I Lost Weight With Yoga | Yoga and Your Love Handles

I Lost Weight With Yoga - Yoga and Your Love Handles

You may have noticed that there are very few practitioners of Yoga who have traces of fat on their stomachs. While in most other "slimming" exercise regimens the only ones who are in shape are the instructors and veterans, even casual Yoga practitioners often sport fewer, if any, bulges on their bodies than their counterparts in aerobics or calisthenics.

This often makes people wonder, because Yoga doesn't even emphasize weight loss as being a major part of it's purpose, and yet somehow miraculously the people who take up Yoga manage to lose more weight than people who go to diet centers, slimming gyms, and other programs which are supposedly designed to help people lose weight.

The best way to explain this strange phenomenon requires a contrast between modern "hard" abdominal and pelvic exercises as opposed to the gentler methods employed by Yoga.

Let's start with the time honored and well loved torture device, the sit-up. Sit-ups require a person to lay down flat on the floor, legs folded slightly and knees raised a tad. Then the exerciser simply bends at the waist and raises his or her upper body off the floor, bending towards his knees as far as he or she can go, then lowers the upper body back down to lie on the floor again. Repeat ad nauseum.

The theory behind this is that the exercise builds up abdominal muscles and causes the tummy to sweat, said heat and sweat "burning off" the belly fat. The reason it doesn't work? The excess of muscular effort in that area makes you hungrier AND increases the rate at which your now-aroused digestive system absorbs food and liquids. Now guess which part of your body those digested foods are going to be stored? If you guessed the stomach, you earn a gold star…

Crunches are another exercise method which took the place of regular sit ups when it was discovered that the tension caused by normal sit ups caused undue stress and tension on their victim's lower backs. This led to various back problems for exercisers. Crunches are easier on the back and much lower on stress. Simply put, people doing crunches lie on their backs again but flat this time. Then, jack knifing slightly at the waist, they simultaneously raise their legs and upper body off the floor, forming a shallow letter V with their bodies. Lower both body parts, wash, rinse, and repeat.

Crunches, aside from being easier on the back than sit-ups, proved to be more effective at removing love handles because the muscular strain involved less motion than a sit-up, which required tucking the body forward. This allowed exercisers to perform more crunches in the same amount of time and for comparatively less strain. The increase in muscular "burn" for less exhaustion (which led to less hunger that sit-ups) proved more effective.

I Lost Weight With Yoga - Yoga Poses For Weight Loss and a Slim Tummy

Yoga, on the other hand, employs stretching and breathing exercises that require very little effort (and are actually often relaxing) coupled with breathing exercises that improve metabolism. This essentially leads to a metabolic boost that burns off fat while relaxing the body, thus avoiding the increased hunger that regular exercises create.

One example of a Yoga posture that helps the abdominals is the basic dand, or cat stretch. This is done by getting down on your hands and knees and, exactly like a cat stretching it's back, arch your body down towards the ground. This stretches not only your abdominal muscles, but also your chest and shoulders as well. Then, arch your back upwards in the opposite direction, making a "bow" with your body supported by your legs and arms. This stretches the spine and back muscles. Unlike classic exercises which would have you repeat this motion several hundred times, Yoga instead stresses stretching slowly and completely throughout the length of the motions, and actually holding each at it's peak (as far as you can stretch) for several seconds while you breath in that position.

Another exercise method used in Yoga is referred to in modern science as dynamic tension. In dynamic tension, muscular effort is expended to make a limb NOT move, and hold a certain position rigidly for a certain period of time.

The boat pose is a position in Yoga that shows this exercise method off, and it targets the stomach as well. It is performed exactly like a crunch, in that you lie on the floor and, jack knifing at the waist, form a letter V with your body. The difference is that you HOLD the pose in the boat position, freeze in place, and just breathe. The effort of actually holding a static position actually generates more exercise than repeated muscular contractions, while tiring you out less.

These are simply two examples of why Yoga practitioners are usually much more slender and streamlined than their counterparts in traditional weight loss programs. They don't go out of their way to lose weight, it just happens to be a pleasant side effect aside from gaining improved flexibility, strength, and cardiovascular exercise from Yoga.