Does Yoga Help You Lose Weight

This is a frequent question asked by many yogis worldwide: does yoga help you lose weight? The answer is YES, I lose almost ten pounds by doing yoga for six months.

Why doing yoga helps to lose weight?

Because doing yoga burns calories, and some types of yoga, say hot yoga, burns calories efficiently. If you practice yoga a lot, and maintain a good diet, you are definitely going to lose weight after weeks or months.

They key regarding losing weight is raising heart rate to a certain level, any forms of workout can lead to weight lose if people reach that heart rate threshold. For example, HIIT is a famous exercise form that will help you shed pounds like crazy, however, it is miserable and hard to persist doing HIIT exercise.

As far as myself is concerned, I start practice yoga because I want to foster a heathier lifestyle and relax my body, as I heard yoga is a very good practice to achieve physical, mental and spiritual development. I was not aiming losing weight by doing yoga, yoga weight loss is a by-product of my practice, lol.

While losing weight can be simplified to calories in vs. calories out equation, and we know for sure that doing yoga helps burn calories, what left is make sure the total calories you eat is less than that you burn. So, the best approach for yoga weight loss would be mix yoga practice with other forms of workout you like, e.g. jogging, running, swimming, hiking and else.

As mentioned above, raising heart rate is the key to yoga weight loss, hence picking the right yoga forms becomes important. The yoga you practice must help you raise heart rate to a certain level, let’s say, raise by 30% of your regular heart rate. And relatively more vigorous yoga styles can provide a better result than gentle yoga styles.

What kind of yoga burns more calory?

For a fast and long-lasting yoga weight loss, pick fast-paced vinyasa yoga or Ashtanga yoga. They are relatively more intense than other yoga styles. Well, well, well, make sure you are prepared for those practice, Vigorous style of practice is not for everyone. For beginner, start slowly and gradually build up your practice. You can not be wrong to start slowly.

Vinyasa yoga adopts a specific sequence of poses, chaturanga to upward-facing dog to downward-facing dog and else, this means vinyasa yoga focus on integrating your core and weight-bearing on your hands and feet. Wow, that is intense, do not you think so? I do not do vinyasa yoga very often, because I might eat more than usual after class, lol.

Ashtanga yoga is also relatively intense than other yoga styles. It follows the same series of poses each time, once you have learned its sequence, you should focus on doing every pose right and better each time. I love Ashtanga yoga, but I cut it off from three times a week to once a week, as I found it less fun after frequent practice.

Power yoga, on the other hand, never enter into my list, as I found it very hard to practice. However, that does not mean it is not a good option. I found many yogis adopts power yoga as a major practice to yoga weight loss. Give it a try, you can not hurt to try new yoga styles. One can always finding answer to a question by trying out.

Any suggestions on yoga poses?

Well, I will recommend only one pose.

Plank pose

I can not stress enough how much plank pose will help you speed your yoga weight loss. I lose my belly fat by practicing plank every day, three times a day, 90 seconds every time. It really makes me feeling miserable in the beginning and my lower back aches heavily. It was on the margin of quitting, that I start to improve little by little. For everyone who want to start practice plank pose, I want to tell you: start slowly and extend gradually, mind your pose carefully and tweak to find your right position.

For yoga lovers, doing yoga to lose weight is doable. You might have a feeling that it is too good to be true, just think what I have achieved after practicing (read about us page to find my full-length photo) and start today. High intense yoga is hard to practice, picking high quality yoga apparel is also an important factor that ensures your stick on to it.