How Much Weight Can You Lose in a Month With Yoga
The amount of weight you can expect to lose with yoga in a month depends on several factors like your body mass index (BMI), your metabolic rate, and your calorie consumption. Combining the proper diet and practicing an intense yoga style, you can expect to lose 2 to 5 kgs in a month on average.
Intense and active yoga styles burn the most amount of calories, preventing weight gain.
Vinyasa, ashtanga, and power yoga are prime examples of physically intensive types of yoga.
According to 2013 studies, yoga was an excellent activity to help with weight loss, behavioral changes, stress reduction, and heightened mindfulness.
Getting into a regular practice of yoga will also help you be more aware of your eating choices. This article addresses some critical questions about weight loss and yoga, including some of the best asanas for it — so keep reading!
How does yoga help you lose weight?
Yoga can enable your body to burn more calories by boosting your metabolic rate, a natural body process responsible for converting food into energy.
Several yoga asanas can speed up your metabolism by significantly improving your oxygen intake and increasing your heart rate.
A faster metabolism means more of your calories get converted into energy to maintain the proper functioning of your systems, ultimately leading to fat burning and weight loss.
According to experts, the type of yoga you do plays a crucial role in determining its applicability in weight loss goals.
Your best bet would be the more physically challenging styles such as Bikram, Ashtanga, or Vinyasa, featuring more aerobic poses.
The high-activity types of yoga do a better job at boosting your metabolism, leading to faster weight loss.
How many calories can you burn with different types of yoga?
- In a one-hour session of Ashtanga yoga, you can burn about 500 calories.
- In a one-hour session of Vinyasa yoga, you can burn between 550 to 600 calories.
- In a one-hour session of Bikram yoga, you can burn between 350 to 500 calories.
Wanna know more? 👉 Here all you need to know about Ashtanga Yoga and Weight Loss
How much time does it take to lose weight doing yoga?
Regardless of how much time you spend trying to lose weight, you’ll only start seeing actual results as soon as you boost your metabolic rate.
If you immediately start following a low-calorie, high-protein diet plan and do physically intense yoga sessions, your metabolic rate will be boosted within hours.
With that combination, you can expect to lose up to 2 kgs of weight in just ten days.
A 2013 study showed that a 10-day program of yoga resulted in noticeable weight loss and reduced heart disease risk in obese men. With a BMI (body mass index) of 26 or greater, the men in the study lost about 1.9 kg weight on average.
If you follow a strict diet plan and regularly perform intensive yoga practice, your weight should start going down within weeks.
How much weight you’ll lose also depends on the amount of excess fat you have.
Tips for best results
The most important thing to aim for to see fast and significant weight loss results is to boost your metabolic rate. Yoga, or any other type of physical exercise, is only one of the tools at play to achieve that.
Other factors that can increase your metabolic rate include your diet, the types and asanas of yoga you perform, and your lifestyle.
Let’s look at a few tips you can employ for better weight loss results.
1. Eat protein-rich foods
According to research, eating protein-rich foods can boost your metabolic rate by 15 to 30 percent, compared to only a 5 to 10, or 0 to 3 percent increase in metabolism from carbs and fats, respectively.
Protein-rich foods include eggs, meat, fish, dairy, seeds, nuts, legumes.
The boost in your metabolism can last for hours, as these foods require your body to use up more energy to digest them.
2. Perform high-intensity types of yoga
For weight loss, the calm and meditative yoga sessions aren’t the ones you’re looking for.
To boost your metabolic rate, your practices need to be high-intensity and make your body work hard during the session.
Physically demanding types of yoga include Ashtanga, Vinyasa, or Bikram yoga, for example.
3. Drink More Cold Water
Drinking water can have a temporary impact in speeding your metabolism up.
According to studies, drinking only two glasses of water can boost your metabolism by 10 to 30 percent for about one hour.
The effect is even more significant with cold water.
Your body needs to use up energy to heat the cold water to your body temperature, which means it’ll increase your metabolic rate to do so.
Moreover, drinking more water also fills you up, making it less likely for you to reach for fattening snacks.
4. Sleep well
A lack of sleep can significantly increase obesity risks. Why’s that? You guessed it: sleep deprivation brings down your metabolic rate.
If you want to maximize the weight you shed in a month with yoga, make sure you get a good night’s sleep.
5. Eat Spicy Foods
Spicy foods get their flavor from a substance called ‘capsaicin’ that boosts your metabolic rate.
According to one study, eating peppers can burn an additional ten calories per meal. While this may seem small, it’s still a slight advantage when paired with other strategies to increase your metabolism.
6. Drink More Coffee
When taken in moderate quantities, coffee can raise your metabolic rate in the short term. According to studies, it can boost it by 3 to 11 percent.
Just like green tea, coffee also helps burn fat. Several studies show that people consuming at least 270 milligrams of caffeine daily (about three coffee cups) burn an additional 100 calories a day.
