The thief eats meat but is never beaten: the strict self-discipline behind the thin man

All you see is the thief eating meat, but you never see him getting beaten.

Since I started paying attention to body control, I've always been very mindful of the relationship between the amount of food on diners' plates and their body weight whenever I eat in the cafeteria.

The conclusion is naturally that those with extremely high obesity levels have larger piles of food on their plates; while those who are thin rarely have high piles of food on their plates.

Gradually, the relationship between food intake and body shape and weight became clear.

It can also be inferred that those who frequently eat slightly more food but have a normal body shape are likely to have a high level of physical activity.

During my observation, I noticed that the amount of food a colleague ate for lunch each day didn't seem to match his body size; in other words, based on what he ate, he should be even fatter.

This colleague isn't usually a sports enthusiast. Although I knew he tended to worry a lot, I felt that the energy he expended from worrying wouldn't be enough to burn off the extra food he ate.

So, puzzled, I voiced my question while having dinner with him one day.

Unexpectedly, my colleague said, "Haha, let me tell you the truth, I fast one day every weekend."

I asked, "Don't you feel uncomfortable if you go hungry for a day?" He said he was used to it and didn't feel uncomfortable at all.

So that's how it is! There are people who consistently fast one day a week! It's like seeing the thief eating meat but not the thief getting beaten.

I admire you, I truly admire you.

I wouldn't even dare to think about going hungry for a day. Now that I've reduced my meals from three and a half to two a day when I was obese, I can't even manage to go hungry for one more meal. It's even difficult to eat a little less at a particular meal.

Lacking the skill to endure hunger to adjust the excessive intake of nutrients, I had no choice but to walk more each day to balance my gluttony.

A lean physique in old age is priceless

"It's hard to buy leanness in old age with a thousand pieces of gold." This is a folk saying that has been widely circulated for countless years. It should be a summary of the wisdom and experience of our ancestors, as well as a summary of historical evidence of health and longevity.

One pretext for Western medicine to attack traditional Chinese medicine is that traditional Chinese medicine terminology only contains empirical descriptions and lacks corresponding experimental data and medical and pharmacological support.

In fact, from the perspective of clinical trials, modern drug clinical trials usually involve only a few thousand people and last for several years. Compared with some widely accepted Chinese medicine sayings, the breadth of the trial population and the time span are really insignificant.

The saying "It's hard to buy leanness in old age with a thousand pieces of gold" has been passed down to this day. It can be said that it has been verified over thousands of years and observed and tested by billions of people from different groups. It's just that our ancestors used a simple and intuitive expression.

The question is, what exactly is the hidden meaning behind the concise phrase "be thin in old age," and what is the content expressed in modern medical terminology? The simple explanation is that it's good for people to be thinner in old age.

You can further ask why it's better to be thinner when you get older. This easily overlooked "get to the bottom of things" conclusion is actually quite simple. Modern life science explains that after humans enter middle and old age, various physiological functions begin to slowly decline. In order to adapt to our rate of decline and allow the weakened functions to still control the body, the best strategy is of course to reduce its load, that is, to let weight decrease as the body's functions decline.

Zoological studies have found that the food-to-body-weight ratio (the ratio of food intake to body weight) of many animals is much higher when they are juveniles than when they are adults. In other words, juveniles eat more, but adults eat less. This is because the metabolism slows down in adults, and the energy required per unit body weight is reduced.

Based on the changing patterns of animal diet ratios, there is reason to believe that a reasonable diet ratio for humans throughout their lives, when plotted on a coordinate graph, would be a gradually decreasing curve with the left side higher than the right, consistent with our metabolic processes.

If an older person doesn't lose weight when they should, it's like a car with reduced horsepower that isn't properly unloaded and operated, which can cause many problems.

The principle is that simple: to be thin in old age, you must eat less.

Anyone who works in horticulture and tree transplantation knows that to transplant a large tree, most of its branches must be cut off in order for it to survive, because a damaged tree cannot maintain its original lush canopy.

Even in spring, old trees have sparse branches and leaves. It can be said that the trees are too old to grow more branches and leaves, but this is also a necessary requirement for old trees to be vigorous and proud.

When later generations understand the saying "It's hard to buy leanness in old age with a thousand pieces of gold," they should also pay attention to historical restoration and analysis.

There are two issues that require us to address dialectically.

First, the ancients' use of the word "old" did not refer to the modern age of over sixty.

In early societies, the average lifespan was only around forty years. People married young and became grandfathers before they were even forty.

In other words, the "old" in the ancient saying "old age makes one thin" should refer to someone around forty years old.

The point is that we must not take the ancient teachings literally and interpret them according to modern concepts, thinking that we should only pay attention to body control after retirement. Instead, we should understand the ancient teachings in a more nuanced way and start paying attention to body control no later than now, when we are in our "middle age".

Secondly, the ancients' saying "be thin in old age" does not mean that people can be fat before they get old, and the body before "becoming thin in old age" should not be fat.

This process of becoming "thin" is a decline from a normal weight.

In early societies, material conditions and living environments meant there was little societal concern about obesity. By modern standards, the average BMI for men was generally no more than 21.

In other words, the ancient Chinese saying "to grow thin in old age" did not mean "to get fat," but rather "to become even thinner."

Being thin in old age is essential, but being thin throughout life is even more valuable.

If you become severely obese too early and unfortunately die from obesity, then there's no point in talking about being thin in old age.

The "walled city" phenomenon of fat and thin

In life, there are often some people who are on the thin side who will reveal in conversation that they actually wish they were a little fatter, but unfortunately they just can't gain weight no matter how much they eat. Sometimes they gain a little weight, but they lose it all again in no time.

Such examples seem to suggest that some people simply can't gain weight.

I disagree with this.

Those thin people who say they wish they were a little fatter are just saying it; they don't actually turn this occasional thought of being fatter into a continuous, patterned behavior.

Listen to their words, but also observe their actions. Without the continuous support of increased dietary intake, there's no such thing as gaining weight so easily.

When people look at their plates during meals, thin people think they've eaten a lot, but to fat people, that little bit of food is hardly "a lot".

To give an extreme example, some anorexia patients will eat more when strongly encouraged by others, but then they will vomit it all back up when no one is looking.

Although the dietary restrictions of thin people are not as strict as those of anorexic patients who eat and vomit, they only talk about eating and never actually do it.

If fat people, out of spite, actually try to force thin people to eat more, the final thing they'll say is, "No way, eating too much will make your stomach uncomfortable."

Maintaining a slim figure over a long period of time, along with a long-standing and healthy habit of not eating too much, still presents a strong resistance to certain behaviors.

For these people, eating more requires a great deal of determination and is not something that can be sustained for long.

Occasionally, a moment of reckless behavior at the dinner table will be immediately offset by skipping the next meal or only having a small bowl of congee.