Weight Loss and Yoga - Estranged Bed Partners?

2006-09-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

By Jeanette Pollock

When you primarily want to significantly and rapidly lose weight, experts and fitness gurus attest that yoga is not the exercise of fitness regime for you.

But is there any reason why yoga would not be highly recommended for weight loss?

Actually, it is a great and amusing fact that yoga and weight loss are estranged bed partners. It is because yoga also facilitate weight loss. When someone practice or do yoga, expect that there would be a corresponding weight loss that would follow suit.

Yoga truly is not the best and recommended exercise for weight reduction purposes, but it could greatly help. It is not to be compared to the widely popular calorie-burning and cardiovascular exercises.

However, yoga also facilitate for improved agility and strength in the large and core muscle groups of the body.

Doing yoga regularly and properly is said to be equivalent to running, walking, rollerblading, swimming and cycling.

Thus, when regularly done and practiced, yoga can also lead to a significant weight loss, to the advantage of the exerciser.

Here are some yoga exercises that are so simple and are aimed at helping any person eventually lose weight in the long run. Take note that great and proper execution of each of these simple exercises are vital to the success of the weight-losing yoga practice.

FROG STAND

1. Lowly squat. Place the hands on the below ground, resting the triceps on top of the kneecaps. Then, tip forward, and lift the feet from the ground and into position similar to a balanced frog stand. Keep the position for 30 seconds.

2. Extend a leg in back, keeping it diagonally relative to the floor, at the same time elongating the neck to maintain balance.

3. Straighten the elbows, lift the legs, tip forward, then try to press up slowly into a handstand.

These exercise strengthen the whole shoulder girdle. These also help build up core muscles and enhance the body’s overall stamina.

BRIDGE

1. Lie down, faceup on the floor and then put the knees up, then feet flat and grasp ankles using the hand, drawing the heels close to the butt. Inhale, thrust the belly button up. Release the hands. Put palms up, then dig the thumbs into the tailbone and push the lumbar spine further up.

2. Move the hands palms-down near or beside each ear. Press up into a U shape inverted position.

The exercise will improve posture through strengthening the muscles along the spine. This would be very beneficial since people spend more than 90 percent of daily daytime existence in a slight and forward fold.

Do the exercises regularly or whenever you have the time to properly and orderly execute them and see the weigh loss or the difference in only just a span of a few days.

Jeanette Pollock is a regular article contributor on yoga and stress management. To learn more about yoga, please visit her website at http://www.justyogabasics.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeanette_Pollock

Understanding Metabolism and Weight Loss

2006-09-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

By Peter Cullen

Metabolism. There isn’t perhaps a more frequently used word in the weight loss (and weight gain) vocabulary than this. Indeed, it’s not uncommon to overhear people talking about their struggles – or triumphs – over the holiday bulge or love handles in terms of whether their metabolism is working, or not. Doctors, too, often refer to metabolism when they try and explain why starvation and water-loss diets aren’t scientifically or medically responsible; since, they do not influence or take into account metabolism (there’s that word again!).

So, for all of the usage that this rather daunting and biologically-charged word enjoys in our world, you’d comfortably assume that people understand it, right? Or, at least, they have some fundamental information when it comes to how to speed up their metabolism, right? Wrong!

Regrettably, many people simply don’t understand the concept of metabolism and metabolic change. This, equally as regrettably, is hardly their fault. There is so much information floating around out there, much of it over the ‘net or through a “friend of a friend who has a personal trainer”, that there’s bound to be some confusion and conflicting messages.

Furthermore, many people (quite understandably) mistake their own weight gain and loss episodes as a matter of metabolic change. Sometimes this is true, and sometimes it isn’t. For example, there are scientific ways to increase the rate of metabolic change, and thus enable the body to burn more calories. Eating certain foods more frequently is one way to do this. Yet another way to visibly lose weight – at least on a perceived, temporary level – is to sit in a steam room for a few hours. Whereas the former method (eating the right foods) is a real, proven weight loss method through increased metabolic change, the latter method (the steam room) is just temporary because the lost weight is merely water, and will return as swiftly as it “melted away”.

The point to remember here is that some people mistake their own weight loss attempts as being related to metabolic change; and, as you can see with the steam room example, that isn’t always the case.

Another big reason that people don’t have clear, consistent information on this topic is because, unfortunately, there are a lot of food and supplement companies on the market who don’t want you to know fact from fiction. They want you to believe that constantly buying “low fat” foods is going to somehow speed up your metabolism. While, yes, some low fat foods can play a role in an overall eating program that is designed to speed up metabolism, merely eating foods that come from packaging that screams “LOW FAT!” won’t do anything.

In fact, believe it or not, but many people actually gain weight when they eat too many “low fat” products. Many of these products are laden with calories from carbohydrates or proteins (which are still calories and still must be burned off or they turn into body fat).

As you can see, and probably feel from years of trying to unravel this whole metabolic mystery, this is a confusing, stressful, and indeed, potentially depressing situation.

Pete Cullen runs Boost-Your-Metabolism.com where you can read more about metabolism and weight loss. Visit http://www.Boost-Your-Metabolism.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Peter_Cullen