Hot Yoga for Weight Loss & Fat Loss?
Many practitioners of yoga report feeling more flexible and relaxed, but can hot yoga really help with weight loss and fat loss? The answer is a resounding – YES. Hot yoga is performed in a room heated to between 90 and 105 degrees F, and usually with increased humidity so that you don’t feel ‘dried out.’ This environment causes you to build heat in the body and sweat more profusely than in other types of yoga classes. Although this is one way that you can reduce your pant or dress size pretty quickly, there are other, less obvious reasons why a hot yoga practice helps to keep you thin and toned.
The first, and rather obvious reason that people lose weight when practicing hot yoga, is because you are melting away calories. An increased body heat will increase your metabolism because your body has to work harder to keep its internal temperature at a constant 98 degrees. Sweating also helps to rid the body of toxins through one of the largest organs of the body – the skin. The skin is responsible for releasing an incredible amount of toxic residue from the body – that which is consumed in a poor diet, and that which is involuntarily taken in through environmental pollutants from the air, water and off-gasing from products we use in our homes and offices.
When we sweat out some of these toxins instead of making the liver and intestines do all the work, we start to change the body’s chemistry. The liver gets a break and so does the digestive system. You may also notice that you crave less refined sugar, processed foods and other foods that have little or no nutritive value and end up being treated as ‘toxic’ by the body. When your food cravings change, you lose weight because you are eating for energy now instead of emotional lows or to stave off roller-coastering glucose levels caused by starve and binge eating – you know that donut you eat for breakfast and then you don’t get around to lunch until 3pm because of all your business meetings and errands so by the time you put any fuel into your body again, you are literally crashing – this phenomenon simply goes away. You make smarter food choices because you get used to feeling, imagine this, GOOD.
Add to the fact that when you practice hot yoga, you are also making subtle changes to your energetic body, what is called the animaya kosha in Sanskrit, and your very cells and you will soon be addicted to good eating, sleeping and drinking behaviors instead of bad ones. Three pieces of chocolate cake no longer seem appealing. You’ll actually crave a big plate of salad or some broccoli instead. You burn calories in a hot yoga class, and this will help to burn fat, but you will also change your body chemistry so that your lifestyle choices change too. Hot yoga is a mental, physical and spiritual change that most people find quite phenomenal once they’ve experienced it.
