Читать книгу The Big Healthy Soup Diet: Nourish Your Body and Lose up to 10lbs in a Week - Linda Lazarides - Страница 17

These are important concepts in Oriental medicine. Yang represents male qualities (such as hard, dry, dense, hot, pungent) and Yin represents feminine qualities (such as soft, damp, loose, cool, sweet). For good health these should always be in balance. If they become out of balance, eating the right foods can help to correct any associated problems.

Excessive dampness leading to overweight suggests that there is too much Yin energy in the body and not enough Yang, so eating aduki beans (which are hard, dense and dry before cooking) or pepper and garlic (which are respectively hot and pungent) helps to correct the imbalance.

Always bear in mind that Oriental medicine is about balance. So don’t overdo the pepper and burn your insides thinking that this will help you lose weight faster. It won’t!

Aduki beans and broad beans are considered good for soaking up dampness. The best part of the broad bean is the pod, and soup can be made with water in which the pods have been boiled. Mung beans and bean sprouts are also recommended if your weight problem is accompanied by an excessively hot constitution—that is to say if you feel the heat easily and suffer from skin eruptions.

To increase the Yang energy on which metabolism depends, Oriental medicine recommends the regular consumption of kidneys, liver (preferably from organically-raised livestock), shrimps and mussels.

Oriental medicine includes a great deal about increasing ‘fire’ or ‘heat’ in the body. Ayurvedic medicine also emphasizes the importance of supporting the ‘digestive fire’ in order to improve digestion and reduce unhealthy sedimentary deposits in the body’s tissues. Is there a Western equivalent? Indeed there is. Many so-called warming herbs and spices create the sensation of warmth in the body (ginger and pepper in particular). They are well-known circulatory stimulants and can