If you’re feeling toxic, ‘off’, bloated and heavy after eating, and are reacting badly to more and more foods, it’s natural to try to change that with radical diets and fasts, because you feel it in the gut area. But the cause of those symptoms is stagnant chi and that comes from lifestyle factors that impact on your digestive abilities (as well as from junk foods). Firstly, instead of doing drastic diets or fasts, which your organs hate and which can create further spin-off symptoms, look at changing anything that rises yang up when you eat. Things like scrolling, working, multi-tasking or eating while you’re feeling rushed and stressed, will have an effect on digestion and nutrient absorption and contribute to weight gain.

Weight gain may not even be about food but about toxic chi. Toxic chi (from anger, frustration, fear) is also stagnant chi which means it is energy not in motion, and energy that doesn’t move turns into fat. And there’s plenty of extra toxins bombarding us daily (negative chi, negative emotions, negative news).

Healthy weight comes down to how you connect to your chi, cultivate it and move it. This is what clears toxins and converts stored sugars (fat) into energy. So you also want to introduce a healthy rhythm to your day (follow the chi cycle) and get your bodyclock working for you. My chi cycle lifestyle does this. It schedules meals at the best times in terms of organ function, it makes stagnant chi move and it enables natural detoxes at set times each 24 hours.

Five bodyclock weight loss tips:

5am. The most important one is move as soon as you wake up to kickstart the first free detox of the day. Don’t eat until you’ve burned those toxins otherwise they’ll become stored and stagnant chi (weight gain). Breathwork, stretching and exercise / tai-chi is my routine. For maximum detox effect take two hours between 5am – 7am. This is when all our physical and emotional crap comes to the surface so it can be deleted. It doesn’t matter how well we live, everyone has some build-up of toxicity, because it also comes from our interactions with people and the environment around us.

5-7am is Large intestine time (chi is amping up its function). Imagine the large intestine, and you’re probably thinking “gross” but it’s not, it’s gorgeous. It’s there to serve. Every morning, at its special time it is on stand-by to run a free detox program, to sweep away all the toxic, vengeful, furious, uncharitable or just negative thoughts of the previous 24 hours. To lighten the load and set you up for a fresh start with a clean slate and a positive new outlook on life

7- 9am. Have a warm breakfast of fat-burning foods like oat porridge (new research shows middle-aged people who ate three servings of wholegrains a day had waist sizes two inches less than those who didn’t, as well as lower blood pressure and lower blood sugar levels). Take supplements and Chinese herbal formulas to move and cultivate chi (these help burn fat).

1-3pm Have a cooked meal for lunch to settle your chi. This builds chi, which can burn fat.

6pm. Always do a switch-off practice around 6pm to prevent the toxic build up which creates weight gain

7-8pm. Have a light and simple evening meal and don’t check your phone during the night (this is linked to weight gain).