When Fat Leaves the Abdomen, the Cells Cheer Up

After this Spring Festival, my weight dropped by about 1 kg, and my son's by nearly 5 kg. We have finally broken the old vicious cycle of "gain three jin every holiday" and entered a virtuous cycle. Most importantly, I have cultivated in my son a love of exercise; now if he stays two days without going out to exercise, he feels restless. Once an exercise habit is established, it benefits you for life.

My weight has now fallen below 65 kg, within the standard range; the belly and flab are gone, and within the next two years it may drop below 60 kg. Throughout this past winter I have not once worn a down jacket or cotton-padded coat; those warm clothes never even came out of the closet. On the coldest days in Beijing I went out wearing only a windbreaker — also a record I had never achieved before.

All of this is because I have kept up exercise for two years. My form of exercise is cycling: 4–6 times a week, 20–30 km each time, about 1–1.5 hours. Even in winter, each ride works up a light sweat. After exercise I feel completely relaxed; at night I fall asleep the moment my head hits the pillow, my mood is much better, and my study and work efficiency is higher than before.

Exercise benefits not only the body but also brain development. During exercise the brain is fully engaged; it must coordinate tissues throughout the body to perform various movements, and we are using our minds as we move. The professional athletes at the Winter Olympics require even greater physical and mental exertion; those graceful, highly difficult moves are by no means easy.

Cycling requires constantly dodging pedestrians and vehicles on the road, so during a ride our brain must make frequent judgments and decisions. Cycling is most obvious in improving the brain's ability to coordinate the body's tissues and organs; people who exercise regularly have brains that develop more comprehensively.

My memory and logical thinking are stronger now than when I was twenty; my brain has not deteriorated with age, because I exercise it every day through learning and movement. My social skills may have declined, because as I have aged I no longer enjoy socializing as much; I prefer spending happy, quiet time with my loved ones. I think most people are like this too: we were once infatuated with this dazzling world, but one day we return to our inner selves.

Middle-aged spread is a very common phenomenon; a few years ago I had it too, but now the process has reversed. When the body gains weight, movement becomes less agile and the brain's reaction speed is noticeably slower. After increasing exercise, excess stored fat is burned off. Fat, as an energy store, was an advantage early humans evolved when food was not guaranteed; but in today's era of abundant food, excess fat has become a public nuisance. Common diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, gallstones, hypertension, cancer, and depression are all more or less related to obesity. More than half of the midlife crisis of modern people is tied to improved living conditions combined with insufficient self-discipline — overeating, overdrinking, and reckless indulgence.

If you look through monographs in psychiatry, whether on depression, anxiety, or other mental illnesses, you will find that most psychiatric works list exercise as an important means of rehabilitation. If you look through works on diabetes or gastrointestinal tumors, you will find they also list exercise as an important rehabilitation measure; for some early type 2 diabetes patients, exercise alone may cure their disease.

Fat is not useless. It is mainly distributed under the skin and around internal organs; in certain animals it is stored in specialized locations, such as the camel's hump. Its main function is to store energy; when food is scarce, the energy stored in fat helps us survive the hungry years. That is why people and their descendants who have lived through famines tend to become obese and diabetic afterward, because they evolved new genes during the famine with a more urgent need for energy. For example, after the Irish Great Famine and the Chinese Great Famine, the incidence of obesity and diabetes rose markedly.

Fat also plays a role in protecting our internal organs; wrapped in fat, our organs are cushioned against impact injury. Some say fat also insulates against cold, but I actually feel more cold-resistant after losing weight through exercise. So being fat is not good, but being too thin is not good either; the best is to maintain standard weight.

Weight loss should also be methodical and gradual. Rapid weight loss through dieting or diet pills can trigger gallstones and other diseases and cause various functional disturbances; exercise-based weight loss is comparatively safe. But even with exercise, losing 15–25 kg in half a year would cause many problems. If we are already overweight, we should not be impatient: change our lifestyle, increase exercise, make a three- to five-year plan, and lose weight slowly.

I used to sacrifice exercise time because I was busy with study and work. When we were in school, PE classes were often taken over by other teachers; as important exams approached, PE was practically canceled. This kind of shortsighted education did great harm to my generation. I think most of my peers now live with a lot of anxiety, and a considerable part of it is related to never having developed an exercise habit and lacking movement.

After two years of exercise, besides benefiting physically, my personal confidence has also grown. Being arrogant is not good, but being overly self-deprecating is not good either; people who undervalue themselves easily develop anxiety and depression, so personal confidence is one of the cornerstones of health. When we can feel our body is in good shape and we move freely, our confidence in ourselves genuinely rises, and difficulties in life no longer weigh on us so heavily.

Although the state is calling for more physical activity for primary and secondary school students, I think enforcement in Beijing is still insufficient; Beijing's students are still competing on test scores. Children's physical activity has not kept up while their nutrition has been excessive, which is why Beijing is now the city with the highest prevalence of type 2 diabetes in China (type 2 diabetes accounts for over 95% of all diabetes). If we take the time to observe children leaving school at the gates of Beijing's primary and secondary schools, we will see far too many chubby children.

The impact of obesity on the next generation will show up gradually over the next 10–30 years. Diabetes, heart disease, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, and other obesity-related epidemics are rising sharply in younger age groups. Many families are now paying, or will soon pay, the price of obesity — a heavy price.

If by middle age a person has no abdominal fat accumulation, the risk of related diseases is much lower. So if you have also gained weight, change your lifestyle quickly; let's control our weight together.