Is Yoga Useful For Weight Loss?

By: Boris Dzhingarov

The truth is that yoga is extremely useful for lasting weight loss but most people think that it is not offering a pace that is fast enough to burn as many calories as most people want. At the same time, we have countless people that showed that they lost weight by practicing yoga. People are definitely different and there is no guarantee that yoga is going to work with you but there is a pretty good chance that this is the case.

When you do yoga you need to be committed, just as with any sport or just as when you want to go to the gym to lose weight. However, in this case you may be tempted to work even more since you do not really need access to gym or exercise equipment. The yoga mat is all that you need since practice always involves your own bodyweight.

In many cases people that believe yoga is not effective for weight loss and that try to go through a regular weight loss yoga routine end up not being able to finish the routine. The stress put on the body is actually more than what you expect. This is because of the way in which the body is working out through yoga. At the same time, yoga helps you to lose weight by affecting your body, soul and mind.

Mental Benefits Leading To Weight Loss

A big reason why people do not lose weight is that they lack motivation or are simply too self-conscious about the presence of extra weight. Yoga is going to also work on your mind and you do not have to go to the gym. This means that you can regularly and comfortably practice at home, without the judging eyes of anyone put on you.

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We should also say that yoga helps deal with the unhealthy day-to-day habits we have. Consistent yoga practice allows us to identify the bad habits and remove them. This is one of those advantages that few people know about and that does indirectly affect weight loss. For instance, the best weight loss routine will always include healthy eating. Yoga helps with the discipline needed to actually eat healthy foods most of the time.

Physical Benefits Leading To Weight Loss

In yoga you get to use hundreds of postures (Asanas) that lead to countless sequences and flows. The postures will all deliver some sort of physical benefits. To make things even more interesting, most of the poses will help with detoxification, which encourages mind and body purification. That is going to affect the speed at which you get to your weight loss goals.

Most yoga types are very effective in burning calories and improving muscle tone and flexibility. In fact, you will surely be surprised about how much you sweat during a routine, especially as a beginner. When your main goal is to lose weight, the program you create can be focused on different practices that have an increased effectiveness. When you want to increase flexibility, you choose postures and transitions that help with that. The main idea if you want to lose weight is to use the right postures and transitions.

For fat burning Vinyasa flow and power yoga are great choices. They are fast paced and will increase your heart rate, together with speeding up your metabolism. Through these routines you can actually burn an average of 500 calories every single hour. You normally burn the same amount if you go through regular gym routines.

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Final Thoughts

While most people will automatically recommend going to the gym when you want to lose weight, the truth is you really want to consider yoga. Top athletes from around the world have started to practice various forms of yoga in connection with their regular gym workouts. As regular people, the yoga workouts are normally enough to get in a really good shape, lose weight and maintain a healthy overall weight.