Weight loss is a foggy forest.
In this forest, countless winding paths lead you astray, and what you might think are shortcuts could easily lead you astray. Therefore, the main road is the most convenient path to your destination.
What is the main road? It’s the “eat less, move more” triad of weight loss. However, I’m not entirely dismissing some simple weight loss methods. While writing this book, many friends and netizens provided me with some weight loss tips, some of which have proven quite effective!
Weight loss is a rational and long-term battle. Those of us who study Traditional Chinese Medicine know that many folk remedies, wonder formulas, and even miraculous prescriptions originate from folk traditions. Even Traditional Chinese Medicine itself is a product of thousands of years of folk medicine. While some weight loss methods don’t follow the “eat less, move more” main road, that doesn’t mean they are ineffective. A good doctor should clearly understand the underlying principles. Sometimes, even if a method makes sense in principle, it’s crucial to consider its potential harm to the body. Even if it’s harmless, individual differences in constitution and application methods mean it may not be effective for everyone.
This is why I insist on the fundamental principle of “eat less and move more,” as it’s a universally applicable, scientific, safe, and effective weight loss method. Regardless of your constitution, lifestyle, environment, gender, age, or whether your obesity is pathological or simple, this main approach applies. Other weight loss methods and tips can be seen as supplementary, adding fun to the weight loss process. The effectiveness of some methods may be uncertain, but that’s okay; you can try them as long as you don’t deviate from the overall direction.
With this in mind, as always, I’ve selected dozens of these methods for your reference. When choosing weight loss methods, I mainly consider two aspects: First, the method must be medically sound; unreliable methods will not be chosen. Second, safety is paramount; any weight loss method that could adversely affect a woman’s health, no matter how effective, is excluded.
For example, a friend recommended eating bitter melon for weight loss, based on the fact that bitter melon contains momordicin, which has a strong fat-burning effect. I specifically reviewed the literature and found that bitter melon does indeed contain this component. However, the problem is that the content of this component is very low. To achieve the desired effect, one would have to eat bitter melon every day. Traditional Chinese medicine considers bitter melon to be cooling in nature; eating it daily could potentially cause diarrhea. Therefore, I eliminated this method because it does not meet safety requirements. Besides this method, there are also methods such as the apple diet and the juice diet, which mostly just promote “a single diet method,” but these are not healthy weight loss methods and were also removed by me.
