Becoming Paleo, Part 4: The Projections of Anxiety

The projections presented junk food as the only way to escape the anxiety that was growing within me.”Post by John Michael

For the next two months after my day of fasting, I studied my eating problem. I had a basic understanding of the mechanism that underlie it: my mind would recognize a dilemma, which I would choose to ignore instead of resolving, thereby repressing the dilemma, which would then return to my consciousness as an image of food that I would be driven to attain to soothe a growing anxiety. But in order to solve this problem, I would need a deeper understanding of it.

The projections were images of food, generally calorie-rich industrial foods, composed of a mix of flour, sugar, milk, or fat, if not all four of these ingredients. These images always had a will-violating quality: no matter how hard I tried to resist them, their power, in the form of anxiety, would only grow, until my will was overcome, and I found myself seeking out the food that they presented. I decided to begin my investigation at the root of this problem, with the issues that I was repressing by ignoring them when they appeared in my mind.

Under examination, all of these issues appeared related to one another by a theme of health. When the statement, “I am going to be alone tonight,” emerged in my consciousness, it was propelled there by a concern for my health, because, to my own mind at least, human contact is necessary for a healthy life. I repressed this thought by ignoring it as a nuisance, and so, because I hadn’t recognized the legitimacy of its concern, I unwittingly activated the projections of anxiety. It appears then that my mind contains an instinctual concern for my overall health, and that when I ignore my responsibility to both recognize this instinct and act in accordance with its concern, its frustrated psychic energy returns to my unconscious mind, where it animates the mechanism that transmits the projections of anxiety into my consciousness.

Though aware that the following is purely speculation, I would like to suggest an evolutionary rationale for this mechanism. A human being who ignores his instinctual concern for his health and the health of others predisposes himself to be less connected to his social group, because, by not caring for himself attentively, in accordance with his instinct, he can probably contribute less to the group, and because, by not caring for the members of his group as his instinct suggests, he probably reduces the group’s cohesion, at the very least with regards to his own social position. Basically, if you don’t pay attention to both your own health and that of others, you can offer less both to yourself and to your society, and will likely enjoy less of the survival advantages conferred by cooperation, in both its intra- and interpersonal forms. Without cooperation, the chances that I will go hungry in a hunter-gatherer milieu, like the one in which our ancestors evolved this instinct, increase, so the projections of anxiety activate, driving me to eat calorie-rich foods in an attempt to compensate for my reduced chances of survival.

This instinctual process, over which I should have had control, but which my willful ignorance had repressed, forcing it back into my unconscious, where it became automatized in its negative aspect, was living my life for me, but in a way that was contrary to my plans, by forcing me to act in accordance with it. Because I was content to ignore my health instinct, swatting it from my consciousness when it first appeared, as if it were an annoying house fly, it returned to my consciousness with a vengeance, and without regard for my volition, because, by ignoring it when it originally appeared, I had proven that my ego was ignorant of its responsibility to the other parts of my mind, and unaware of its position as conductor in the great mental orchestra of my thought. In its second appearance, the psychic energy of the health instinct had shed its cooperative aspect, and had become implacably coercive. It would be listened to, whether I wanted to hear it or not.

Stay tuned for Becoming Paleo, Part 5: Transforming the Projections of Anxiety.

Related Posts
Becoming Paleo, Part 1: The Yale Food Addiction Scale
Becoming Paleo, Part 2: The Anxiety Barrier 
Becoming Paleo, Part 3: Breaking the Anxiety Barrier 

Monthly Finds - June 2011

ENVIRONMENT

• A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself – New York Times
• Warming to Blame for Water Crisis in U.S. West? – National Geographic
• Rolling Out New Routes on America's Bicycle "Highway" System - OnEarth
• “Colorful” Solar Panels from Qsolar – Clean Technica

FITNESS

• Aping the Early Human Workout - WSJ
• Exercise May Prevent Silent Strokes – My Health News Daily

NUTRITION

• The Modern Paleolithic Revolution – Technorati
• 10 things you can do today to start your primal journey - Courageous Mind
• Paleolithic Diet Infographic – PaleolithicDiet.com

RECIPES

• Asparagus With Gremolata, Lemon and Olive Oil – New York Times
• Grilled Artichokes with Creamy Mint Sauce – Mark’s Daily Apple
• Ginger Beef with Mango Salsa – Everyday Paleo
• baby back ribs + cherry cabbage slaw – Modern Paleo

Quote: Oceans getting hammered

The three forces combined -- hypoxia, sea dead zones and climate change -- are creating conditions similar to those found at the start of major die-offs of marine species in the past, suggesting that the world is at the cusp of another mass extinction event, the scientists say.

Nathanial Gronewold and ClimateWire  
Scientific American
Pollution and Climate Change Accelerate Ocean Degradation

Quote: Fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats protect against Alzheimer's

It looks like a healthy diet that contains a lot of fruits and vegetables and healthy fats would be important for people who have Alzheimer's disease or conditions that put them at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease.

