How to lose weight and burn fat while feasting this Lunar New Year | Kouzi’s Foodie Perspective
As a foodie, I never tell tall tales—and I have a real-life example to prove it.
That example is my elder brother, who is in his sixties. He didn’t just find a way to lose weight over the New Year; he’s been at it since the New Year two years ago, losing a total of 15kg—dropping from 85kg to his current 70kg. This is all thanks to my three-pronged diet method: simple and blunt, but genuinely effective.
I. The Three-Pronged Diet Method for Weight and Fat Loss
The first ‘axe’ of change is incredibly simple: instead of reducing your dishes, add more. Start with the ingredients—make **kelp, wood ear mushrooms, snow fungus, and dried mushrooms** kitchen staples.
Many people have these dried goods in their cupboards but rarely use them. The secret to making them staples is to always have at least one bowl’s worth soaking, ensuring that whoever is cooking can grab them easily and without effort.
Another key point is **quantity—make them large enough to account for a quarter of the dish.** When cooking high-starch ingredients like potatoes, Chinese yams, or lotus root, I increase the proportion of these ‘additives’ even further, sometimes making them half the dish.
Don’t worry about it ‘altering the taste’. As long as dried ingredients are soaked in advance, washed thoroughly, and then blanched, they won’t overpower the flavour. Besides, many mushrooms have a naturally appealing taste.
The second ‘axe’ is to swap your staple: **replace white flour steamed buns with Shandong-style large pancakes**. In the North, steamed buns are the staple, but those bought from the shops are usually made from refined white flour. Here, pancakes are also a ubiquitous staple that pair perfectly with any dish. The most common is the corn pancake—zero additives, pure whole grain.
II. Medication or Meals? Easier Than It Seems
Health is the eternal topic of family gatherings, and as one reaches middle age, the word ‘weight loss’ appears more and more frequently.
I am one of five siblings. My eldest brother had the best constitution; back in secondary school, he could hike up Mount Tai in a single stride and carry bundles of firewood down the mountain—he was always the family’s gold standard for health. I, on the other hand, was the control group: frail and sickly as a child, only experiencing a ‘late-life resurgence’ in my older years.
My life of constant travel was quite grueling and exhausting. Once I finally settled down in ‘Villain’s Valley’, tending to the earth every day was even more tiring. ‘Look after yourself’ and ‘Eat something nourishing’ were constant reminders from everyone I met. But I’ve never had much of a palate for the ‘fine things’—my tastes are different. I don’t care for rich meats or oily food; my flavours are either light or bland. After fifty, I started running marathons; I’m a bit like someone who’s escaped from the ‘Research Centre for Abnormal Humans’ in a Stephen Chow movie. However, thanks to my odd tastes and abnormal hobbies, my medical check-ups have always been excellent.
As we entered our senior years, the “three highs”—hypertension, hyperglycaemia, and hyperlipidaemia—became common among my siblings. Fortunately, current government policies provide medical insurance for medication and hospitalisation, and modern science has a pill for every problem; the attitude was “just take the medicine, don’t worry”. But while they weren’t worried, I was. I have always been sceptical of the logic that medication is the primary cure: when the body develops problems, it is a sign that our lifestyle is the problem. Health check indicators are reminders to change how we live to reclaim our health, not signals to simply settle for medication. Moreover, all drugs have side effects. As more people suffer from high blood lipids, the number of lipid-lowering drugs has grown. These drugs have many side effects, including raising blood sugar; thus, the “three highs” fuel one another. Medication often treats the symptoms rather than the root cause; in many cases, the medication actually causes further illness.
Whenever we met, I would urge them to watch what they eat and get moving—to eat properly so they wouldn’t need the pills. Whenever I brought this up, I was shot down with a barrage of practical difficulties: “The theory is sound, and everyone understands it, but it’s just not easy to execute”. They all ate as a family, with chicken, duck, fish, and meat fried, sautéed, poached, and deep-fried. It was impossible for them to be like me, eating alone where no one else is hungry, allowing me to prepare my own special meals whenever and however I pleased.
And so, while I continued to preach my sermons on change, no one would actually change. After a while, my advice just became nagging, mere wind passing by their ears.
As my parents moved from needing “some care” to “24-hour care” and finally to “at least two carers”, I took a turn on duty with my brother during the Spring Festival two years ago. He was the head chef, and I handled the odd jobs. My brother is the top chef in our family; he loves cooking and is genuinely skilled at it, though his style is rich and oily—everything he makes tastes delicious.
Every week, when dispensing my parents’ medication, my brother would lament that at 60, he was taking the exact same medication as our 90-year-old father. Many of the changes in his life—becoming overweight in his 30s, a cerebral infarction in his 40s, and the “three highs” in his 50s—had happened 30 years earlier than they had for my father… He would mutter and sigh: “Our generation’s health is far worse than the previous one”.
