This morning I stepped on the scale: 65.4 kg. In October I was 70.2 kg, so I am down 9.6 jin—4.8 kg—without any conventional exercise routine and without dieting. I am still a few liang, less than half a kilo, above my ideal weight of 130.1 jin. The change came from two months of what Chinese tradition calls yangsheng, or “nourishing life.” I want to set down what I actually did, and why.
What “yangsheng” means
The term appears in the Huangdi Neijing. The complete idea is seasonal: spring nourishes birth, summer nourishes growth, autumn nourishes harvest, winter nourishes storage. Today people use yangsheng as a catch-all for any health-related lifestyle, but that is not quite right.
Western health culture and traditional Chinese thinking differ in emphasis. The Western approach tends to stress individual actions—exercise, supplements, and so on. The traditional view stresses harmony between people and nature, tian ren he yi. Winter swimming, celebrated in some Western countries, looks to Chinese medicine like damage to the body. The point is not to fight nature but to adjust the body’s small system as the season changes.
How I adjusted my behavior
I used the Huangdi Neijing’s winter passage as a guide: “In the three months of winter, this is called closing and storing. Water freezes and the earth cracks; do not disturb yang. Retire early and rise late; wait for the sunlight. Let the mind be hidden and concealed, as if holding a private intention, as if already having gained something. Avoid cold, stay warm; do not let the skin leak and cause qi to be rapidly drained. This is the response to winter qi, the way of nourishing storage.”
I could not manage “retire early and rise late, wait for the sunlight.” In the evening I help my daughter with homework; in the morning I make her breakfast and take her to school. Apart from that, I did reasonably well. After getting up I do one round of Baduanjin. Before sleep I sit in meditation for 30 to 60 minutes.
Food
Breakfast is mostly “ten-treasure bean and grain porridge,” with eggs and bread as sides. The main ingredients are soybeans, corn, peanuts, buckwheat, oats, grain germ powder, black sesame, flaxseed, millet, and sorghum. I add whatever is at home—lily bulb, lotus seed, and sometimes a little huangjing (Polygonatum). Huangjing should be used sparingly; too much makes the porridge bitter. A CCTV program had an expert describe huangjing as a prebiotic for the gut. A relative had given me a box, so I started adding some.
Flaxseed and grain germ powder are hard to find in wet markets; that is the usual obstacle when I recommend this to relatives and friends. I ordered both online. The flaxseed was 43 yuan for 750 g, and after about two months I had used about two-thirds. The germ powder was 54 yuan for 4 jin; after the porridge is cooked, I sprinkle some in.
Lunch is normal: noodles or rice, with pork, beef, fish, shrimp, chicken, leafy greens, cabbage, radish, and so on. My simple rule is one meat dish, one leafy vegetable, and one root vegetable.
Dinner is porridge—rice, millet, or corn grits—sometimes cooked with pumpkin, yam, taro, or sweet potato, depending on what is available. The staple is homemade steamed bread or baozi. The dishes are vegetables plus pickles we make at home.
A weekly light fast
Once a week I do a “light bi-gu,” or light fasting. It is not complete abstinence from food; I still eat three meals. The difference is that meals are replaced with protein powder, lecithin powder, fish oil, and a multivitamin/mineral supplement. I learned the formula on a course in Wuhan; it was built around Amway products. The drawback is cost—the full set was about 1,500 yuan—but the advantage is that I can use it with some confidence. It lasts a long time: after two months I had used less than a third, so the cost per month is tolerable.
Why do it? Several books recommend fasting one day a week, and Nan Huaijin also advocated it. But at the beginning, an empty stomach is uncomfortable, and sometimes I could not keep it up. In October, on the Wuhan course, Liu Weicheng—the founder of Fire Dragon Cupping—introduced this method. The reasons for fasting are simple: modern people do not lack nutrition; many have too much. And the spleen and stomach need a break. That is all.