Lifestyle changes show weight loss benefits
Yoga is known to correct posture and calm the mind and body. However, opinions are divided on whether yoga can help you lose weight. The health and medical media “Everyday Health” recently introduced why yoga is beneficial for weight loss and explained: “It’s not just because you burn calories on a yoga mat that you lose weight.”
“If you do yoga right, it will change your lifestyle,” said Judi Bar, head of the yoga program at the Cleveland Clinic Center, certified by the International Association of Yoga Therapists and the Yoga Federation. He explains that lifestyle changes will increase physical activity, reduce binges, manage stress, and help you lose and maintain weight.
Judy Barr’s team published a study in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine in July 2013 that found that yoga was associated with weight loss and maintenance. The results showed that yoga reduced back and joint pain, consumed more energy by consuming more exercise, improved mood, reduced stress, and had an effect on weight.
Another study published in a special issue of Yoga Prevention and Treatment in 2016 analyzed data collected by interviewing 20 adults who said they lost weight through yoga. Five factors that conclude that yoga helps with weight loss are: ▲ shift to a healthier diet ▲ influence of the yoga community ▲ physical change ▲ psychological change ▲ the belief that yoga weight loss experiences are different from experiences past weight loss.
Judy Barr cites three reasons yoga can help you lose and maintain weight.
1. eat mindfully
Reflecting on the mind on the yoga mat is related to eating habits. Dr Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and director of the Yoga Alliance research, said he would feel if the food made him feel lethargic or bloated.
A study published in July 2015 found that yoga led to changes in eating behavior, including eating less fat and eating more fresh vegetables, whole grains and soy foods.
A 2015 study published in the Journal of Sports and Exercise Psychology looked at 159 women who regularly did yoga or aerobic exercise and found that yoga practitioners were significantly less likely to disrupt their eating patterns than those who did aerobic exercise.
2. Helps manage stress
Stress affects weight gain. Yoga can help reduce chronic stress levels. This is due to breathing and meditation training.
Dr Sundar Balasubramanian, assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, said, “Yoga breathing helps people with chronic and other ailments energize, improve their mood and lower stress levels.”
“Stress can make it very difficult to lose weight because it increases cortisol and can make sleep difficult,” he explains. This is where deep breathing helps. Dr. Balasubramannian said: “Breathing exercises cause physiological changes and, in particular, reduce the amount of cortisol in the body.”
3. Helps build muscle.
Carol Krucoff, a Duke Integrative Yoga therapist certified by the International Association of Yoga Therapists, said: “It is often thought that weight training is necessary to strengthen muscles. However, yoga also uses your own body weight as a form of resistance. It becomes a full body workout as you try to maintain balance.
Imagine you are stationary in the plank position. You will use the muscles of the shoulders, core, hips and legs to support your body. Do another pose, activating other muscles in the arms, shoulders, and back. Krukoff said this burns calories.
In June 2016, the results of 30 experiments with more than 2,000 participants were published in the journal “Preventive Medicine”. Researchers concluded that yoga reduces the waist-to-hip ratio in healthy adults and could lower body mass index (BMI) in overweight or obese people.
