Can you really lose weight by doing yoga? Heck Yes!
I see many clients every single week and I have noticed a commonality within all my type A, highly driven, ambitious over-achieving clients who are trying to lose 5, 10, 20, 30, 40lbs – you are all stuck in a rut with your bootcamps, obsessive running, P90x, Insanity and yes sometimes even too much of my Sculpted class and can’t lose weight. You might weigh yourself everyday and glare at the scale in disbelief because your heart rate monitor tells you that you just burned 500 calories and yet week after week you see no change on that darn scale.
Now, you might get a little irritated from me telling you this, but that’s precisely what you need to hear right now. Wanna know the secret to reaching your goals (provided they are reasonable and you are not being overly-critical of your perfectly healthy body), you need to CHILL OUT. Yes, it’s that simple. And how do you do this? Get yourself on a yoga mat and get yourself to a class.
I know what you are thinking right now. No I’m not a mind reader but over the past few years I’ve heard the Type A personalities tell me countless times “Yoga is not for me, I don’t feel like I get a workout at all and I can’t relax, I find myself bored”. Sound familiar? I’m not poking fun at you. That used to be my opinion too. I thought yoga was for crunchu granola-types who really enjoyed humming to themselves…
I thought it wasn’t for me because I loved (and still do) the running high, always moving at 150% in everything I did. Until about 9 years ago, during a time when I was running 5 days per week and teaching 9 classes per week plus lifting weights 3 other days per week. I walked into a class led by ‘my’ teacher Theresa that completely changed the way I felt about yoga. She moved us in a way that both challenged and calmed my body and my mind.
Here’s the deal. Over-achievers tend to be in constant sympathetic nervous mode, just like I was and it makes it nearly impossible to lose weight. Sure you might have an initial weight loss of a few pounds, especially if you are working long hours and barely eating, but that will eventually catch up to you. Your body will start to get used to the famine-mode and go into starvation-mode holding on to every calorie your consume because it’s fears it will need to go into survival mode again.
Now you naysayers might be reading this thinking that cortisol, the main stress hormone is catabolic (break-down), while this might be true, the effect in the long-term of high stress promotes weight gain. Why? Various reasons for this to happen. Cortisol, if constantly elevated, can wreak havoc on all your other hormones like insulin and your appetite control hormones. Or worse, you burn out your adrenals which can negatively impact your thyroid. The thyroid is an extremely important organ for managing your metabolic rate.
If your cortisol is high all day from your demanding job, the best thing to do is chill out with a yoga class to LOWER stress. More often then not though, you end your day with a stress-inducing long run further elevating your cortisol, then guess what happens? You crave comfort-carbs. Cortisol does a mighty fine job at lowering serotonin which is a neurotransmitter responsible for appetite control, keeping you calm, satisfied and joyous. So because the body is so incredibly brilliant, it will crave carbs to get that artificial feeling of calmness from carbs. Of all my sugar-addicted clients, the ones who seem to struggle with this addiction the most (sugar cravings = alcohol abuse, excessive eating of refined carbs, or carbs of any nature really, candy, baked goods etc) are often the ones beating up their bodies on the treadmill or going to five bootcamps a week.
It’s all about balance. You become so incredibly reconnected and acquainted with your body when you slow down that it helps your body lose that excess weight it’s hold on to. Learning to let go is one of the hardest things to do. But when you do, when you slooooooooooow down, you learn to love yourself more, honour how you are truly feeling and CHILL OUT.
Now what are you waiting for? Get a mat and get your ASANA to class
Namaste xo