Yoga for flexibility can help you tie your laces. Yoga for anxiety and depression can help you climb out of a funk. Yoga for carpal tunnel syndrome can help you twist stubborn lids off jars.
But yoga for weight loss? Can yoga really help you lose weight?
Adding a yoga routine to dietary changes can increase initial weight loss by 20% and can then help you maintain weight loss over time. But while yoga is (amongst other things) exercise, it’s not among the most intense aerobic workouts – save for a few exceptions, like hot yoga and power or vinyasa yoga.
Having said that, even if yoga classes might not contribute directly to your target weight loss, yoga can help you lay the foundations and sustain a long-term health-conscious lifestyle, which may include weight loss.
But First, a Question: Why Do You Want to Lose Weight?
Every body is beautiful. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of pressure on people to look a certain way and this is rife in Western yoga culture. There’s a skewed perspective in:
Fashion
The yoga clothing industry is expected to grow to $53 billion per year over the next ten years. And the fashion industry as a whole doesn’t have the best track record for representing true body shapes or supporting a healthy body image. What you wear to yoga classes should support your unique body and your individual goals, not the fashion industry.
Commercialism, Consumerism
If we look at the imagery online, on social media, in magazines, and on TV, we see a depiction of yoga that favors the slim and the pale-skinned. Commercialization has created a vision of yoga that is fashionable, “idealist,” sexualized, and elitist. However, all our body shapes and colors are valuable and worthy of attention.
Social Media
The social media version of yoga is less about the journey and more about a skewed idea of what the ideal destination should look like for all of us. It depicts perfect balance and strength. It rejects wobbling and the rewarding journey toward and through improvement on multiple levels.
What Yoga’s Actually About
Authentic yoga practice, however, marries the physical with the emotional and the mental, and everyone’s experience is different. What you look like is beside the point. How you feel and where yoga takes you are far more interesting and relevant.
Every Body Is Different, and That’s Beautiful
In my first year as a massage practitioner, I was amazed by how different people’s bodies are anatomically. Trying to fit what we’ve got into a single societal mold is not only impossible but also detracts from our rich variety, which is beyond interesting; the unique characteristics of our bodies and minds make us fascinating.
Increasingly, yoga studios, brands, teachers, and platforms are stepping out from the shadow of yoga commercialization to celebrate our differences and inspire body positivity.
So, to circle back, if you want to lose weight so that you can run faster, reduce joint pain, sleep more comfortably, or another reason that will help you stay healthy, that’s fantastic, but please take a deep breath and hug yourself if you’re feeling pressured into losing weight because of your society’s predominant, unrealistic, and ever-changing ideas about what the best shape is. The benefits of yoga for you can go so far beyond what the scales are saying.
How Yoga Can Help You Lose Weight
The Science of Yoga for Weight Loss
Getting straight into the evidence, research has demonstrated that yoga can help us:
- Reduce body fat
- Lower our body mass index
- Decrease body weight
- Reduce waist circumference
During interviews, the study identified that ways yoga may have contributed to weight loss include:
- A shift toward healthy eating
- Believing that losing weight with yoga was different than other weight loss experiences
- Support or impact from the yoga community
- Psychological changes
- Physical changes
Breaking It Down
There’s no simple solution or one-size-fits-all technique for weight loss. This is partly because there are many reasons to want or need to lose weight, such as improving heart health, wanting to feel fitter, meeting the weight requirements for a sporting event, or wanting to fit into a pair of jeans. Also many factors influence weight gain or obesity including chronic conditions, genes, lifestyle, diet, socio-economic factors, medications, sleep, and mental health.
Rather than directly helping you shed some pounds, yoga practice could be useful because it can improve the mind-body connection, thus ameliorating various areas that may play a part in weight gain or obesity. Yoga is also accessible for many people with limited mobility and has had success as an alternative, low-impact activity that can help people meet moderate exercise goals.
Yoga can help you:
Be more mindful
Improving the mind-body connection promotes our awareness of how we feel, emotionally, physically, and physiologically, which can make us more aware of what we put into our bodies. This, in turn, makes us more likely to stop eating when we’re full, avoid unhealthy food, and engage in various types of physical exercise more frequently.
Manage stress and anxiety
Increased cortisol — often described as the stress hormone — has been linked to increases in abdominal fat. A common reaction to stress and anxiety is craving for fatty or sugary food, which can lead to comfort eating or binging. Decreasing stress and anxiety through yogic breathing, meditation, and calming or empowering asanas, therefore, can lower cortisol levels, interrupting some of the causes of weight gain.
Reduce reliance on medications
Some medications, such as steroids or medicine for mental health conditions, may have weight gain as a side effect. While yoga can not replace professional medical advice or treatment, if it can reduce certain symptoms enough to remove the need for medication in some cases, it could contribute to weight loss, though only under the guidance of your healthcare professional.
Improve respiration
Yoga can improve overall respiratory and physical functions by enhancing upper-body flexibility and strength. For instance, pranayama techniques can boost inspiratory muscle strength and improve breathing. With better respiratory function, you may be able to exercise longer, more intensely, or more comfortably, all of which could increase the speed with which you lose weight.
Improve cardiovascular health
While a typical yoga class is not as sweat-inducing or heart-pumping as a run, yoga nonetheless can improve cardiorespiratory fitness even better than some traditional exercises typically recommended for preventing cardiovascular disease. Not only is it great to have a healthy heart, but this can make exercise more sustainable.
Reduce joint pain
Joint pain is often a barrier to moving, let alone exercise. Yoga, however, can help break the cycle of weight gain and joint pain, which could allow you to be more physically active and thus more likely to lose weight.
Increase muscle, tone, and flexibility
While yogis might not be as muscle-bound as bodybuilders or have the endurance of marathon runners, asana practice is, among other things, exercise. Most types of yoga make your body stronger and more flexible. In particular, hatha, ashtanga, and vinyasa/power yoga can help you build strength and lose weight – though not as much as aerobics or other high-intensity exercise types.
Check in with yourself daily
Performing yoga regularly offers you a unique self-check-in to get in touch with your physical, emotional, and psychological changes. Body scans, meditation, pranayama, and asanas provide feedback regarding your body, which can help you find a weight that’s healthy for you.
Be part of a supportive community
Whether you do yoga online or in-class, sharing your practice with empathetic, like-minded people can support your weight loss journey. Sharing your experience with others and being able to give and receive advice, motivation, and inspiration is a great benefit of being a part of the yoga community.
Feel less self-conscious
People of all ages, body shapes, and sizes do yoga. Seeing the variety of people within the amazing yoga community can help you feel less self-conscious. Also, being able to do yoga online, in your own home, gives you an added sense of comfort and safety if you’re not ready for or don’t feel like attending a group class in person.
Weight Loss Is Just the Beginning
So, is yoga for weight loss a thing? Sure, yoga can support your weight loss. But it can also do so much more.
Writing this post makes me want to get up and do yoga. So I’m going to do just that. Right after the next paragraph.
Yoga is a fantastic, balanced practice that promotes healthy living on all fronts. And while most types of yoga may not be the fastest ways to lose weight, they are brilliant at supporting you through healthy decisions about your body, mind, and (in my case, immediate) future.
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