Q. Doctor, I've heard the term 'Diet Kimbap Shop' (Diet Gimbap-jib). What exactly does that mean, and why does it cause weight gain?

I have personally experienced the frustration of trying to lose weight through extreme fasting, only to find myself feeling dizzy and bloated even after drinking just water. Through that experience, I realized that the human body is far more complex than we imagine. From a Western medical perspective, this state is similar to increased insulin resistance or a lowered basal metabolic rate; energy continues to enter the body, but the ability to burn it is gone, leading to continuous accumulation. In Traditional Korean Medicine (TKM), we interpret this through the concepts of Dam-eum (痰飮, phlegm-fluid retention) and Eo-hyeol (瘀血, blood stasis). Dam-eum refers to abnormal metabolic waste stagnant in the body, while Eo-hyeol refers to turbid, sluggish blood flow. These wastes act like a clogged drain, obstructing the circulation of Qi and Blood. Specifically, when you have Bi-heo (脾虛), or a deficiency in Spleen function, the efficiency of converting food into energy plummets. Instead of energy reaching the areas that need it, the leftover residues are stored as fat, making the body's interior feel 'packed tight' like a tightly rolled kimbap. The key is not simply eating less, but clearing these blockages to flip the metabolic switch back on. Let's examine the current state of your body's 'metabolic factory' together.