Can Acupuncture Help me Lose Weight?

Acupuncture can be a great tool for weight loss and can be helpful in regulating cravings so that we can eat a more well-rounded diet, but it's also important to make food choices that are actually good for us rather than getting sucked in to the latest trend. The way acupuncture helps in losing or maintaining an already healthy one is that by using acupuncture treatments to strengthen the organ system, we improve our metabolism.

Something I use a lot in my practice is Chinese medicine food therapy. It’s a way of looking at the energetics of food--understanding the properties of all food and how it affects our system--so that we realize all (real) food can be useful to us by improving how our organs function, which ultimately, includes improving our metabolism. Food therapy, or kitchen medicine, just means that we realize what we put in our bodies every day has an effect, and it gives us the understanding of that effect from the perspective of Chinese medicine.

Should I be keto? Should I be juicing? Should I fast?

Diets or as they are now frequently called, lifestyles, may certainly be necessary for special needs populations, but eliminating or over relying on a particular food group creates imbalances in our organ system, and while it's possible that certain diets may lead to weight loss, it may come with a damaged organ system and problems later on. Even though there are practitioners that follow or recommend specific diets, Chinese medicine recommends a diet with a variety of colors, textures, and flavors for well rounded health. A healthy weight will then be a natural extension of a balanced system.

Does this mean that we can eat pizza everyday and still maintain a healthy weight? Sadly, probably not, but what it does mean is that when we do eat pizza--or other foods that are less nutritionally dense--we're more likely to do so without gaining weight because we’ve got a robust metabolism, thanks to acupuncture, herbs, and appropriate food choices.