Cue driven behavior (pornography, masturbation, smoking, overeating)

[FiberZilla]

I’ve been reading about the obesity epidemic in America and have come to the conclusion that it parallels the skyrocketing rates of sexual addiction across the board. Former head of the FDA, David Kessler’s work was summed up below. If you look online. his lectures are pretty easy to find.

I’ve inserted the word in red to illustrate the uncanny similarity of these issues and firmly believe that many who struggle here, particularly with sexual purity may find his work interesting.

Below is a review of one of his works:

Conditioned hypereating (masturbation or smoking) is a biological challenge, not a character flaw, says Kessler, former FDA commissioner under presidents Bush and Clinton). Here Kessler (A Question of Intent) describes how, since the 1980s, the food industry, (entertainment media) in collusion with the advertising industry, and lifestyle changes have short-circuited the body’s self-regulating mechanisms, leaving many at the mercy of reward-driven eating (masturbation or smoking). Through the evidence of research, personal stories and examinations of specific foods (images, television, movies) produced by giant food corporations and restaurant chains, (major media outlets, tobacco or porn industry) Kessler explains how the desire to eat (smoke, watch porn &masturbate) —as distinct from eating (marital intimacy) itself—is stimulated in the brain by an almost infinite variety of diabolical combinations of salt, fat and sugar (extremely sensual images) . Although not everyone succumbs, more people of all ages are being set up for a lifetime of food (sex, smoking) obsession due to the ever-present availability of foods laden with salt, fat and sugar (highly attractive sensual imagry). A gentle though urgent plea for reform, Kessler’s book provides a simple food (sex, smoking) rehab program to fight back against the industry’s relentless quest for profits while an entire country of people gain weight and get sick (divorce, infidelity, sex crimes) . According to Kessler, persistence is all that is needed to make the perceptual shifts and find new sources of rewards to regain control.

The food insustry has been “playing” us for decades with processed foods engineered to be highly palatable by scientists so as to actually trigger us to eat more of them yet never actually reach satisfaction. These processed foods hit the pleasure centers of our brains much harder than naturally occuring foods ever could. The entertainment and porn industries do the exact same thing with their airbrushed images, camera angles etc, sensual storylines, etc. keeping the sexual machinery running in constant overdrive. I believe people are driven to pornography in the same exact way a person is driven to stick their head in the fridge even when they aren’t hungry.

While I do believe that masturbation is sinful, so is overeating and smoking too much. Satan is behind all of this to be sure. But these observations help to explain WHY this behavior is so difficult to overcome and provide some relief for those who feel absolutely terrible about their moral failings. I believe that this knowledge can combine with a sincere heart to repent and give people a much better chance at living a life more pleasing to Christ.

 

[fabricdragon]

hmmmmmm
yes that is interesting… as someone who is hypoglycemic, i am already prone to food obsession from my blood sugar swinging up and down… but when you throw refined white sugar into the mix. well on a hypoglycemic child it can act like cocaine to an addict.

i suppose the similarity would be someone with an already … overactive? intense? libido and sexual imagery today.
btw, i am not imagining it as being possible, i know it is! a friend of mine has a clinical thyroid and adrenal problem that puts her libido into overdrive. she didnt know “why” other people didnt have the same problems until she was put on medication for those issues!
and i know a man who has to take medication to lower his testosterone levels or he gets ill…among other problems.

i know what has been useful to many with food. is to make a complete “fast” from their usual eating habits. not always a literal fast (although many of the food addicts i know have tried it) but a understanding that at this point, even normal foods are associated with my food obsession, so i need to make a drastic change
many of them go on vegan diets
or even raw food diets
and find that helps break the association of simple ordinary things like pasta…

others go to spas or health clinics (google wheat grass and spa) or vegan “Mc Dougal cruises” to spend a week or more having their relationship with food controlled by someone else in order to set up new habits

would this work well for those others?
like a complete “fast” from magazines or internet? because at this point even “normal” women’s clothing is associated with issues?
or going to a retreat for a while ? like a monastery? combined with therapy and a purge of all un needed imagery in the home?

oh, and for many food addicts they find the artificial sweeteners and MSG and Aspartame and all the other chemicals to be directly addictive… “hyperstimulating” and they can never safely have them again, much like an Alcoholic must avoid alcohol…
i wonder if there is a similarity in the porn/media situation.

 

[FiberZilla]

hmmmmmm
yes that is interesting… as someone who is hypoglycemic, i am already prone to food obsession from my blood sugar swinging up and down… but when you throw refined white sugar into the mix. well on a hypoglycemic child it can act like cocaine to an addict.

i suppose the similarity would be someone with an already … overactive? intense? libido and sexual imagery today.
btw, i am not imagining it as being possible, i know it is! a friend of mine has a clinical thyroid and adrenal problem that puts her libido into overdrive. she didnt know “why” other people didnt have the same problems until she was put on medication for those issues!
and i know a man who has to take medication to lower his testosterone levels or he gets ill…among other problems.

i know what has been useful to many with food. is to make a complete “fast” from their usual eating habits. not always a literal fast (although many of the food addicts i know have tried it) but a understanding that at this point, even normal foods are associated with my food obsession, so i need to make a drastic change
many of them go on vegan diets
or even raw food diets
and find that helps break the association of simple ordinary things like pasta…

others go to spas or health clinics (google wheat grass and spa) or vegan “Mc Dougal cruises” to spend a week or more having their relationship with food controlled by someone else in order to set up new habits

would this work well for those others?
like a complete “fast” from magazines or internet? because at this point even “normal” women’s clothing is associated with issues?
or going to a retreat for a while ? like a monastery? combined with therapy and a purge of all un needed imagery in the home?

oh, and for many food addicts they find the artificial sweeteners and MSG and Aspartame and all the other chemicals to be directly addictive… “hyperstimulating” and they can never safely have them again, much like an Alcoholic must avoid alcohol…
i wonder if there is a similarity in the porn/media situation.

