An obese person should enrich his/her vitality concerned with the use of limbs and the functioning of viscera, while a thin person should enrich his/her blood.

From the standpoint of traditional Chinese medical theory, fat people tend to be deficient in vitality needed for the proper functioning of limbs and viscera. They have phlegm and dampness in their bodies. They are rather slow in movements and not fond of physical exercises. Their limbs are apt to feel heavy or become fatigued in physical activities. These people are prone to fall prey to arteriosclerosis, apoplexy, and coronary heart diseases.
Thin people, on the other hand, are mostly deficient in body liquids, especially blood and, in the case of a male, sperm, though they tend to be agile and physically active. They are plagued by internal fire, which may flare up in some tangible form. For example, these people are often in an excessively excited state, and it is easy for them to be afflicted with insomnia and erosion of mucous membrane in the oral cavity.
For these reasons, there is a popular saying in China: "Fat people are short of vital breath, whereas thin people are deficient in blood supply".
Experts point out that although people who differ in types of body-build have different constitutions and diverse physiological characteristics, their organisms can be brought into mutually similar balanced states by health preservation means that are appropriate. Otherwise, pathological conditions may appear.
As obese people tend to be deficient in vitality, the strengthening of the spleen to enrich vitality would be the best method for handling at the very root the case of a puffy person. This person should be advised to eat foods which enrich vitality through fortifying the spleen, such as the white gourd, white radish, edible black fungus and yam, among which radish contains a pungent ingredient, the mustard oil, which can promote the metabolism of lipids so as to prevent the accumulation of fat under the skin.
The white gourd has little nutritional value, but it can eliminate the excess fat in the human body and also ease constipation, thereby being useful to obese people, who need these benefits. It goes without saying that obese people ought to engage in physical exercises at the same time.

Thin people are very often deficient in body liquids and as a result have strong internal fire, which is symptomatic of the deficiency. Therefore, they need to eat foods which in a sense moisten their internal organs and fill up their depleted body liquids. They ought to consume lily bulbs, honey, and balsam pear (bitter gourd), which are generally believed to be conducive to moistening of the viscera and quenching of the internal fire.
They should not eat too much of acrid-aromatic and pungent foods, such as hot pepper, aniseed and cinnamon. They should abstain from ordering dishes that are pan-fried, deep-fried, quick-fried or stir-fried and eating foods that are said to have the property of making people sweat unnaturally, feel thirsty too frequently, become constipated unexpectedly for too long, or show other signs of intensification of internal fire. Deficiency in body liquids, moreover, often engenders what traditional Chinese medicine views as heat inside, whereby thin people may feel ill at ease and seem choleric, thirsty with throat pain, or, contrary to general belief, inordinately eager for sexual intercourse. Therefore, during the time when one is nourishing his/her body, he/she should strive to dispel the heat inside, which is indicative not of strength but of deficiency and is highly harmful.

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