Doctor, I feel like I eat less than others, but I'm still not losing weight. Is there something wrong with my body?
It can be very frustrating when the scale doesn't budge despite eating less. This is often due to 'energy stagnation.' When you drastically reduce your food intake, your body enters a survival mode and significantly lowers your metabolic rate. To conserve energy, your body begins to store even small amounts of food rather than burning it. This results in a vicious cycle where unused energy turns into metabolic waste, making it increasingly difficult to lose weight. It is an ironic situation where your body has become too efficient at storing energy.
In Western medicine, this phenomenon is often attributed to a low basal metabolic rate and insulin resistance. When your energy expenditure drops, even a modest intake of food is stored as fat.
Traditional Korean Medicine (TKM) views this through the lens of Spleen Deficiency (Bi-heo, 脾虛). The Spleen is responsible for transforming food into vital energy; when this function weakens, nutrients are not converted into clean energy. Instead, they turn into 'Phlegm-dampness' (Dam-eum, 痰飮), a sticky metabolic waste, or 'Blood Stasis' (Eo-hyeol, 瘀血), which refers to stagnant blood that hinders circulation.
Many patients in my clinic complain that they 'bloat even after drinking water.' This isn't a matter of willpower; it's a sign that your body's internal 'circulation routes' are blocked. It is like an engine revving while the wheels remain stuck. In this case, rather than further starvation, the priority is to clear the blockages. By tonifying Spleen Qi (Bi-gi, 脾氣) and normalizing metabolic functions, we can return your body to a constitution that naturally burns energy. Let's work on restarting your internal 'energy factory' rather than just focusing on the numbers on the scale.
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