Yoga supports lasting weight change, but not primarily through calorie burn. A regular practice changes your relationship with your body, builds the self-awareness that underlies healthy habits, and over time addresses the emotional and behavioural patterns that drive overeating or inactivity. This is slower and less direct than a diet, but more durable. The post explains why short-term approaches consistently fail and how a committed practice works differently.
When it comes to losing weight, we all know it’s down to diet and exercise.
Sounds easy. Yet anyone who has ever tried to shed even a few pounds knows it’s not that simple. You might have tried a tough diet, a very strict exercise regime, or perhaps you happened to have a period of intense physical activity, or you’ve fallen in love and food was not a priority anymore, and you managed to lose half a stone. But how quickly after you resumed your normal habits did the weight get put back?
We all know it, and perhaps next Spring we’ll get motivated again to find another miracle diet, push ourselves even more and achieve the dream beach body, but how often after several attempts do we lose hope and motivation?
If this is the case for you and you have been struggling with weight problems for years, then perhaps it’s time to look a bit deeper, to understand what’s at the root of the problem, what makes us break a diet, and what causes us to eat compulsively, or to be a couch potato, and so on.
1. Find the reason
Perhaps it’s down to lack of will power, or there is an emotional problem and you need your comfort food, or your digestion is extremely slow and you put on weight almost just by looking at cakes?
There can be so many reasons, and the first step is to find out what it is, and therefore what needs to be addressed, and what has to change.
2. You need to change
You need to change, and the change has to be forever. Unless you want to be slim for just a month or two.
Having a month without chocolate, or joining a boot camp is a good start, but if you are looking forward for the month to finish, and to going back to your beloved reunion with the sofa and sweets, that won’t work. You have to be honest with yourself: can you live all your life without chocolate, cakes, and with a commitment to an extreme physical regime? If that doesn’t sound like fun, then in time you will be back to your old routine and your old self.
The change has to be willing, permanent and achievable. It has to involve the food you eat, your daily activity, and also the state of your mind, the state of your being. You have to recreate your new self, be committed to this new self and never slip back to your old habits.
3. Yoga is an exercise for body and mind
Many people think about yoga as a physical exercise, and therefore think of the effects it might have on muscles, joints, and the body’s shape. If you turn up weekly for your yoga class looking just for physical exercise to turn your body into an image from a yoga poster, you might discover that other exercise classes and workouts might actually do a better job at making you sweat, push more, and overall in burning more calories.
That is, unless you have heard that yoga is an exercise for the mind too. Body & Mind is an oft-used slogan and a bit of a cliché in yoga, however not many who practise yoga understand how it works on the mind, and it’s seldom taught nowadays. Perhaps you’ve noticed that you are more relaxed after a class, or perhaps you feel more happy and content; that’s a good start, but yoga can offer way more than that.
4. Learn about chakras
You can understand much more how yoga can affect your mind if you understand the ancient knowledge of the chakras. That’s another word which you’ve probably heard in yoga, but how do chakras affect us, and how does yoga influence your chakras? That’s very seldom covered in your weekly yoga classes.
Once you learn about chakras and which asanas (yoga poses) work on them, you will understand how you can develop or empower any qualities you want within yourself, just by committing to specific yoga practices.
So yes, with certain targeted asanas practised you can strengthen your willpower, self-confidence, create more enthusiasm, self-motivation, self-love, and whatever quality you might be lacking.
5. Dive into a journey within yourself
And during this incredible journey you might discover much more about yourself, your hidden wounds, inner strengths, inspirations and potentials.
When I started my yoga practice over 20 years ago, losing weight was not the top priority. I had been on diets since the age of fourteen, and the dieting obsession was making me really miserable. I had periods when my life was all about counting calories and avoiding places with food, followed by ‘weaker’ times, when I hated myself for eating chocolate and my weight would grow almost over night. All together I was not happy, and there were a few other things not going well for me at the time, and I really needed change.
A regular morning yoga practice built up my self-confidence and brought more harmony to my life in just a couple of months. But I had an intuition there was much more to it. Soon after, I took off for India to dive into yogic mysteries at the very source, and that’s where the next 7 years of soul adventure and transformation began. And the adventure still continues, on so many levels.
6. The results and the promise
But did I lose weight? Yes, my weight finally stabilised at 64kg and I wear 4 sizes smaller clothes than at my “heavy” times in my early twenties. But what’s more important is that I haven’t been on a slimming diet for decades; my relationship to food has changed completely. I occasionally do purification or detox regimes for overall health, but on the other hand, I don’t feel guilty when I have some chocolate, cake or go to Italy for fantastic holidays and eat 4-course meals. I can trust my body to tell me in a healthy way what’s enough, and perhaps compensate with a little bit more walking or other fun activity.
So what has changed is that I’m much more connected to myself, more embodied, more understanding and compassionate, more joyful, and much more.
There is lots to promise; however it doesn’t mean it’s easy. It requires commitment, and time. As I said, it’s not about temporary change; you want to rewire yourself permanently, and that will need time. But I promise it’s worth it, and you will love it.
If this resonates and you’d like to begin, my weekly Hatha Yoga classes run across mid-Norfolk, and a one-to-one is often the kindest way to start when something deeper is driving the pattern. Drop me a line if you’d like to talk it through.