The mental and spiritual aspects of yoga focus on developing mindfulness. This increases your awareness on many levels. It can make you more conscious of how different foods affect your mind, body, and spirit. Yoga practice may be better able to resist unhealthy foods and comfort eating.
They may also become more in tune with their body to notice when they’re full. Yoga is thought to be especially beneficial for people struggling to lose weight in other ways. But it’s thought that weight loss is associated with more extended periods of mindfulness training.
Practicing yoga may also help you develop muscle tone and improve your metabolism. While restorative yoga isn’t an especially physical type of yoga, it still helps in weight loss. Practicing yoga may also help you develop muscle tone and improve your metabolism.
What is Yoga?
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual practice originating from ancient India. It is used to connect the body with the mind. It promotes health, improves flexibility and balance, reduces stress levels, and slows down the aging process.
Yoga is performed through the medium of physical postures, breathing exercises, and meditation or relaxation. One of the most commonly claimed benefits of yoga is that it helps lose weight.
Calorie Burning
While yoga isn’t traditionally considered an aerobic exercise, certain types of yoga are more physical than others. Active, intense styles of yoga help you burn the most calories. This may help prevent weight gain. Ashtanga, vinyasa, and power yoga are examples of more physical types of yoga.
Vinyasa and power yoga are usually offered at hot yoga studios. These types of yoga keep you moving almost constantly, which helps you to burn calories. Practicing yoga may also help you develop muscle tone and improve your metabolism.
While restorative yoga isn’t an especially physical type of yoga, it still may help in weight loss. It is found that restorative yoga was effective in helping overweight women to lose weight, including abdominal fat. These findings are especially promising for people whose body weight may make more vigorous.
Is weather yoga good for Weightloss?
Regular yoga promotes weight loss as much as other aerobic workout sessions. The combination of breathing exercises and yoga asanas positively impacts metabolism, regulates blood flow in the body, and also aids weight loss.
Yoga is a viable, low-cost, non-invasive alternative to typical weight reduction therapies, with the added advantages of long-term lifestyle improvements and positive psychological changes. Yoga promotes weight loss in different ways.
The following are key weight loss benefits of yoga:
- Burns Belly Fat: Restorative yoga poses help burn harmful abdominal fat by working on the core muscles. Trikonasana and the Cobra pose are great at reducing upper and lower belly Lower fat
- Promotes Lean Muscle Formation: Yoga poses like the Boat pose, Plank pose, Chair pose, and bow pose work on the glutes, abdomen, and hamstrings, helping you lose fat, strengthen muscles, and promote muscle formation.
- Increases Flexibility: If you practice yoga regularly and for a long time, your body will become highly flexible. Yoga also tones your body making you look lean and fit.
Helps Cultivate Mindfulness:
Practicing yoga develops mindfulness and awareness of the body. This prevents impulsive eating, thereby restricting weight gain. For example, mindful eating helps exercise portion control and stay away from unhealthy foods. Regular yoga also calms anxiety, leading to behavioral changes to prevent eating stress.
12 Yoga for Weightloss
- Boat pose or Navasana is highly effective for a strong core. It also improves metabolism and reduces belly fat with regular practice. Both men and women can try this pose to improve balance, flexibility, and posture.
- Plank pose or Phalakasana helps reduce abdominal fat and improves core and shoulder strength. This is also suitable for both men and women.
- Warrior 1 pose or Virabhadrasana 1 is a popular beginner yoga pose, especially among women for weight loss. It helps in improving one’s balance and getting a good stretch of the leg and arm muscles. It improves core strength and increases fat burn from the abdominal region.
- The warrior 2 pose, also known as Virabhadrasana 2, is a variation of the Warrior 1 pose. It is easy to do and is among the best poses for weight loss. With regular practice, you can expect a flat stomach. It works for men and women and boosts balance, flexibility, and strengthens the core muscles.
- Bow pose or Dhanurasana is an excellent pose to increase fat burn in the abdominal area. It works by stretching the muscles around the tummy, arms, and legs. It is an intense yoga pose for both men and women. It is advisable to do it under expert supervision.
