If you just look at someone doing yoga postures you might think it would be quite difficult to lose weight with yoga, because the exercises are gentle and you don’t see a lot of sweating or effort that is normally associated with exercise. However, there is more than meets the eye and yoga can play a part in a program of healthy weight loss.
Yoga can help you to lose weight because it is more than just a physical exercise, it is part of a process that helps you to improve your willpower. In addition, the yoga postures have important effects on your glandular system. Let’s look at these two aspects of yoga starting with the glandular system and see how a yoga weight loss program could help you.
One of the most important effects of all yoga postures is that they exert gentle pressure on the endocrine glands. These glands secrete hormones into the bloodstream and these hormones regulate many of the body’s internal functions.
For example, metabolism, the rate that the body turns food into energy, is controlled by the thyroid gland, which is located near the throat. If your thyroid gland is not secreting enough hormone then you might become fat even though you are doing normal exercise. If the gland secretes too much hormone, then you might become too thin even though you have a normal caloric intake. The postures of yoga make sure that the thyroid gland and other important glands function properly, and this is very important if you want to reach your ideal, healthy weight.
What about willpower? Yoga should be thought of as more than just physical exercise. Rather yoga is physical, mental and spiritual exercise. As your glands and internal organs become balanced, your mind also becomes balanced. So the physical exercises of yoga help one to reach a state of mental peace. When you reach a state of inner calm, and inner peace it becomes easier for you to choose what you really want to do (like eat healthy food) rather than to be driven by desires.
On top of this, an important complement of the physical postures is meditation. Meditation is an integral part of yoga and when one meditates one’s power of concentration increases and one’s self confidence also gets a boost. This increase in concentration is accompanied by an increase in willpower. When you reach this stage it becomes easy to take a vow “I will do more exercise and I will cut out junk food” and really stick to it.
So, if you have failed in previous efforts to lose weight, you should also consider trying a yoga weight loss program to help you achieve the success that you are seeking.
