Yoga and Overweight: Health Benefits and Tips for Getting Started

Yoga and Overweight: Health Benefits and Tips for Getting Started

For wellness, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more holistic practice than yoga. Your physical and mental health can get a boost from busting out your mat.

Physical benefits

The limb-stretching, muscle-engaging, bodyweight-bearing nature of yoga has many physical benefits.

For starters, yoga may enhance your metabolism. An older study found that people who practiced had greater metabolic efficiency and lower weight than non-yogis.

It’s clear, too, that yoga’s combo of cardio and strength torches calories. A 160-pound person can burn around 180 calories per hour, popping in and out of poses. A 2021 study revealed that both Hatha and vinyasa yoga led to weight loss, with an average of 3.4 kilograms (7.5 pounds) lost over a 6-month.

Extra strength and flexibility are two other well-known upsides of the practice. Research shows that even sedentary folks can build these elements of fitness by taking up yoga. One study showed that, after 8 weeks of practicing at least twice a week (180 minutes), people with no prior yoga experience had greater muscle strength, endurance, flexibility, and cardio-respiratory fitness.

Mental benefits

On the surface, yoga might look like mere stretching — but the practice goes far beyond the physical. Yoga engages the mind in all sorts of ways that may have benefits for overweight.

By training your brain toward calm and focus, yoga sessions encourage mindfulness. A mindful outlook can have far-reaching effects in multiple areas of life, like promoting mindful eating and greater body awareness.

Pages: 1 2 3

RSS
Follow by Email