virtues

"The more I recognise my freedom to choose, the less I feel deprived and the less I need to rebel. When it comes to taking control of addiction, it makes all the difference when people genuinely acknowledge the free choices available to them. This is the key: own your choices and, as a result, you take control."

"It can be a very big step to say 'no thanks' when something's offered, or to order salad while your friends have pizza."

"Instead of thinking of food as either 'allowed' or 'forbidden', think in terms of choices you make either to enhance your health or impair it."

"I am keenly aware of my addictive thinking, and I believe it is nothing but this awareness that gives me the ability to stay in control of my eating. This approach, which I'll explain to you in this book, is all I'll ever use or need."

"I love food. I'm a junk food junkie. When I start eating those foods I can't stop. I love the way it all tastes. I love the way it makes me feel. It's my comfort, but I know the food is killing me. And it's keeping me from being a part of my kids' lives. I need to change, or I'm gonna die."

"And that's precisely where the magic happens: when we own our problems and recognise that we are the source of the solutions. Especially when it comes to eating, because that can be so completely within our control."

"Accepting your addictive desire to eat means being willing to feel it, without satisfying it, fighting it, avoiding it or doing things to make it go away. ... Simply allow yourself to feel it, because it's your resistance to it that makes it more persistent and more intense. … [I]t's in your best interest to accept your addictive desire to eat, relaxing as much as you can and letting it be there. Remember that the only reason you're feeling the desire is because you ate addictively in the past … And probably the main reason you ate addictively in the past is because you live in a food-addicted culture."

"In order to achieve your goal of eating less at meals, you will need to be willing to feel unsatisfied - and not 'full' - at the end of your meal. When you make a Plan before you start eating, you decide on a stopping point where you have the opportunity to confront your addictive hunger (see page 106). The last thing you want is a feeling of fullness and satisfaction. That's what got you into this problem in the first place!"

"I was the one who did my own actions. Right now you have the ability to take your power by taking the responsibility of your own life and your own actions. Blaming means you are giving your power away. Instead, keep your power and use that power to shape your own reality. "I have all the power within me right now in order to change." You have all the power within you to change right now, and only you can do it, which means taking the responsibility of your own life, your own actions. Your actions today determine the future you are heading to. Stop blaming, making excuses, and change. Become the person you want to be. No one is stopping you besides yourself."

"(Dr Nowzaradan, to camera, explaining): "Lisa knows she is helping to kill James every time she overfeeds him, and that he could die any minute from his weight, but she still won't stop.""

"Steve Miller: "If I have to move mountains to help them, that's exactly what I'm going to do. It's time for this fat family to do things my way. It's got to change.""

"Parents' roles with eating-disordered teenagers are endlessly complicated. In general, we have found that in order to get well, the person with the eating disorder needs to be able to make decisions about her food intake and weight. However, that does not mean that she is making all the decisions or that the parents should not be involved."

"With bulimia or binge eating, the benefits of therapy cannot solely be measured on the basis of changes in the eating disorder itself. Sometimes quick improvements in the eating patterns are short-lived, prompted by a display of "white-knuckle" willpower or a wish to please the therapist. Developing a trusting relationship, expressing feelings, and increasing one's self-esteem have to be established before a more sustained change in the eating can occur. These less observable changes are crucial as a basis of long-term growth."

"Unless the reasons underlying disturbed eating are understood and addressed, the eating-disordered person […] will remain vulnerable to maintaining disordered food rituals when faced with difficult times or distressing internal experiences."

"The goal of treatment should not be merely to stop the behavior, but to understand how and why the person has used food to attempt to meet developmental and emotional needs."

"Surgery. It is important to note that while surgery is considered the most effective treatment for the morbidly obese patient, studies are just evolving considering the long-term effect of this kind of treatment and whether this treatment is ultimately helpful for the binge-eating patient. In general, at one and a half to two years postsurgery, weight loss stabilises, and a substantial portion of individuals even begin to regain lost weight. What is clear is that a presurgical history of binge-eating disorder is associated with poorer long-term weight outcomes. There are many stories of patients who have reached their ideal weight following surgery, only to quickly regain all of the weight once their goal has been reached. In these cases, bingeing begins again despite severe physical pain, vomiting, and the obvious despair of watching the scale skyrocket again. One patient described losing and gaining over 100 pounds in less than two years. Bariatric surgery thus can initially achieve substantial weight loss, but surgery alone may not alter the underlying eating disorder. If the eating disorder remains, positive results can be significantly compromised. Without a deeper understanding of the psychological role of bingeing, without the possibility of medication to address physiological cravings, and without an ongoing program to develop new means of dealing with feelings and stress, surgery may just be a bandage that only temporarily covers a longer-term and deeper problem."

