When people think of yoga, they generally get images of people stretching and assuming a variety of poses while new age music plays in the background. It is a gentle, meditative form of fitness. It certainly doesn’t seem like a sweat-making, calorie-burning workout the way that a Zumba class or a cardio bootcamp do.
However, people shouldn’t be fooled by the slow poses and deep breathing of a yoga practice because experts in both medicine and personal training agree that it can seriously tone your body and help you to trim down. And, you also get the benefit of improving your spirit and your mind, which will help with your overall wellbeing.
So, take in the following fitness tips and get ready to drop some pounds with some sun salutations.
Yoga Helps Burn Calories and Improve Health
The number of calories burned during a yoga session fluctuate widely depending on the type of yoga you choose to participate in. People can burn anywhere from 180-360 calories per hour. The most effective forms of yoga for weight loss are Ashtanga, Vinyasa, and other types of “power yoga.” Calorie burning can also be ramped up in yoga fusion exercise routines that combine the practice with kickboxing or dancing.
Yoga professionals point to yoga for its multiple approaches to weight loss; it provides cardio, flexibility, and strength. If you participate in a 90 minute session, all of the deep breathing should heat up your insides and help you flush out both toxins and water weight. It will also boost the efficacy of your organs and lymphatic system. This is why it is often a part of an opiate addiction detox and opiate addiction treatment recovery.
Even Gentle Yoga Can Help You Slim Down
Some people feel like they can’t get the most weight loss out of yoga because they aren’t fit enough for hardcore classes, but even restorative, gentle yoga is an aid in weight loss. These types of yoga flip on your parasympathetic nervous system, which controls hormones, digestion, and breathing.
Most people rush through their day full throttle, and this means their bodies spend a lot of time in fight or flight mode with high-energy hormones flooding through them. When the parasympathetic nervous system is triggered, it is like stepping on the brakes. Everything eases up and your body can rest, your injuries can repair themselves, your digestion returns to normal, and your hormones rebalance. These can all contribute to weight loss.
Further, there are psychological benefits as well. People who practice yoga become more sensitive to their inner cues, like cravings and hunger. Yes, these feelings and the result of physical elements, but that is true hunger and not the experience of craving foods that are unhealthy. Those impulses are mental.
Yoga calms your mental processes and helps people who practice it to distinguish between genuine hunger and an emotional impulse to eat as a form of coping. Yoga assists people in figuring out what they truly crave and this allows people to make better choices about what they eat and when they eat.
By practicing yoga, you will become more aware of your self, and that is crucial for long-term change. Use the heightened level of awareness that you develop to limit or end mindless eating and to make healthier choices.
Certain Poses Are More Likely to Burn Fat
Poses, also called asanas, have different outcomes. Some of them are ideal for weight loss because their benefits extend beyond muscle-strengthening and calorie-burning. These poses can speed up metabolism by activating the endocrine glands that control your metabolic rate.
- Try fish pose and shoulder stand. Both of these poses wake up your thyroid and that boosts your metabolism.
- Try cobra pose, lengthening child’s pose, and spinal twists. These will all massage your abdomen, help with optimum digestion, and target your internal organs.
- Try downward-facing dog and upward-facing dog, which are great for firming up thighs and hips.
Pay attention to your body when you are practicing yoga. You need to maintain proper alignment, something you can neglect when you get overly focused on weight loss.
Start your weight loss journey with some gentle yoga. This will allow you to benefit without injuring yourself, which could halt your weight loss efforts and cause you to write off yoga and its benefits for good.
