Three years ago, when an acquaintance asked me for the nth time if I was pregnant, I decided to start losing weight. The way to lose weight is to join the running army that was booming at that time. One day four months later, the leader talked to me. After a few words, he suddenly asked me: Have you lost weight? I am secretly glad that the great cause of losing weight is about to come true.

People who exercise to lose weight have this experience: the weight loss is not large, but the body circumference changes obviously. I gave up weighing scale and bought a tape measure. Every once in a while, when I get up in the morning, I will stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom and look at the faint vest line in my abdomen with satisfaction, then take a deep breath and measure the thinnest part of my waist. At that time, my score was that my waist circumference was reduced by 8 cm. It's a pity that I had an operation last summer and rested for a month. My upper body weighed 8 Jin of fat, and I haven't recovered yet.

Losing weight may be the most mysterious topic of our time. Some people can really be reborn through sports, but there are also many "fat people" who run marathons. Some people have lost a lot of weight by Atkins diet with high protein and high fat, but can people really eat like this all their lives? Atkins' death remains unsolved. Many people say that he gained weight before his death. Some American doctors suspect that he has heart disease and high blood pressure. Not to mention dieting. Eating too little is very harmful to my health. I don't want to say goodbye to my period. Moreover, greed is really unstoppable! There are friends around to try acupuncture weight loss and other methods. Is it effective? Yes Rebound? Of course.

I read some books about losing weight, and the results were even more depressing. The weight-loss craze of human beings originated in the middle of19th century, and there seems to be almost no substantial progress in the past two hundred years. Wanjin, the founder of Atkins diet, lost weight in the middle of19th century. 19 18, Lulu Hunter Peters' Diet and Health: Uncovering the True Face of Calories came out, suggesting that dieters should not consume more than 1200 calories a day. That is the first best-selling book about losing weight in the world. Obviously, dieting and changing the food structure are two methods that take turns on the stage of losing weight. During the period, I wanted to lose weight by electric shock, diet pills, etc. For example, I passed away and liked to cut leeks and changed them one after another. What does this mean? This shows that people have not found a universal and efficient way to lose weight, let alone once and for all.

French doctor Begone's electric shock diet is all the rage.

Is weight loss really so mysterious? I asked Chen Weilai, deputy chief physician of the Nutrition Department of Union Medical College Hospital, to answer my questions. Dr. Chen Wei told me that from a clinical point of view, except for a small number of obesity caused by endocrine problems, all obesity is attributed to calorie intake exceeding expenditure. The so-called people who can't get fat if they eat too much do exist. On the one hand, genes play a very important role in obesity-but very few people really eat more because of genes. On the other hand, it may not be the right time. People who eat too much and are not fat are likely to get fat with age: after 35 years old, people's metabolism will decline and hormone levels will change. For example, a decrease in estrogen levels can easily lead to women's weight gain. It is important to lose weight once and for all. Even obese people who have undergone weight-loss surgery to reduce the stomach wall are the same. Chen Wei met a patient who didn't care about the postoperative diet. "One year after surgery, I lost a pound."

Chen Wei, Deputy Chief Physician, Department of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, Peking Union Medical College Hospital

Fundamentally speaking, the reason why human beings are getting fatter and fatter is that our genes conflict with modern life. 99.5% of the time in human history, human beings have to rely on fishing, hunting and gathering to survive. It was not until 10,000 years ago that human beings began a relatively stable farming life. Food began to become generally abundant, that is, in the past two hundred years. The long history of mankind has experienced countless good years and bad years, and those who are blessed with fat are more likely to survive and pass on their genes to future generations.

For modern people, our activities are greatly reduced and food is too abundant. Many times, we eat to satisfy our appetite, not to eat. In addition, our diet structure has also undergone fundamental changes. I have a friend whose online name is "Honduras carpet". The small refrigerator in her parents' house is broken. She wants to honor the two old people, and her first reaction is to buy them the kind of double-door refrigerator that often appears in TV advertisements, "to improve their quality of life." However, she finally gave up the idea. "My other friend also has such a refrigerator, and he goes to the supermarket to buy it every week to fill it up. He hates this kind of life. He asked me:' Is the relationship between big refrigerators and high-quality life true? Shouldn't a truly high-level life be about enjoying fresh food? "

Human genes can't adapt to the high-energy diet in modern society.

Perhaps you will also realize that there are fewer and fewer vegetable markets and more and more big supermarkets in the city. Processed food occupies a large proportion in our daily diet. The natural goal of the food industry is to make us eat more and consume more calories. To this end, food companies have carefully studied human taste buds and nervous system to find our physiological weaknesses. A bottle of sweet drink may contain 40 grams of high-concentration corn syrup, which greatly exceeds the daily intake of 25 grams of sugar for adults. Why do you put so much sugar? Because this concentration is our "bliss point". Studies show that our bodies and brains can hardly resist this sweet attraction.

