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When strolling along the streets of your neighborhood or city, you may have multiple yoga studios—all ranging from Anusara to Bikram, Vinyasa, and Jivamukti. Bikram is widely popular for seat-dripping bodies and hot rooms while vinyasa focuses on the flow of movement.
If your objective is to lose body fat and achieve lean muscle, you may wonder and ponder at how yoga can be implemented into your program. The benefits of yoga are near-endless but then, does yoga really help at weight loss?
Yoga Burns 4-7 Calories Per Minute
If you are planning to lose weight naturally, you need to create a deficit of calories. The more calories you burn than you consume, the more weight you’ll lose. A pound of fat is equivalent to some 3500 calories.
Yoga sessions typically run for 60-90 minutes. Based on research conducted by the American Council on Exercise, your average person burns some 3-6 calories per minute doing yoga, which in turn equates to 180-360 calories burnt during that session. On the contrary, a kettlebell workout will burn some 13-17 calories per minute, which translates to about 800 or more calories burnt in that hour. This is a big different in calories burnt.
Although it largely depends on the level of intensity and type of yoga class, certain styles are more rigorous than others such as hot yoga, vinyasa and power yoga, whereas hatha yoga, restorative and yin yoga are slower-paced and more gentle. Regardless the level of intensity of the yoga sessions, circuit training still remains one of the most superior with respect to overall calorie burn and metabolic boost. But even with these calorie differences, yoga poses other benefits that can be of great help to individuals looking to lose weight.
Yoga Can Still Be An Effective Weight Loss Method. And Here’s Why
Between the years 2000 and 2002, yogi and medical researcher Alan Kristal conducted studies on how yoga had an effect on weight loss. During the study, 15,500 mid-aged women and men were surveyed about their weight and physical activity over time and monitored for factors like health, diet and different exercise forms that could bring about changes in weight.
The study noted that overweight and normal weight adults who practiced yoga regularly for at least 4 years had fewer chances of gaining weight than people who didn’t practice yoga at all. In an actual matter of fact, overweight people who practiced yoga shed an average of about 5 pounds during that 4-year period, much in contrast to non-yoga practitioners who gained on average 14 pounds.
Kristal and other fellow researchers found that: Weight loss didn’t have anything to do with calorie burning. He noted that, from a scientific point of view it was not exactly clear at how yoga managed to help people keep their weight low: “Except for some very rigorous yoga practices, there’s no need to burn adequate amounts of energy to make a significant difference in regard to weight.”
If calorie expenditure did not account for weight loss or maintenance, then what did? Alan Kristal noted that there is a notable association between mindful eating and regular yoga practice, something that wasn’t found in other activities like running or walking.
How Yoga Can Help in Weight Loss?
The following are reasons that yoga asanas can help in weight loss, and these include:
1.Effective and successful stress management, which reduces the chances of stress eating
2.Mindful and mindfulness eating
3.Improved body awareness, specifically in relation to satiety and hunger.
While yoga practice does not burn the most calories, it still makes an important accessory to your daily workout regimen. For any weight loss program to become effective, it should maximize calorie burn and encourage the maintenance of lean muscles as well as be founded on cardiovascular and resistance training.
However, yoga can also be used as flexibility and active recovery training in between more intense exercise workouts. The benefits of mindfulness and stress reduction associated with the practice of yoga have the potential to bring about better eating habits, increased self-awareness and improved sleep, which could further mean additional weight loss and enhanced maintenance of weight loss outcomes over time. No matter which exercise you do, a good diet and nutrition are essential. If you fail to adhere to the right diet, then you won’t realize any desired results. Eat clean, exercise right and you will be able to achieve your objectives.