Naturally, I would start my sermons on change again, and he would counter with the difficulty of changing. We went round and round in circles.
If it’s too hard to change, then let’s not change—let’s just tweak things. That is how the flexible methods I mentioned earlier came about.
III. First Victory
On that occasion, my brother and I were on duty for two months. He was always the one at the stove, cooking according to my parents’ tastes and his own habits.
Usually, the celebrity weight-loss success stories or various boot camps we see are extreme in both diet and exercise. They require clear goals, iron will, and an “unconventional life”. The suggestions I gave my brother that winter were a middle-ground version for a normal life; I didn’t ask for extreme changes. It was just a matter of adding a few ingredients and reducing the oil. The food still went on the table, but without excessive exercise or special hunger—it was simply a matter of shifting the focus of the chopsticks slightly.
I added a few items, all of which share common traits: they are nutrient-rich, highly satiating, low in calories, and do not absorb oil. Wood ear mushrooms, silver ear mushrooms, kelp, and other fungi could almost be called “zero-calorie ingredients”, making them perfect additions to rich, heavy dishes. Like vegetables, they are dietary fibre powerhouses. Dietary fibre not only fills the stomach to create a sense of satiety and helps maintain stable post-meal blood sugar, but it also blocks the enterohepatic circulation of cholesterol, helping these unwanted guests be expelled from the body more quickly. This way, one can still feast during the holidays without worrying about fatty liver, a pot-belly, or high blood lipids.
During the Spring Festival, the theme of family gatherings is always eating. By adding these ingredients to various grand dishes without changing the cooking method, the flavour is hardly affected. However, those with the “three highs” or obesity now have a choice when they reach for the food. If they then dip it in that bowl of vinegar-water before eating, it’s even better.
Without special diets or restriction, and eating New Year meals with the family as usual, my brother lost a kilogram in two months.
More interestingly: he no longer needed to wash his hair every day.
I usually go for a morning run and get drenched in sweat, whereas my brother used to wash his hair every day to stay smelling fresh. He said he had an oily scalp , and if he didn’t wash it for a day, his hair would stick to his head, which felt unpleasant. During our two months on duty, my early morning runs remained unchanged, but my brother’s daily hair-washing quietly shifted. It became every two days, then every three. Eventually, he even took it upon himself to stop his lipid-lowering medication: “The oil on my head has decreased, which means the oil in my blood vessels has decreased too”.
Having seen initial results, my brother gained confidence. Naturally, there was no need for me to nag; he was self-motivated and shed ten kilograms in a year. By the following Spring Festival, he bought new clothes—for the first time in decades, he wasn’t moving to a larger size, but a smaller one. His belly had shrunk, and he looked younger.
As his weight dropped, the pressure on his feet and knees eased, and he gradually increased his physical activity, losing another five kilograms by the third Spring Festival. Once the baseline weight is lower, the loss is less obvious, but my brother is confident in maintaining a slow decline, aiming to shed another five kilograms in the next year or two.
IV. Two Bonus Tips
Refined starch in staple foods is the main culprit for weight gain. Everyone knows whole grains are better, but they often lack flavour. For people in Shandong, large savoury pancakes are a natural, blessed alternative. For those who don’t have access to Shandong pancakes or can’t stand the taste, but must eat white rice or flour and cannot tolerate a significant reduction in quantity, there is another way.
Do not eat freshly cooked white rice or store-bought steamed buns while they are hot; first, place them in the freezer for a day. A portion of the weight-gaining refined starch is converted into weight-neutral resistant starch (please search online for the detailed science). When you want to eat them, take them out of the fridge—there is no need to thaw or bring them to room temperature. Put the rice directly in the microwave or steam the buns; the taste is hardly affected.
Tip Two: Lipid-lowering Drinks.
During New Year gatherings, the family always needs something to drink. Everyone knows alcohol damages the liver, so many switch to soft drinks. In reality, the sugar in those drinks is equally damaging. Alcohol and sugary drinks both harm the liver, increase weight, and raise blood lipids. My solution is to switch to Roselle tea. Roselle is high in Vitamin C and anthocyanins, and stevia is zero-sugar and zero-calorie, helping to lower lipids, cut through grease, and aid digestion. Paired with the stevia I grow myself, the balance of sweet and sour is just right for all ages. Furthermore, the roselle flower has a festive colour, making it the perfect “tea instead of wine” for the Spring Festival table.
Finally, with this glass of bright red Roselle tea, I wish everyone a Happy New Year. Especially for those readers struggling with health issues, I hope you can be like my brother and, with the help of the “three-pronged” dietary method, successfully lose weight and fat and step into the New Year in new clothes!
Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations in this article are provided by the author.
Editor: Tianle