Truth about weight loss with YOGA

If you here to find out if practicing yoga contributes to weight loss, the answer is YES.

The article is about my personal experience with yoga on losing weight and a bit of yoga concepts on weight loss.

Let me give you few of my observations before we get into meat of this article, I have been to lot of yoga studios for drop in classes in US, India and South America.

Observation # 1: I noticed people who practice yoga on regular basis, majority of them are lean/skinny.
Observation # 2: Walk into a yoga studio and try to find people with excess weight Vs lean/skinny people. From my experience, I say chances are quite slim to find good number of overweight people.

Should I conclude practicing yoga will build lean and nice body??

No, as a yoga teacher it would be too naïve on part of me to believe in such claims that yoga practice is a solution for weight loss. There are several reasons behind why someone is overweight, it could be a improper thyroid function, diet or some other medical reasons. Everyone is unique and we are all wired differently, however practicing yoga can help you enjoy a healthy lifestyle.

My Experience

I have been practicing yoga since I was in college, my body has always been skinny and I never attempted to gain weight or anything. I moved to US and my practice of yoga has been greatly reduced due to other commitments and I attempted to gain some weight to not look so skinny. After much difficulty I could put on 15 pounds, which isn’t much for my body yet. All I could notice was my cheeks got chubby and my waist size grew by 1 inch. Later, I went to India for a 4 week yoga teacher training, it was quite intensive and energizing. After 4 weeks, I lost all the 15 pounds I put on. It took so many months for me to gain that weight and in 4 weeks I lost all that. However, I didn’t lose anymore weight beyond that even after I kept practicing yoga. I was eating quite good all the time.
But what happened?

One of the result of my 4 week training was I got 4x flexible that I was before. All the postures I was doing everyday has stretched my muscles and tissues really good. We had to hold the posture for a minute or so and that generated heat in the body and guess what? fat meltdown all the way. I realized the weight gained before was nothing but extra fat in the body, no muscle or so. I checked my body fat percentage and it was 8%, which is in range for an athletes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage)

The common question I hear about weight loss is – are there are any particular postures for weight loss? The answer is Yes and No, because it depends on body type and also where the excess weight is i.e., abdomen or hips or neck or chest or any of the combination. A good yoga teacher will evaluate the student’s body and will make a plan on what postures she/he should practice for better results.

However, some of them cannot afford paying yoga teacher and try to find solutions over internet. Isn’t the reason you are here in first place? well, we can get some answers if not everything. Most of the excess weight tends to be  around waist, abdomen and/or hips area.

List of postures

For all postures, try to hold in the posture for atleast 30 seconds or so.
1. Tadasana I – Click here to see the posture in action
- Inhale raise the arms and push the palms towards sky. Bend sideways till you can and repeat the same on  other side, repeat 4 times on each side.
- Another variation to do along with above is to the twist and turn at the waist towards right and then left. Repeat 4 times on each side.

2. Uttanasana (standing forward bend pose) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttanasana
Place feet one foot apart and slowly exhale to bend forward. If you cant touch your feet, its alright. Just let your body hang and leave it to the gravity to work. Stay in this position for 2 minutes for this one. While coming back to standing position, don’t forget to bend knees little bit and slowly raise your body.

The above 2 postures are very good for reducing waist and abdomen fat. Do it regularly for a week or 10 days in morning and evening and you should be able to see the difference.

There are more poses to work on, but they require series of steps involved to attain the final posture. The above 2 postures are easy and doesn’t require any steps to remember.

Thanks for reading

Pic source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3206805049/in/photostream/