"Everyone who lives with an eating-disordered person must face the issue of what kind and how much food to keep in the house. Yet there is enormous confusion about the "right" solution."

"Be aware that a portion size isn't designed to make you 'full up' - it's designed to satisfy and nourish you. There's a big difference between being satisfied, i.e. eating enough, and being full up. When you are full up, the uncomfortable sensation you get is your stomach telling you it is over-distended (stretched). Unfortunately, people get used to this sensation and program themselves, or anchor it, to be the feeling they think they should get after every meal, and they don't stop eating until they get it."

"You must become more aware of just how much you eat - even 'healthy' calories will make you fat if you eat too many of them. You must use your own common sense and intelligence here."

"In some cases, the psychological need for more or the feeling of not enough that is so characteristic of the ego becomes transferred to the physical level and so turns into insatiable hunger. The sufferers of bulimia will often make themselves vomit so they can continue eating. Their mind is hungry, not their body. This eating disorder would become healed if the sufferers, instead of being identified with their mind, could get in touch with their body and so feel the true needs of the body rather than the pseudo needs of the egoic mind. p. 31"

"Don't tell me you can't imagine yourself not eating chocolate, cakes, crisps, cheese, or whatever else you put in your mouth when you are not hungry, because I don't buy it."

"Because the symptoms of bingeing, vomiting, exercising, or starving can be so disruptive and frightening, it is easy to pay attention only to those behaviors. To do so, however, misses the point. The overt symptoms are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface lies a much larger piece of the picture - a complicated world of feelings and experiences that are very much part of the eating disorder. Both the visible and invisible parts need to be acknowledged in order to understand the disorders of bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, and binge eating."

"Nutritional counseling. Nutritionists, who are trained to assess imbalances in food intake and develop dietary programs, can help correct nutritional deficits and guide someone with an eating disorder to develop healthy eating habits, perhaps for the first time. Some people with eating disorders have extremely chaotic eating patterns or have not eaten a "meal" in years."

"Sometimes a nutritionist is sought to provide a diet as an answer to the problems with bingeing. However, a diet is not the answer to an eating disorder. Many eating-disordered people are experts themselves on diets and food intake. They know what is healthy. They know the caloric intake of every morsel they put in their mouths. Some are professionals in the area of nutrition. This underscores that eating disturbances are not due to lack of information about a good diet, but have to do with psychological factors that keep people from putting this information to use. Often, a nutritionist and therapist work concurrently. The nutritionist sets the stage for healthy eating, and the therapist examines what gets in the way when someone can't keep to her food plan. The goal overall is that of allowing someone to eat when hungry, in moderation, and to understand what motivates problematic eating so that better choices can be made."

"I can't tell you what to eat, I can't tell you what to change, because you have to decide for yourself what you want."

"... when people eat when they are not hungry, it's to get a feeling. Often, it's to get any feeling other than the one they are experiencing, and they seek solace in the sensation food gives them. They become anchored to feeling better when they eat. This is called 'comfort eating'. If you remove the causes of the negative feelings - whether it's a past trauma or anxiety, or a stress of some kind - the need to eat to get rid of that feeling by comfort eating disappears."

"If you have a compulsive behavior pattern such as smoking, overeating, drinking, TV watching, Internet addiction, or whatever it may be, this is what you can do: When you notice the compulsive need arising in you, stop and take three conscious breaths. This generates awareness. Then for a few minutes be aware of the compulsive urge itself as an energy field inside you. Consciously feel that need to physically or mentally ingest or consume a certain substance or the desire to act out some form of compulsive behavior. Then take a few more conscious breaths. After that you may find that the compulsive urge has disappeared for the time being. or you may find that it still overpowers you, and you cannot help but indulge or act it out again. Don't make it into a problem. Make the addiction part of your awareness practice in the way described above. As awareness grows, addictive patterns will weaken and eventually dissolve. Remember, however, to catch any thoughts that justify the addictive behavior, sometimes with clever arguments, as they arise in you mind. Ask yourself, Who is talking here? And you will realize the addiction is talking. As long as you know that, as long as you are present as the observer of your mind, it is less likely to trick you into doing what it wants. p. 149"

"Overeating and making your body fat is a clear case of self-harming. Every time you overeat or drink high-calorie junk, especially when you don't need food for energy (i.e. when you are already satisfied) you are deliberately harming yourself."

"The ugly truth is that millions of Americans are hooked on foods that stimulate the body's internal pleasure system. They give us that feeling of reward that calls us back for more: it's a biological response and the food makers know this. They actually have what they call 'the bliss point': they know just how much sugar salt and fat will set off the pleasure centres in your brain, the same areas that light up in an MRI if they give you cocaine. ... We need to talk freely and without judgement about these fearsome fearsome issues - about food, about fat, and about body image. We need to have a no-holds-barred conversation... to help us all find ways to tackle one of the biggest problems that's standing between us and a healthier America."