Suzanne Craft, PhD
Medscape
Diet Appears to Modulate Alzheimer's Biomarker

Becoming Paleo, Part 3: Breaking the Anxiety Barrier

The object of my cravings was often dictated by what was available. In Argentina, they took the form of local pastries, the eating of which could accurately be called a national pastime in that country.Post by John Michael

Cardboard pint boxes of frozen yogurt piling up in my bedside dust bin, alongside gummy bear and chocolate bar wrappers: this was only one of the many manifestations of my eating problem. (Yes, I would often eat my comfort food in bed.) Aside from this, there were the odd situations that I found myself in on account of it, like listening to the gripping, if still horrific, story of a recent drive-by shooting in my neighborhood, as I waited for a double cheeseburger in the 24-hour corner store below my apartment at midnight. And then there were the effects that it had on my body. With regards to my weight, the only certainty was that it would fluctuate. Because my stomach was often distended, my posture suffered, and I found it easier to develop lower back pain. One day, I was looking in the mirror at my love handles, and I asked myself, “What is this anxiety that I allow it to ruin my physique like this?”

One thing I’d learned was that the more refined my self-awareness was, the more complex were the issues that I could address. All of my earlier approaches to solving this problem had followed a rather crude strategy: I would try to change my eating habits by force of will alone, attempting to simply resist my cravings when they awoke within me. I had failed each time because this problem was far more complex than I gave it credit for.

In March of 2011, I decided that I would try a new approach. Instead of using brute force of will, I would study my eating problem, in the hope of divining its underlying mechanism. The best method that I could think of for intensifying its symptoms to the point where I could clearly observe them was to fast. As I knew from experience, resisting the symptoms would heighten them; the idea was to let them do so, until they grew to the point where I would be able to discern their finer parts, and perhaps understand how they worked together.

Fasting for me was nothing like what you read about on hunter-gatherer.com or Mark’s Daily Apple; this was no thirty-six hour fast. In fact, it wasn’t even a six-hour fast. Instead, my fasting consisted of eating only when I was hungry, and of eating only until my hunger was sated. But even this was a challenge for me. On the first morning of my fast, I found myself light-headed as I walked through my neighborhood, even though I had just eaten. (Interestingly, one of the first things that I had to do during my fast was to learn to distinguish between my cravings and genuine hunger because I had been operating for so long according to the input of the former that I had forgotten what the latter felt like.) I had switched to Paleo foods in order to provide a contrast between what I was eating to diminish my hunger and what I craved. As the day progressed, I found myself rediscovering my connection to my stomach.

With my attention directed towards my gut, my curiosity began to generate questions. “What is hunger?” I asked myself, and immediately my mind went in pursuit of the answer. “What is thirst?” More questions followed, growing in complexity and refinement as I answered their simpler precursors. “How much food do I really need?” and, “If I eat slowly and attentively, will this reduce my later cravings?” Tentative answers began to accumulate, like, “An empty stomach is not necessarily a hungry one.” Slowly I managed to relearn the simple system of signals that my digestive tract uses to communicate with me, which allowed me to turn my concentration to the study of my cravings.

The first thing that I realized was that my cravings did not originate in my stomach; they had nothing to do with hunger or thirst. Instead, they originated in my mind, and had to do with an entirely different need. But what was it? Mustering all of the mental subtlety that I could, I set myself to observing the thought patterns that culminated in my cravings, and what I saw surprised me. The cravings often hit hardest in the evening, usually a few hours before I fell asleep, and on this particular night I watched in fascination as they activated, revealing to me their inner workings.

A craving would begin as a problem that presented itself to my consciousness – in this case, it was the statement, “I’m going to be alone tonight.” (At this time, I was living in Bogotá, having moved there from Santa Marta, where I had left behind many good friends.) I would ignore it – in this case perhaps under the influence of the belief that I could live without companions for a little while – and this would repress the problem, which would then return to my consciousness as an image of junk food. The image would remain in my mind, slowly charging with anxiety, until I went and sought out the food that was pictured within it. Once I had attained the object of my craving, there was little time spent savoring it, as a friend had once pointed out. I would eat it quickly, because I wasn’t interested in its flavor; it had only one use: the reduction of my anxiety. It achieved this reduction by filling my stomach, and so dulling my awareness, which hid the problem that had initiated all of this, until it receded from my consciousness, and I could sleep.

The following morning, my will to fast buckled, and I found myself indulging my cravings again. But I wasn’t worried, because the previous day’s efforts had yielded great knowledge, within which I knew resided the key to breaking the anxiety barrier.

Stay tuned for Becoming Paleo, Part 4: The Projections of Anxiety.

Related Posts
Becoming Paleo, Part 1: The Yale Food Addiction Scale
Becoming Paleo, Part 2: The Anxiety Barrier 
Becoming Paleo, Part 4: The Projections of Anxiety 

Dr. George Forgan-Smith joins Primal Docs

Primal Docs is a new network of physicians, and soon other health professionals, that educate their patients on Primal/Paleo health. George Forgan-Smith, MBBS in Melbourne Australia just joined the network and says:

Having taken on the paleo diet I have lost a substantial amount of weight and I like to think I am living proof that I must be equally as willing to participate in my treatments as my patients.

Learn more about doctor George Forgan-Smith at Primal Docs.