7. Perform high-activity yoga sessions frequently
To give a solid boost to your metabolism, it’s recommended to practice Ashtanga, Vinyasa, or Bikram yoga as frequently as possible.
High-activity yoga routines should be carried out at least four to five times a week in one-hour sessions.
8. Perform restorative yoga on off days
On other days, try balancing your practice out with gentler, more relaxing sessions. Restorative yoga classes such as Hatha and Yin are great options.
A 2013 study looked into the potential of restorative yoga on weight loss in overweight women. It found that those who took part in a 48-week restorative yoga program ended up losing more weight in 6 months than those in a simple stretching program.
In the study, the stretching group lost only 6 square centimeters of fat directly under the skin, compared to the 34 square centimeters of fat loss for the yoga group.
You may also like 👉 Is Healthy Eating More Important than Exercise for Weight Loss?
Can you lose weight with just yoga?
Any worthwhile attempt to lose weight always relies on two significant aspects; exercise that boosts your metabolism (in this case, high-activity yoga like Vinyasa, Ashtanga, or Bikram) and healthy eating.
Yoga alone doesn’t result in significant weight loss, especially if it’s not accompanied by healthy eating.
Remember, you need to ensure three things in your yoga weight loss journey to be able to see actual results;
1. Perform the correct type of yoga, and do it regularly
To increase your metabolic rate, you must take up physically demanding types of yoga such as Vinyasa, Ashtanga, Bikram, etc.
Moreover, you need to do it frequently and regularly to have a consistent rise in your metabolism.
2. Eat foods that boost your metabolic rate
Make sure you follow a diet plan designed to boost your metabolism and not slow it down.
For instance, eat high-protein meals to have the most substantial impact on increasing your metabolic rate.
Similarly, stay away from foods that in turn reduce it, such as processed vegetable oils, white flour, soda, etc.
3. Reduce your calorie intake
The whole purpose of increasing your metabolic rate is to get your body to burn more calories by converting more of the food you eat into energy.
If you continue to intake a large number of calories with every meal, you’ll be canceling out the effects of a boosted metabolic rate. In that case, you may notice little to no weight loss results.
Doing yoga every day but gaining weight
To lose weight, your body should be converting more calories into energy than into reserves.
This is only achievable with a boosted metabolism that works overtime to make sure your vital systems have enough energy to function correctly.
If you’re regularly performing yoga but still putting on pounds, various factors could be at play.
1. You are performing the wrong type of yoga
The type of yoga you practice directly correlates with how much weight you can expect to lose in a month.
If you’re performing a slow type of yoga that doesn’t aim to pump up your heart rate, it won’t significantly boost your metabolic rate. This means it won’t have an impact on your weight loss journey.
You need physically intensive yoga sessions to help with weight loss directly.
For instance, vinyasa and power yoga are generally performed at specialized hot yoga studios. They constantly keep you on the move, helping you burn calories.
2. You’re consuming processed oils
Even if you’re eating healthy, you may be making a crucial mistake—cooking your meals in processed oils.
Stay away from fatty foods cooked in vegetable oils. Instead, use coconut oil or extra virgin oil, which are both proven to impact your metabolism positively.
According to research, coconut oil can help burn away your belly fat. A four-week study on 20 obese adults found that a daily dose of 2 tbsp of coconut oil showed a significant reduction in waist measurements of participants.
3. You’re eating foods that slow down your metabolism
When you’re looking to boost your metabolic rate to lose weight, there’s a whole variety of foods you need to stay away from.
Here’s a list of foods that reduce your metabolic rate:
- Fast food
- Processed foods
- Yogurt
- Soda
- Fruit juice
- Farmed beef
- Refined grains
- Alcohol
- Produce contaminated with pesticides
- Sea salt
- Frozen meals
Eating healthy amounts to more than fifty percent of any weight loss transformation attempt.
To learn more about this concept, consider reading more about the importance of eating healthy to lose weight.
Conclusion
The amount of weight you can lose with yoga in a month is directly linked to your metabolic rate, and yoga only plays an indirect role in it.
Your metabolic rate depends on several factors like your eating habits and your physical activity. Yoga only addresses the latter part.
The more intense your physical activity levels are, the higher your metabolic rate goes. Hence, it’s essential to practice the proper forms of yoga that are physically challenging, such as Vinyasa, Ashtanga, or Bikram, etc.
Practicing the wrong type of yoga that doesn’t boost your metabolic rate won’t lead you anywhere in terms of weight loss.
The same goes for diet, as a high-calorie, low-protein diet works against your weight loss goals.
Make sure you follow a strict diet plan that consists of foods that boost your metabolic rate (e.g., protein-rich foods like eggs, meat, fish, dairy, seeds, nuts) and excludes all foods that slow it down (such as fast food, processed foods, sodas, or meals cooked in processed oils).
As you deepen your awareness and yoga practice, you may feel naturally attracted to healthier food choices and better ways to take care of yourself.
Regardless of whether or not you meet your fitness goals in a month with yoga, the benefits you’ll experience will go far beyond your physical transformation. All the best!
Read also: