You can lose weight with a yoga practice.
Yeah, right!
Doing a couple of down dogs and breathing differently is going to help you lose weight. Sitting in strange poses with your arms and legs in different places does not seem like the sort of stuff that will help you to shed those unwanted pounds.
Surprisingly yoga can help you lose weight. There are three ways that a yoga practice will help you to lose weight.
- Focus the mind
- Burn the calories
- Frequent regular practice
1 – Focus the mind
Once you start a yoga practice you start to become more aware of your body and it’s reaction to the pose. This is an important aspect of your yoga practice. As you continue to become more aware of your body during yoga practice, you also become more aware outside of your practice.
You will start to become aware of your body’s “I am full” signal while you are eating. This signal has always been there. Yoga has heightened your awareness of your body and this signal is coming through more clearly now.
All you have to do now is recognize the signal and stop eating as soon as you recognize it. Leaving food on your plate is not a bad thing and in the future you can start taking a smaller portion size when you are getting your meal.
Once you learn how to recognize your body’s signals about eating the next thing you want to do is figure out how to burn up the calories that you are consuming.
2 – Burn the calories
Different styles of yoga burn different amounts of calories. Some styles of yoga are quite gentle and are the equivalent of a brisk walk. More vigorous styles of yoga can be quite aerobic and burn up a large number of calories.
Gentle yoga styles like Kripalu are the equivalent to a brisk 20 minute walk and will consume about 800 calories.
Vigorous yoga styles like Power Yoga or Ashtanga are roughly equivalent to a fast run and will burn up about 1800 calories.
The number of calories that you consume during your yoga practice depends on many factors including:
- your weight. The more weight, the more calories you burn;
- your gender. Guys tend to burn more calories than gals;
- the length of your yoga practice. A 90 minute practice will burn more calories than 60 minute practice.
After you have picked the style of yoga that is right for you, you will have an idea of how many calories you are burning during each yoga practice. Now it would be a good idea to find out how often you should do a yoga practice to promote weight loss.
3 – Frequent and regular practice
To get the most weight lose benefit from your yoga practice you need to practice more than once a week. Doing your yoga practice 2 – 3 times a week is the lower end of frequency. If you can afford the time investment, a daily yoga practice will give you even more potential for weight loss.
The more often your practice the more calories you are going to consume and the more weight your are going to lose.
Summary
Yoga can help you lose weight in three ways:
- focus the mind
- consume calories
- regular practice
It does take a lot of time commitment and the weight loss does not start right away. Stick with it and you will see results despite all of your thoughts to the contrary, yoga really does help you to lose weight.
Next steps
If you are planning or seriously losing weight talk to your yoga teacher. Together you can select the style of yoga that is appropriate to you and your goal. And you can also find out how many times a week you should be doing a yoga practice to meet your goal.
