If healthy weight loss is what you really want, and not just yo-yo dieting, then do read the following pages:
From them you’ll know why …
Put these together, in balance – your acupuncturist will do this for you – and you’ll get healthy weight loss.
It used to be thought that fat people had more efficient metabolisms, so they needed less energy for life. Consequently, because they ate the same amount as thin people, the excess energy turned to fat.
But they were wrong! Fat people tend to under-report the amount of food they eat. So the extra food turns to fat, often also because they take less exercise than thin people.
But why do they eat more in the first place? In healthy people, hunger stimulates eating. Satiety has the opposite effect. If the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that controls these reflexes, is damaged, or overwhelmed, you may eat more than you need.
In both humans and animals, this leads to obesity.
If so, healthy weight loss becomes very difficult.
What could cause this?
It seems every one of us has a level, set by our brains, of a required weight, of ‘fat-ness’ or ‘thinness’. This may be inherited, but can be influenced by upbringing and the environment.
When blood-sugar levels drop, either from hunger or exercise, our brains measure how far we’re off our individual ‘set-point’, and make us eat, or not, accordingly.
As we eat, our brains measure how much high carbohydrate food we’ve eaten. As this carbohydrate turns to blood-sugar, the set-point is reached and you stop eating.
(By the way, fat in food doesn’t seem to have the same effect. High levels of food-fat don’t switch off the hunger reflex as fast as high carbohydrate levels, except in thin people. It’s as if fat peoples’ brains don’t recognise the signals from fat so well.)
Complex carbohydrates (ie unrefined) foods also have more fibre, which physically fills you up because it takes more space. Refined carbohydrates, on the other hand, don’t fill you up space-wise so fast. Physical discomfort from over-eating occurs more slowly in fat people.
What is worse, refined carbohydrate produce high blood-sugar levels faster and unless you’re diabetic (insulin resistant) the extra blood-sugar either turns to fat (if you’re not inclined to exercise) or is burned off by movement like taking exercise or ‘fidgeting’ (the word used for movements that are neither work, walking nor exercise).
People from less developed countries where there is less refined food and greater need to work physically don’t put on weight.
But when they move to live in the developed world, the perils of high carbohydrates, more fat and less exercise, often gradually increase their weight. (So a healthy weight loss becomes more difficult.)
Since their bodies were primed to store excess food as fat against any future famine, and not to lose it if possible until then, the weight stays on and we have to assume that their ‘set-points’ have been raised.
You will realise by now, I hope, that with acupuncture for healthy weight loss there is no single acupuncture point that leads to weight loss, or indeed leads to appetite control.
When you go for acupuncture for healthy weight loss, no doubt your acupuncturist will be thinking of using some well-known points that will help your energy – while you cut back on inappropriate food and take more exercise.
BUT if he’s any good he’ll also be looking at points to help your Heart, Lungs, Spleen and Stomach organ-energies.
Why? Because from the Chinese medical point of view, it is the balance between these organ-energies that decides what, in the Western view, we may call the ‘set-point’.
Harmonising those different energies leads to a number of benefits:
The result is that you eat less and exercise more, so gradually achieving a healthy weight loss.
Although we haven’t mentioned it much here, your acupuncturist will also have to decide if your Liver qi is flowing properly because if you have stagnant Liver qi, that will have to be treated too – in fact, probably first.
Likewise, depending on which schools or systems of acupuncture he studied, he may treat any of the other Organ energies to ensure harmony. There are many ways of using acupuncture for weight loss and, as explained, we don’t actually do acupuncture for weight loss, we do it to put your system into balance.
When your system is in harmony, so will you be. At that point you’ll find that your weight will begin to move in the right direction and you’ll feel more comfortable with the results.
What we counsel you against believing is that, if you’re using acupuncture for healthy weight loss, sticking some pins in your ears will solve all your problems. Sure, there are points in your ears that can, for a while, suppress appetite in many people, but they don’t work forever.
If you think you have Stagnant Qi, you may also like to read the book all about it. Written by the author of this site, nearly 40 years of practice, to help people manage stress using the wisdom of Chinese medicine – all 3000+ years of it! It’s called ‘Qi Stagnation – Signs of Stress’. See panel on right.
If you’re using acupuncture for healthy weight loss we urge you to see someone who’ll look at the whole picture and work to keep all your Organ energies in balance. This will greatly help you achieve your aims steadily over time.
That way you’ll become happier, healthier and more companionable. You’ll have the friends you want and they’ll enjoy your company.
You’ll also feel good about yourself and your body.
Click to return from this Healthy Weight Loss page back to Acupuncture for Weight Loss.
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