Can Yoga Help with Weight Loss

Honestly, I hesitated to touch on this topic since I know it's delicate for many people. But, I hear this question frequently from the people I work with and the most popular yoga videos on Youtube are Yoga for Weight Loss and Burn Fat with Yoga. So I thought it appropriate to sit down and have some real talk about yoga and weight loss. I want to avoid moralizing and making judgements. If you’re living with overweight obesity and you own it, that’s your choice. If you want to lose weight, that’s great. This is just what you should know if you’re trying to lose weight and you want to make yoga a part of that process.

The facts of weight loss

Let’s start by getting ourselves straight regarding weight loss in general. Weight loss (or gain) is the product of energy balance. That’s CICO, calories in, calories out. If your input is greater than your output you gain weight. If your output is greater than your input, you lose weight. Now, I can already hear the objections, ‘There’s more to weight loss than CICO'. 'It’s not that simple.' 'Genetics.'  'Environment.' 'The Food Industry.’ And you’re right, on all of those. On its own, calories in, calories out is a bit of a tautology. If would be like me asking you, ‘Why do some people get richer and some people get poorer?’ and you tell me, ‘Well, the people getting richer are putting more money into the bank than they take out.’  Sure, it’s true. But it doesn't tell us very much about WHY.

The same with weight loss. Calories in calories out is true. We can’t argue with physics. But as a reason it’s not very helpful. We’re really interested in why some people burn more calories than they eat and others eat more than they burn. If we understand that, then we can begin to see the ways that yoga may be able to help, and you can decide if yoga really is the best option for you.

How effective is yoga at burning calories?

So, what are the ways yoga can influence energy balance? Let’s start with the most obvious. Yoga is movement, therefore yoga burns calories. Any kind of movement practice is going to contribute to your total daily energy expenditure. The kind of yoga you do is going to determine how many calories that is. According to the WebMD exercise calculator for a 160lb person:

• 30 minutes of vigorous power yoga burns about 250 calories. 
• 30 minutes of a more general flow type of class burns 160 calories. 
• And 30 minutes of hatha yoga burns about 90 calories. 

Now, honestly, I don’t know what criteria WebMD uses to distinguish ‘power yoga’ vs ‘hatha’ so I played around a bit and found some equivalent values. 

• 30 minutes of power yoga burning 250 calories is about equivalent to 30 minutes of jogging at a 5 mile an hour pace. 
• 30 minutes of flow yoga, burning 160 calories is about equivalent to walking quickly for 30 minutes, between 3.5 to 4 miles per hour. 
• 30 minutes of hatha yoga, burning 90 calories is about equivalent to walking slowly for 30 minutes, at about 2 miles an hour. 

So, how effective is yoga at burning calories? It's about as effective as going for a walk or a jog, depending on how vigorous your practice is…. If you can do it.

The problem with doing yoga to burn calories

There is a problem with doing the 'Yoga for weight loss' videos in order to burn calories. I took a look at some of the most popular classes on youtube and I saw a lot of plank pose and downward facing dog variations. Most of them include a lot of arm and shoulder work. If you have strong arms and shoulders this might not be a problem for you. But, in my experience most people’s arms and shoulders are going to give out way before their heart and lungs do. How many of you have tried a ‘yoga cardio’ class but had to stop, not because you were out of breath, but because your arms just couldn’t do any more planks with good form?

As far as just straight burning calories goes, I think most people are going to have an easier time burning more calories by just walking more, or running more. I know that for me, I certainly have a much easier time walking briskly for 30 minutes than doing 30 minutes of chaturanga, updog downdog.

Not to suggest that you shouldn’t be challenging yourself with difficult poses. That brings us to the next point. Another way that yoga can influence your energy balance is by increasing your metabolism.

How yoga can increase your metabolism

Here I’m going to assume that by ‘yoga’ we’re basically talking about 'calisthenic conditioning.' The kind of yoga that includes planks, lunges, core work etc. In other words, the kind of yoga that is resistance training. 

If you are using your muscles to move against resistance, whether that resistance is created by a dumbbell in your hand or by your body and gravity, if you move against resistance your muscles adapt by becoming stronger and bigger. Muscle is metabolically active tissue, the more you have of it, the higher your metabolism will be. Even when you’re at rest, you’ll be burning more calories if you have more muscles.

So if you are trying to lose weight, in my mind the real value of doing those 30 minutes of chaturanga, updog, downdog,  is not in the direct number of calories burned, but in the gradual increase in metabolism you get from building up muscle tissue over time. There are a couple of challenges to practicing yoga as resistance training. In order to continue adding muscle you must continue increasing resistance. That can be tricky with yoga, it mean learning more challenging poses and transitions. Overall I’d say that yoga is pretty good at building muscle and increasing metabolism, especially if you’re a beginner. But, the most effective way to build muscle is with more traditional weight lifting.

Yoga make other activities more accessible 

The other major benefit to practicing yoga as resistance training is that it can be incredibly good at preparing your body to participate in other activities. Going back to walking or jogging for example. I know some of you would like to be doing more walking or jogging but struggle with recurring pain in your hips or knees or back etc. Yoga, if you’re managing the resistance appropriately and practicing with good form, is an excellent way to rebuild the strength and stability you need to be more active in other areas of your life. 

How yoga can affect your diet

And, finally, I’m going to mention one more way that yoga can influence your energy balance. This time it has to do with the input side of the equation. Yoga, ultimately, is a practice of balance and mindfulness. If you adopt yoga as a lifestyle rather than just exercise, it’s going to affect how you eat (as well as every other facet of your life) . That doesn’t mean you have to become a vegan, I’m not going to make any specific recommendations for what to eat.

But approaching how you eat in a yogic way does mean being mindful of how you eat and what you eat. It means paying attention to your habits around food and thinking about the quality of food you’re eating. If you are trying to lose weight, often that extra bit of attention is enough to confront habits like eating out of boredom or consuming a diet that is mostly processed food for example. The bottom line here is that if you are trying to lose weight, adopting a ‘yogic’ approach to eating can often help you feel satiated with fewer calories.

So, in summary, three factors are going to come into play when you’re on a weight loss journey. How many calories you’re burning with exercise and other activities. Your metabolism, how many calories you’re burning generally throughout the day. And your diet, what kinds of food you choose to eat. Yoga can be your ally in all three of these, but it's not magic. It’s not necessarily better than any other kind of exercise. The only reasons I can think to make yoga your movement practice of choice are: number one, you like yoga are more motivated to practice it and number two, if you’re struggling to rebuild strength and mobility and other movement disciplines are available to you yet.