Good point! “Hyperstimulating” seems to be the key word in all of this… from the intensely pleasurable engineered food (layered in combinations of sugar, salt and fat) to the intensely sensual things that we see on television, movies and magazines. Libidos and appetites are being kept in overdrive by the food and entertainment industries. The driving force is profit.

Habitual overeaters can be cued by simply by innocently leafing through Good Housekeeping magazine and be hit with a picture of a dessert or by driving past a steakhouse and catching a whiff of sizzling t-bones. Men struggling with sexual impurity can be cued easily by a two second exposure to the gorgeous leg crossing blonde hair blue eyed news girls while flipping the channel looking for the discovery channel.

Once those cues hit the brain, we have only a very short time to back out before endulging in the unwanted behavior, whether it is overeating or sexual impurity.

I find Kessler’s work fascinating.

Is there a connection? Absolutely!

 

[Inwe86]

Very interesting post. It certainly does make a lot of sense when you think about it. Ever since the sexual revolution, sex has been thrown into everyone’s face. How can this not affect people in some adverse way?

 

[ALLGIRLS]

I’ve noticed this, too. But while sex and food are related, in that both are required to sustain life-food individual lives, sex the survival of the species, I’ve also noticed that while “society” (media, culture, etc? You know, “they”) rails against the food industry and pushes healthy eating sometimes to the extreme (natural, organic, vegetarian, vegan, raw diets, etc., depending where on the spectrum whatever particular group falls), the opposite is true when it comes to sex. With sex, anything goes. Pornography, masturbation, homosexual acts, threesomes, foursomes, orgies, w/ anyone who’s reached puberty. Whatever floats your boat, it’s your “right” to enjoy yourself and no one can tell you what you can and can’t do, and to deprive yourself in anyway, or heaven forbid, advocate abstinence, is “unnatural”. The main purpose of sex, what is has in common w/ eating, the survival of the species, is usually completely separated from the act itself, like it’s something totally different. No one individual ever died from not having sex. In fact, not having sex can save lives (AIDS, STD’s, abortions, suicide resulting from depression brought on by promiscuity and heartbreak, etc.). We MUST eat, though, even if processed food is the only food available. If we don’t eat, we will die.

It’s almost like Bizarro World, or something. We have food “prudes” telling us it’s basically a sin to eat a cheeseburger or drink a Coke, even if you’re starving, but it’s ok for a 14 y/o to have sex w/ her girlfriend, boyfriend, self, anyone else, so long as she doesn’t get pregnant! It’s one of those things that makes me think we really are living in the end times. We’ve ditched real morality, but we need something to replace it with, lest we look like anarchists, I guess?

Just my thoughts, for all the $.02 they’re worth

In Christ,

Ellen

 

[FiberZilla]

I’ve noticed this, too. But while sex and food are related, in that both are required to sustain life-food individual lives, sex the survival of the species, I’ve also noticed that while “society” (media, culture, etc? You know, “they”) rails against the food industry and pushes healthy eating sometimes to the extreme (natural, organic, vegetarian, vegan, raw diets, etc., depending where on the spectrum whatever particular group falls), the opposite is true when it comes to sex. With sex, anything goes. Pornography, masturbation, homosexual acts, threesomes, foursomes, orgies, w/ anyone who’s reached puberty. Whatever floats your boat, it’s your “right” to enjoy yourself and no one can tell you what you can and can’t do, and to deprive yourself in anyway, or heaven forbid, advocate abstinence, is “unnatural”. The main purpose of sex, what is has in common w/ eating, the survival of the species, is usually completely separated from the act itself, like it’s something totally different. No one individual ever died from not having sex. In fact, not having sex can save lives (AIDS, STD’s, abortions, suicide resulting from depression brought on by promiscuity and heartbreak, etc.). We MUST eat, though, even if processed food is the only food available. If we don’t eat, we will die.

It’s almost like Bizarro World, or something. We have food “prudes” telling us it’s basically a sin to eat a cheeseburger or drink a Coke, even if you’re starving, but it’s ok for a 14 y/o to have sex w/ her girlfriend, boyfriend, self, anyone else, so long as she doesn’t get pregnant! It’s one of those things that makes me think we really are living in the end times. We’ve ditched real morality, but we need something to replace it with, lest we look like anarchists, I guess?

Just my thoughts, for all the $.02 they’re worth

In Christ,

Ellen

The bottom line for me is that it seems that the closer we can all get to doing things the way God intended the better off we are. Right now, we are facing the twin epidemics of sex addiction and obesity in this country. Overstimulation seems to be getting us into trouble. Our food has been engineered to taste in a way that hits the central nervous system far more powerfully than nature intended along with sexual images and suggestive content that the media and popular culture force feed us is keeping us way overstimulated. It’s pretty scary what our children and grandchildren are facing. Ten year olds are being fed diets of corn dogs french fries and chocolate milk at school then come home and have access via the internet to hardcore pornography.

Many people say: “Not my kid… I have a filter on my computer” That’s fine, but what about when he is at his friend’s house?

It’s all related… Overstimulation. I’m afraid we ain’t seen nothing yet!