"Question: How did you get fat? Answer: One bite at a time!"

"If you call your overeating 'comfort eating', start to think of it as 'addictive eating'. Calling it 'comforting' focuses on the perceived benefit only, which is how you justify it. It's more honest to call it 'addictive eating'."

"If you want a reason to keep overeating, you'll always be able to find one. Alternatively, you could make some different decisions about one thing you have complete choice about: what and how much you eat."

"Supplementation of BCAAs resulted in high levels of BCAAs in the blood, which competed with tryptophan for transport into the brain," observes co-lead author Prof. Stephen Simpson. "Tryptophan," he explains, "is the sole precursor for the hormone serotonin, which is often called the 'happiness chemical' for its mood-enhancing effects and its role in promoting sleep. But, serotonin does more than this, and therein lay the problem." <br. The researchers found that the competition between BCAAs and tryptophan in the blood led to lower-than-normal serotonin levels in the brain, which had unwanted consequences. "This then lowered serotonin levels in the brain, which in turn was a potent signal to increase appetite," says Prof. Simpson, adding, "The serotonin decrease caused by excess BCAA intake led to massive overeating in our mice, which became hugely obese and lived shorter lives."

"If you want to do or achieve something, then it stands to reason that you should identify exactly what you must do in exchange. This is a level of understanding accepted by your conscious and your unconscious minds - it's the process of consequence. If you eat too much, the consequence is that you get fat and unhealthy; if you eat less and move more, the consequence is that you get slimmer and healthier."

"We all possess, in our unconscious minds, a kind of servant who performs certain automatic functions. When I learn to type or drive a car or learn a foreign language, I have to do it painfully and consciously; then, suddenly, my robot takes over and does it automatically; in fact, he does it far more quickly and efficiently than "I" could. The main trouble with this mechanical valet is that he often takes over functions I would prefer to keep for myself - for example, when I am tired I eat "automatically," […] In fact, this is the reason that so much of our experience seems oddly "unreal"; the robot has taken it over. […] I may live for whole days in a "robotic" state, so that experience flows off me like water off a duck's back."

"I believe in individual freedom; that's my primary and complete commitment—individual liberty. That’s what it's all about. And that's what socialism was supposed to be about, or anarchism was supposed to be about, and tragically has been betrayed. … I feel much safer in your company."

"Solidarity involves commitment."

"The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism."

"It takes two things to change the world, and you'd be surprised how many people have good ideas, but—commitment? true commitment?—that's the hard one. It requires sacrifice."

"We must now take precautions to prevent you from being embarrassed by something in which the ignorant majority is at fault for lack of proper consideration, and so from supposing with them, that man has not been created truly good simply because he is able to do evil. ... If you reconsider this matter carefully and force your mind to apply a more acute understanding to it, it will be revealed to you that man's status is better and higher for the very reason for which it is thought to be inferior: it is on this choice between two ways, on this freedom to choose either alternative, that the glory of the rational mind is based, it is in this that the whole honor of our nature consists, it is from this that its dignity is derived."

"Let us never forget the Christian maxim "that we should not do evil that good may come of it.""

"A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it."

"And out of good still to find means of evil."

"It must be that evil communications corrupt good dispositions."

"There is Good and there is Evil and Evil must be punished. Even in the face of Armageddon, I shall not compromise in this."

"Ut acerbum est, pro benefactis quom mali messem metas!"

"Man is an enigma whose knot has not ceased to occupy observers. The contradictions that he contains astonish reason and impose silence on it. So what is this inconceivable being who carries within him powers that clash and who is obliged to hate himself in order to esteem himself?"

"The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded."

"He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn't evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares.It occurred to Mellas that he could create the possibility of good or evil through caring. He could nullify the indifferent world. But in so doing he opened himself up to the pain of watching it get blown away. His killing that day would not have been evil if the dead soldiers hadn't been loved by mothers, sisters, friends, wives. Mellas understood that in destroying the fabric that linked those people, he had participated in evil, but this evil had hurt him as well. He also understood that his participation in evil, was a result of being human. Being human was the best he could do. Without man there would be no evil. But there was also no good, nothing moral built over the world of fact. Humans were responsible for it all. He laughed at the cosmic joke, but he felt heartsick."

"[T]here's good and bad in all of us. We have to face them both, and sometimes we have to make a decision between each. It's nothing we can avoid. It's nothing we can rant against. Each individual has to make his own decision on it."