We usually lack knowledge about the food we eat. Chen Wei's patient told him that he ate very little and didn't know why he couldn't lose weight. But this uncle eats three handfuls of peanuts every day. Chen Wei gesticulated and told him, "Eighteen peanuts are equal to a spoonful of oil." I have learned some knowledge of nutrition since I lost weight. I basically gave up snacks and sweet drinks. But for convenience, I often choose breakfast in the quick-frozen food cabinet. If you look at the label carefully, the total calories of these frozen foods may be limited, but the fat content is super high. I eat about half of the recommended daily fat intake.

Processed food can make people unconsciously consume more calories.

Chen Wei and I had lunch in the professor canteen of Union Medical College Hospital. His lunch is simple: a Spanish mackerel, a celery fried with bean curd skin, a bowl of millet porridge and half a bowl of rice. When he feels hungry between meals, he will eat a kind of cereal that his colleagues jokingly call "dog food" to satisfy his hunger. At the same time, he is still exploring the effect of "fasting": fasting for two days every Monday and Thursday. During fasting, he reduced his energy intake to 1/4, about 600 kcal: equivalent to a bag of low-fat milk, an egg, a fruit, one or two staple foods, half a catty of vegetables, one or two meats, and a spoonful of oil. He told me that he could control his weight accurately through his diet.

At that lunch, we each ate a watermelon after dinner. I asked Chen Wei how many watermelons a person can eat a day. "This is the number of such a piece." I'm a little hesitant. Who only eats a watermelon at home? "For diabetics, it is very happy to eat such a piece of watermelon." The problem of ordinary people is that it is difficult for us to judge and balance between appetite and physiological needs. Personally, I can't resist the temptation of fruit. I remember that once Fan Zhihong, a teacher of nutrition at China Agricultural University, took a popular science class in Weibo, and everyone had to eat seven points full. Many people ask, "What does it feel like to be seven points full?" Discussion: We often regard "support" as "satiety". This is probably a habit formed at an early age: a common phenomenon is that when children stop eating because they are "full", their parents and elders in China will ask them to "eat two more bites".

I don't want to lead readers to the other extreme because we discuss moderate diet-this extreme is no less harmful than losing weight. Search Weibo to lose weight, and you will find that many girls have starved themselves to the point of running away from home during their menstrual period, and are still pursuing "just losing a few pounds". Our reporter Zhang Xingyun went to the Sixth Hospital of Beijing Medical University. In the eating disorder ward, those girls who pursue lower weight suffer from anorexia and cannot live a normal life at all. Even if it doesn't reach the severity of eating disorders, unscientific dieting is not advisable-it won't make you thin. American research shows that girls who promote dieting in early adolescence are more likely to be overweight in the next four years. Girls who regularly diet are twice as likely to overeat after two years as girls who don't diet 12 times.

A woman with anorexia. Because of the fear of obesity, some people step into the misunderstanding of losing weight and suffer from diseases psychologically and physically.

The complexity of the topic of losing weight lies in that it is not only related to our health, but also to our consciousness and how we look at our bodies. Our society has a very simple understanding of the beauty of the human body. In the words of my friend "Honduras Carpet", "Being thin is a universal aesthetic like blue sky and white clouds." This is a girl with personality. She has a well-paid job, but she doesn't like buying luxury bags. One thing she particularly likes is that she is wearing clothes with 80 yuan, but someone asks her if it is expensive. "Because I don't think I need to use famous brands to enhance my value. On the contrary, I can improve the value of accessories myself. " But even such a girl with a strong heart still can't accept her figure of1.67,60 kg-in fact, the body mass index is 2 1.5, which is very standard. The reason is not complicated: everyone around us is accepting and spreading the concepts of weight and goddess weight, and everyone is losing weight. More importantly, thinness is endowed with rich added value: thinness means a moderate, exquisite and high-quality living standard. And fat meat is the original sin, which means addiction, indulgence and low-end.

Chloe (left), a 24-year-old anorexic, was hypnotized by a psychologist at the Anno Aid Center in Paris.

Fortunately, after being troubled by weight loss for many years, she is not so entangled. A cosmetic surgeon who had liposuction admitted frankly that if you want to improve your happiness index, instead of spending money on liposuction, you might as well find a psychologist and learn to accept yourself. She realized that in our society, everyone shows their best in the circle of friends. "This conspicuous and lively field is actually creating loneliness and self-blame, which makes us more and more intolerant of ourselves and others. The morbid fanaticism about thinness is actually only one aspect. " So, she forgave herself for not being a goddess, and ate as much as she wanted. When you don't want to move, don't ask yourself to exercise. She learned to laugh at herself for being "fat" in front of people thinner than her. Perhaps, trying to reconcile with your body is the practice that you and I both need.