- Chair pose or Utkatasana works wonders for both men and women. It mainly targets the legs, thighs, and knee muscles. The pose helps improve metabolism and accelerates fat burn.
- Bridge pose, also known as Setu Bandha Sarvangasana, helps improve metabolism and stimulates abdominal organs for improved digestion. It is great for both men and women.
- Cobra pose or Bhujangasana provides a good stretch to the abdominal muscles and helps reduce belly fat. Both men and women can include this in their routine. Avoid it if you are pregnant.
- Upward-Facing Dog Pose Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, the Upward-Facing Dog pose strengthens abdominal muscles and burns fat around the waistline. Both men and women can do it regularly and benefit from it.
- Downward-Facing Dog poses This pose has several benefits. Also known as Adho Mukha Svanasana, it works on the core, leg muscles, arm muscles, back of the legs, and the brain as the pose improves blood flow. It burns calories faster among men and women.
- Triangle Pose Trikonasana or Triangle pose also engages the core muscles to reduce abdominal fat deposits and promotes muscle formation and strengthening on legs and arms in both men and women.
- Cat-Cow Pose The Cat-Cow pose or the Marjaryasana – Bitilasana helps release tension in the neck and spine areas while burning belly fat in men and women.
Yoga and Better sleep
Practicing yoga can help improve the quality of your sleep. You may find that you’re able to fall asleep more easily and sleep more deeply when you have a consistent yoga practice. Ideally, you should sleep between 6 and 9 hours each night.
Yoga Nidra is a form of guided relaxation that may help you to sleep more deeply and increase mindfulness. You can also set intentions during yoga Nidra, which may help you develop weight loss goals.
Their levels of sleepiness weren’t significantly different at the follow-up. However, this score improved the longer people did the practice. Larger, more in-depth studies are needed to expand on these findings.
How often should you do yoga to lose weight?
Practice yoga as often as possible to lose weight. You can do a more active, intense practice at least 3 to 5 times per week for at least 1 hour. On the other days, balance out your practice with a more relaxing, gentle class. Hatha, yin, and restorative yoga classes are great options.
If you’re a beginner, start slow start with a 20-minute practice and build up from there. This allows you to build strength and flexibility and prevent injuries. Allow yourself 1 full day of rest each week. Combine your yoga practice with activities such as walking, cycling, or swimming for added cardiovascular benefits.
As part of your routine, avoid weighing yourself directly after a yoga class, especially hot yoga, since you may lose water weight during the class. Instead, weigh yourself at the same time each day.
Tips to keep in mind
Do yoga regularly: You may be practicing the best yoga poses for weight loss, but if you don’t do it regularly, you won’t see results. So, it’s recommended to do yoga daily to lose weight. Be patient with the results: Yoga works slowly yet surely. Don’t expect your weight to reduce immediately. Be patient.
Add gym workout to the routine: If you are extremely overweight, it is advisable to couple your yoga routine with a gym workout as well. Develop healthy eating habits: Developing healthy eating habits is an essential key to losing weight.
Some of the essential habits include saying no to junk food and soft drinks, neither overeating nor skipping meals, avoid watching TV or chatting while eating. Eating healthy enriches your yoga experience. Outdoor activities are a great way to lose fat.
288 yoga poses in 12 minutes!
One round of Sun Salutation consists of 12 yoga poses. One set consists of two rounds of Sun Salutation: first stretching the right side of your body and then the left side. So, when you do 12 sets of Sun Salutation, you are completing 12 sets x 2 rounds in each set x 12 yoga poses in each = 288 yoga poses in 12 to 15 minutes.
Surya Namaskar calorie calculation:
One round of Surya Namaskar burns up to 13.90 calories for an average weighing person. You can now set the target for yourself. Slowly you can increase the number of rounds of Surya namaskar to 108.
30-minute workout calorie meter
How many calories are you burning in your 30-minute workout?
- Weight lifting = 199 calories
- Tennis = 232 calories
- Basketball = 265 calories
- Beach volleyball = 265 calories
- Football = 298 calories
- Bicycling (14 – 15.9 mph) = 331 calories
- Rock climbing = 364 calories
- Running (7.5mph) = 414 calories
- Surya Namaskar = 417 calories.