Healthy Weight Loss
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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 ...
- A healthy Heart function keeps you stable and on course. That means you won't get palpitations or episodes of extreme anxiety and you'll know what you're doing.
- A healthy Lung function gives you the energy and inspiration to work at it, to exercise enough and so burn those calories.
- A healthy Spleen function enables you to think it through carefully, to do what you need to do! It helps your body transform food into healthy blood and energy, and eliminate what you don’t need.
- A healthy Liver Function keeps you relaxed and enjoying life.
- A healthy Stomach function helps you choose the right foods to eat, to prepare and eat them sensibly.
- A healthy Ming Men Fire provides the life energy and warmth your body needs to digest food and transform fat into fluids for elimination.
Put these together, in balance - your acupuncturist will do this for you - and you'll get healthy weight loss.
Why did you put on weight in the first place?
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?
The 'Set-Point' Theory - Western theory
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 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.
What can acupuncture do for a healthy weight loss?
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:
- you feel happier and more relaxed
- your sleep improves
- your body stops clamouring for particular foods
- you are more inclined to exercise
The result is that you eat less and exercise more, so gradually achieving a healthy weight loss.
Liver Qi Stagnation
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 (opens in a new window), 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, see further down this page. 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!
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.
Booking Consultations with Jonathan Clogstoun-Willmott
Click here to see when Jonathan is available, or to BOOK your appointment online.
Alternatively, ring him on 07950 012501 or freephone (only free to telephone within the UK) 0800 298 7015.
Jonathan Clogstoun-Willmott Books
All the books in the 'Chinese Medicine in English' series should be fully accessible on Kindles and Kindle apps. (Or you can buy the softback print editions, of course.)
('Western Astrology and Chinese Medicine' published 1986, was never available in a Kindle version.)
Request! Please!
If, having read one of my books you can write a review - preferably positive - that would help others decide whether to read it.
You can put your review on Amazon or, on this site, here.
And if you think it was terrible?
Well, let me know so I can improve it for the next person. (Ideally let me know before cursing it in public!)
Here are some of the books I (Jonathan) have written.
Subscribers to Kindle Unlimited can borrow the first four for 'free'.
Qi Stagnation - Signs of Stress
Yin Deficiency - Burnout and Exhaustion
Yang Deficiency - Get Your Fire Burning Again!
Yuck! Phlegm! How to Clear Your Phlegm ...
Western Astrology and Chinese Medicine
Published 1986 and, amazingly, still selling. Was apparently used back then by at least one acupuncture college to help students understand Chinese medicine!
Four Reviews so far. (Despite the lurid cover, it explains the five main types of phlegm and what works best for each type. I hope it's easy to read and will be much more useful than all the websites on the subject.)
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