Yoga is a sport that can support not only your physical but also your mental and spiritual health. However, does the practice of yoga aid you in weight loss?
Well, the answer is yes. ONLY if you know what type of yoga helps in weight loss.
The article below aims to provide you with sufficient knowledge for choosing the best type of yoga for weight control.
Make sure you read through and find our tips for losing more fat during yoga sessions!
Yoga – A useful tool for weight loss
Doing yoga assists you to enhance yourself in many aspects of life, including mental and physical.
The benefit of weight loss is evident in the more active yoga forms.
They can burn calories as efficiently as other conventional exercises such as biking, walking, or running.
The right type of yoga can build your muscles and strengthen your core, too.
Yoga also teaches mindfulness and mental awareness. They give you a “habit of mind” to make better decisions regarding food and exercise.
Experts have recognized the weight loss efficiency of some types of yoga. Read on to know the three most commonly recommended yoga forms for weight control.
What type of yoga helps in weight loss?
Below are three types of yoga help in weight loss:
1. Vinyasa Yoga
Vinyasa yoga is a practice that has vigor and can burn up to 400 calories in one take.
In vinyasa yoga, you can lose weight by linking poses together, from balancing poses like Warriors or Crescent Lunges, to push-up style move like Chaturanga.
All of these movements and poses will challenge your legs, core, hand, arm, and chest.
In fact, a 150-pound woman can burn up to 495 calories in a 50-minute session of Vinyasa Yoga, which is rough twice as much as walking in the same span of time.
Vinyasa yoga is listed as moderate-intensity cardio by the American College of Sports Medicine.
2. Power Yoga
The Power Yoga fandom has an interesting saying: “Power Yoga has a solution for everything”.
Based on Vinyasa practice, combined with some elements of a fitness workout, Power Yoga helps you build internal heat, increase your stamina, and make your body come more flexible and stronger.
Power Yoga is steadily becoming more and more popular around the work. By and of itself, Power Yoga is a good cardio/aerobic exercise. The bargain is that it also helps build muscle strength and lure away stress, all the while keeping the traditional mental and spiritual values of yoga.
Power Yoga even forces your inactive muscles to flex and lengthen, releasing the tension in your body and your mind.
Much like a high-intensity gym session, Power Yoga practice is going to leave you sweating profusely.
3. Ashtanga Yoga
Also called eight-limbed yoga, Ashtanga yoga sessions combine many postures and breathing techniques (or asanas).
A practitioner has to go through an intensive series of different poses in a continuous manner. Each class of Ashtanga lasts anywhere from 60 – 90 mins.
In this span of time, you will be guided to practice difficult breathing techniques that work to strengthen your muscles. Gradually, the toned muscles make you look slimmer and change your shape greatly.
The result is, that even when you are not burning a lot of calories with Ashtanga, your body still looks stronger, slimmer, and healthier.
Weight loss: It’s not only the body
Other than the cardiovascular benefits mentioned above, there are some other ways that yoga helps you to lose weight.
People tend to eat excessively when they feel stressed. Yoga has been scientifically proven to relieve stress efficiently.
Doing yoga, therefore, prevents empty calories and “soothing meals” from sabotaging your diet and reduces a practitioner’s energy intake.
As individuals learn to relate to their bodies differently in doing yoga, they also become more mindful of the foods they eat.
Thus, the individual has better control of their energy expenditure and intake. This is the key that is essential to weight loss.
How to lose more weight with yoga
The practice of yoga is a sophisticated ritual, with exercises for relaxation, breathing, and physics. If you want to lose weight with yoga, your best bet is one that includes a lot of aerobic exercises in one session.
Whatever type of yoga that you choose for your weight loss journey has to be challenging. You have to feel your heart beating faster.
The three forms of yoga mentioned above are indeed effective for weight control. However, if you are doing a more inwardly-focused type of yoga, and you want to stick to it, then there are still some other methods for it to work:
- Combine your yoga practices with aerobics activities like cycling, swimming, or walking.
- Choose a yoga class that lasts between 75 – 90 mins, and attend them 4 – 5 times a week. During this period of time, your body is going in continual activity, working the muscle, lengthening, and strengthening. This really helps in raising your metabolism, and therefore, weight loss.
- Pay special attention to how your body feels during yoga can help you develop a more compassionate view of your body.
A lot of yoga practitioner reports that once they have a grip on the sense of psychological, emotional, and physical realities and how they constantly shift. They then have better control over their food choice.
Anchored by their internal value systems, these people choose wiser portion sizes, make better food preparation, and eat at a lower speed.
After all, weight loss in the modern world is a battle of the mind, rather than a physical matter.
Practices that strengthen our emotional and spiritual health like yoga have a better chance of leveraging your weight loss journey than other sports and practices.
Happily losing weight with Yoga
Rooted in India as a practice for the mind and spirituality, yoga has made itself famous in the modern world.
Every type of yoga assists us in the three main aspects of ourselves: physical, mental, and spiritual. By knowing which type of yoga is best for weight loss, you can also conquer your goals regarding fitness and weight.
We wish you reach your healthy weight goal and have a good time doing it with Yoga.
