The Fussy Factor of Yoga will cause you to eat less of these meals.
“Yes!” exclaims Alice as she steps down off of the scale. Alice is happy, her weight is down again. This is the second blood donation in a row that her weight has been down.
Alice is not trying to loose weight, she is not on a diet, but her weight is going down anyway.
Alice recently started doing a lot more yoga than she used to. Alice has been hit by the Fussy Factor of Yoga.
What is the Fussy Factor
When you have been doing yoga for a while you will discover that your eating habits spontaneously change.
- You start eating less at a meal. Your body signals that you are full and you pay attention and stop eating.
- You start putting less on your plate. Since your body is telling you to stop eating you decide that you may as well put less on your plate and not waste it.
- You start eating different foods. Steak, Poutine, burgers and fries, cake with lots of icing are no longer as attractive as they once were. Your body is telling you that these foods make you feel heavy and bloated.
- You start eating foods that make you feel light and energized.
- You start eating more often. When you start to get hungry you have a small snack rather than having a large meal later in the day. Your body goes thank you.
No one told Alice to change her eating habits but it happened anyway. The Fussy Factor is causing this change.
Where does the Fussy Factor come from
When Alice started doing yoga she started to increase her body awareness.
One of the features of doing a yoga pose is paying attention to the sensations within your body as you stretch your muscles. You need to increase your body awareness in order to avoid injury and get the maximum benefit out of a yoga pose. It is this heightened body awareness that is causing Alice to change her eating habits.
The feedback from her body about what she is eating has always been there. Now that Alice has been paying more attention to her body during a yoga pose she is becoming more aware of the feedback that her body is giving her outside of her yoga class.
Now when Alice eats anything she is getting a response from her body right away.
- Too much
- Too heavy
- Too sweet
- Too bloated
Not only is Alice getting all of these stop signals from her body she is getting positive signals too.
- I am full now. let’s stop eating
- I feel energized. Let’s eat more of that in the future
- I am hungry now. Let’s have a small snack
- I feel tired. Let’s have a small energizing snack
As a result of all of this feedback from her body, Alice has changed her eating habits. The only one that told her to do this was her own body. It took a while for the Fussy Factor to take a hold of Alice.
When does the Fussy Factor happen
The Fussy Factor does not strike until you have been doing yoga for a while. You need to be doing yoga on a regular basis for several months before your body awareness improves enough that it starts to affect your life outside of yoga class.
It took Alice six months of doing yoga 3 times a week before the Fussy Factor hit her and she started to change her eating habits.
The two keys that cause the Fussy Factor to happen are
- A frequent yoga practice. Alice is practising yoga 3 times a week and sometimes as often as five times.
- A sustained yoga practice. Alice has been going to yoga class every week for six months.
Both of these keys need to be in place for the Fussy Factor to take hold.
But I already do yoga once a week
Doing yoga once a week even if you do it for years is not frequent enough to develop the Fussy Factor. To develop the body awareness feedback loop you need to do yoga several times a week for several months.
Like Alice you will find that practising yoga 3 – 5 times a week for 6 months or more is what it is going to take before the Fussy Factor shows up.
But I want to see results right away
Yoga is not a quick weight loss plan. To develop the Fussy Factor and to start to loose weight is going to take a lot of effort on your part and a lot of time. If you want to loose 10 pounds in 10 weeks then you should be looking somewhere else.
Will the weight stay away if I stop yoga
No, the weight will not stay away if you stop doing yoga. The Fussy Factor well eventually go away and your old eating habits will return.
You need the yoga to keep that mind body connection in fact. You need to keep re-enforcing that improved feedback from your body that yoga helped you to develop.
Summary
Alice is having a light snack after her blood donation because her body said it was time to eat. Alice is feeling energized and is glad that the Fussy Factor has become part of her eating routine.
The Fussy Factor and her resulting weight loss is just one of the many reasons why Alice is convinced that she will be doing yoga for a long time.
Next Step
Increase the number of yoga classes that you do in a week and after several months you too will be hit by the Fussy Factor.
Additional Reading
To learn more about yoga and weight loss read How Yoga helps you to loose weight and How does yoga help with weight loss.
This brief article, , talks about the thyroid and weight loss.
