Here is a portion of an article about the weight-loss benefits of yoga. Yoga burns calories, builds lean muscle mass, and increases the mobility and health of your joints. It also reduces stress, and lowers your body’s production of cortisol, a hormone that wreaks havoc on your metabolism and causes you to store up extra fat. Properly practiced, yoga prevents and heals injuries so that you can remain active throughout your life.
How Does It Work?
In 2005, medical researcher and practicing yogi Alan Kristal, DPH, MPH, set out to do a medical study on the weight-loss effects of yoga.
With funding from the National Cancer Institute, Kristal and colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle led a trial involving 15,500 healthy, middle-aged men and women. All completed a survey recalling their physical activity (including yoga) and their weight between the ages of 45 and 55. Researchers then analyzed the data, teasing out other factors that could influence weight change – such as diet or other forms of exercise.
The end result: They found yoga could indeed help people shed pounds, or at least keep them from gaining weight.
“Those practicing yoga who were overweight to start with lost about 5 pounds during the same time period those not practicing yoga gained 14 pounds,” says Kristal.
For the study, he says, practicing yoga was defined as at least one 30-minute session per week for four or more years.
Kristal says it’s not clear just how yoga might help people keep off the pounds, at least from a scientific standpoint. His own opinion is that the effects are subtle, and related to yoga’s mind-body aspects.
“The buzzword here is mindfulness — the ability to observe what is happening internally in a non-reactive fashion,” he says. “That is what helps change the relationship of mind to body, and eventually to food and eating.”
