Weight Loss – Five Recommended Ways to Lose Weight

Chinese medicine, Chinese acupuncture, is a medical system founded 5,000 years ago. It is ancient, yet still relevant and useful today, helping us achieve health goals suited to our modern era, and it can help achieve one particular goal: a healthy weight.

Modern medical research points to the effectiveness of Chinese medicine and Chinese acupuncture for weight loss. It shows that with the help of acupuncture treatment, herbal medicine and a healthy lifestyle, it’s possible to slow down fat production, improve movement of the bowels, large and small intestine, in order to increase waste elimination and the absorption of essential substances, improve blood flow and speed up the metabolic rate.
Chinese acupuncture plays a key role in treatment, but here are five things you can do yourself to support your weight-loss efforts and processes.

1. Replacing sweets and starches with foods
2. Think about how you’ll act to move your energy every day
3. Drink green tea and herbal tea
4. Drink plenty of water
5. Pressing Chinese points on the ears to suppress hunger

1. Replacing sweets and starches with foods

Bitter foods.
Bitter is one of the five flavors of Chinese medicine (along with pungent, sweet, salty and sour).
It’s considered a flavor that aids slimming, because foods with a bitter taste are hard to overeat.
The bitter flavor helps cleanse the intestines and assists in flushing out toxins.
Foods with bitter flavors are also used to increase the secretion of digestive enzymes, which improve signal transmission from the central nervous system – signals of fullness.
Examples of bitter foods include cucumber, radish, asparagus, and certain types of lettuce.

2. Think about how you’ll act to move your energy every day

Qi, life energy, the life force; the energy that sustains all life in Chinese theory.
But Qi can get stuck or blocked in the body, which leads to the creation of “dampness” (a substance in Chinese medicine considered to bring about excess fat). So it’s important to move the Qi, the energy, to clear the blockage and stagnation and support healthy metabolic processes.
Qi can be encouraged to flow freely with Chinese acupuncture, as well as with physical activity (including Tai Chi, Qi Gong, yoga, breathwork) and with herbs, medicinal plants and nutrition.
Foods that help move Qi include: green tea, celery, melon, pumpkin and sunflower seeds.

3. Drink green tea and herbal tea

We already know that calories found in liquids, whether juice, soda, or other sweetened (diet) drinks, shouldn’t be part of a weight-loss plan, but Chinese medicine takes this one step further, and here I suggest you replace those drinks with tea.
Tea has been used for thousands of years in China to help “burn” fat and prevent stagnation in the intestines, eliminate toxins and fat, and strengthen Qi.
Go drink tea after a meal high in fat.
Chinese herbs such as lotus leaf, cassia seeds, hawthorn, and Polygonatum odoratum are traditionally used for weight loss.

4. Drink plenty of water

This classic diet advice tip is true in Chinese medicine as well. The traditional advice is to drink plenty of warm water early in the morning, as this helps flush the system, flush the intestines, and re-stimulate metabolic processes. Chinese medicine warns against drinking too much water with meals, since it harms digestion, which can lead to food stagnation.

5. Pressing Chinese points on the ears to suppress hunger

The points are located on the small triangle at the front of the ear. This is the cartilage located opposite the entrance to the ear canal. There are two powerful points there for reducing appetite. Press these points alternately for 30-90 seconds starting about 10-20 minutes before meals, or whenever you feel unusual hunger, to prevent overeating. You can pinch the cartilage on both ears.

Combine these principles into your lifestyle and you’ll be on the royal road, the healthy road, to reaching your goal.