Can you lose weight with yoga? Most yoga poses are static poses, so weight loss isn’t common with most static yoga poses. If you are doing power yoga which has more active yoga poses it could help burn a decent number of calories. But yoga isn’t an aerobic exercise, it is an exercise that helps with relaxation and increasing flexibility.
Can you lose weight with yoga? Photo credit: iStock-anon-tae
Active and intense styles of yoga can help you burn the most calories. The more active forms of yoga are ashtanga, vinyasa and power yoga. Vinyasa and Power yoga are usually offered in hot yoga studios.
And doing these two types of active yoga in extreme conditions can help you burn a lot of calories. Although you will be losing a lot of water too because of the extreme hot conditions in that hot yoga studio.
The only way to lose weight is you need to be in a caloric deficit. And the two things that can help you there are diet and exercise. If you are not burning enough calories through yoga, you will have a tough time losing weight unless your diet is perfect.
How many times a week should you do yoga to lose weight?
If your goal is to lose weight, then doing yoga about 4 days a week for an hour would make the best sense. But make sure you pick active yoga like Vinyasa or power yoga which allows you to burn a lot of calories. And add a diet component that helps to put you in a caloric deficit. The diet should be low in calories, and it should be balanced in carbs, proteins, and fats.
Also, it doesn’t hurt to add a form of cardiovascular to yoga to help with your weight loss goals. And those cardiovascular exercises can be swimming, dancing, walking, jogging, cycling, etc. Yoga by itself wouldn’t be enough of an exercise to help you lose weight. You should add some form of strength training and cardiovascular exercise to complete your workout routine.
After you do hot yoga, you will be dripping in sweat because of how much water you have lost in those extreme heated conditions. You want to make sure that you hydrate yourself with water immediately because of that excessive water loss.
If you weigh yourself right afterwards you will see that you lost weight. But that weight is 100% water loss so once you start drinking water that water weight you lost comes right back.
Research studies have shown that practicing yoga can improve the quality of your sleep. And most studies have revealed that quality sleep has always been associated weight loss. So, if you are having insomnia or sleep issues then yoga may be a good thing to implement into your exercise routine.
“Most yoga poses are static poses, so weight loss isn’t common with most static yoga poses.” Celebrity Fitness & Nutrition Expert Obi Obadike
The Bottom Line is yoga is a great form of relaxation and spiritual/stress reliever type of exercise, but you are going to need more than yoga for weight loss.
If you add cardiovascular exercises and strength training exercises to yoga, then all of that collectively will tremendously help with weight loss. And make sure that you are consuming a proper low caloric diet to help with being in that caloric deficit phase.
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References
- Xuewen Wang, Joshua R Sparks, Kimberly P Bowyer, Shawn D Youngstedt, Influence of sleep restriction on weight loss outcomes associated with caloric restriction, Sleep, Volume 41, Issue 5, May 2018, zsy027, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsy027
- National Center For Complimentary and Integrative Health- https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/yoga-what-you-need-to-know