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Paleo Foods: Fruit and Nut Petit Fours

Post by John Michael

One of the dilemmas that people face when switching to the Paleo diet is an apparent loss of variety in what they can eat. By becoming Paleo, we leave behind a great number of foods that human ingenuity has fashioned from the products of the agricultural revolution; whether it’s the grain-based cereals that we’ve become accustomed to eating in the morning, or the dairy-based desserts that send us off to bed at night, there’s a lot we leave behind. But, in my experience switching to the Paleo Diet, I’ve found that, instead of having my culinary horizons narrowed, this diet has actually revealed to me the great number of foods and flavors that exist outside of the realms of grains, dairy products, and heavily processed foods. These blogs, which will all be entitled Paleo Foods, are an attempt to share the diversity of delightful flavors that can be found within the alimentary domains of fruits, vegetables, meats, and nuts and oils, which together form the basic components of the Paleo Diet.

I recently visited my friend Iris in Córdoba, and, because it had been over two years since we’d seen one another, we decided to have a celebratory dinner in her apartment. We picked up a chicken at the local supermarket, along with several vegetables, but when Iris began to look for dessert, she learned I couldn’t eat most of her selections. “But can’t you eat anything good on this diet?” she asked, somewhat exasperated. “Well,” I replied, amused by her consternation, “every once in a while I can have dark chocolate.” “I think this is one of those times,” Iris told me, and, laughing, I agreed with her, and bought a bar of Cadbury Intense 50% Cacao (not my first choice). But, when we finished our dinner, and I opened my chocolate bar, I found it to be kind of boring, and so, deciding that it needed some spicing up, I had the idea of Paleo petit fours.

I know that petit fours are, according to their strict definition, bite-sized cakes, generally made of flour or marzipan, but when I hear the term “petit four,” I don’t think of cake, but of a sweet, finger-food dessert. It’s in the spirit of this personal definition that I use the term now. Before continuing, I would like to say that, because honey was probably a rarity in the cuisine of our Paleolithic ancestors, and dark chocolate non-existent, it’s important to treat these petit fours as a special-occasions-only food. With that being said, let’s get to the treats.

Click to read more ...

Dr. Catherine Shanahan joins Primal Docs

Primal Docs is a new network of physicians, and soon other health professionals, that educate their patients on Primal/Paleo health. Dr. Catherine Shanahan in Bedford, New Hampshire just joined the network and says:

Everything I learned about diet from the medical establishment was turned on its head by my experience in Hawaii. Animals are actually easier to raise than vegetables, requiring only pastureland and water, and so many of my patients also raised their own goats, pigs, and chickens, and caught fish. I realized I was seeing firsthand the kinds of practical food-gathering, storing, and cooking solutions that our ancestors used throughout history; I was learning the foods that made us human.

Learn more about Dr. Shanahan at Primal Docs.

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Quote: Geothermal energy (2)

"the top one percent of the planet has enough energy to power and heat civilization for approximately 6 billion years."

Craig Dunn

Scientific American
Stop Mining for Oil (and Coal), Start Drilling for Heat

New Primal Docs website launched

Chris Armstrong recently announced a new website featuring a map-based directory of physicians with an interest in promoting Paleo/primal health. As Chris writes:

I’ve created the Primal Docs Website in an effort to bring people together with like-minded physicians. We’ve only just begun and we just have a handful of physicians listed so far, so stay tuned for a physician near you. If you know of an MD (anywhere in the world) who you think would be a good fit for the site, please have them get in touch with me.

Chris notes the site will soon feature other health care practitioners, "but that won’t be ready for another month or so — stay tuned for more details on that." 

Hopefully the directory will grow into a worldwide resource. I am pleased to have been included. Visit the site and provide Chris your feedback. We at PaleoTerran would also like to know your impressions. 

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Quote: Agriculture's toll on health

When populations around the globe started turning to agriculture around 10,000 years ago, regardless of their locations and type of crops, a similar trend occurred: The height and health of the people declined.

Carol Clark
eScienceCommons
Dawn of agriculture took toll on health 

also see Early Farmers Were Sicker and Shorter Than Their Forager Ancestors

The Standard or Average American Diet

Post by Dr. John

John Durant over at Hunter-Gatherer raises concern about the use of the term "Standard American Diet". He writes: "I hate when people use the phrase the "Standard American Diet", or SAD, to exemplify what's wrong with our food system.  It's so contemptuous."

Instead, he proposes the use of "industrial diets" or "industrial foods." I agree we should not use the moniker with contempt. However, even our modern-Paleolithic vegetables and fruits usually don't come from our own backyard but are produced and delivered by the food industry.  The term "Average American Diet" would be more accurate and would avoid the use of the SAD acronym. Regardless of the terminology, the key issue is knowing, on average, where dietary calories come from so we can determine where the nutritional challenges lie and whether we are making progress. 

According to Civil Eats and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, these are the average daily calories per capita consumed in the U.S. in 1970 and 2008. The proportion of vegetables and fruits remains pitifully small. Grains have ballooned by almost 200 calories, added fat by about 230 calories, and added sugar by over 50 calories. The challenge for the Paleo community is increasing.

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