Surgery Success (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook))
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Obesity interferes with my mood by:
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Doreen A. Samelson (The Weight Loss Surgery Workbook: Deciding on Bariatric Surgery, Preparing for the Procedure, and Changing Habits for Post-Surgery Success (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook))
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real incest symptoms include bulimia (to shrink from sight), obesity, wearing baggy clothing or many layers of clothing (in an attempt to cover up from peering eyes and to provide protection by appearing larger), eating disorders, substance abuse, perfectionism (an attempt to overcompensate for feelings of worthlessness), depression, suicidal ideation, promiscuity, prostitution, self-harm, phobias, homosexuality, and more.
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Judith Reisman (Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America)