Over the past decade alone, yoga has exploded into a multi-million dollar industry. Nearly 21 million Americans actively participate in yoga, spending more than $10 billion a year on classes and products (including equipment, clothing, retreats and videos), with the majority of novice practitioners citing general wellness, stress management or weight loss as one of their primary motivations for taking up the practice.
However, the roots of yoga are spiritual, not physical, which is the way we think of yoga today. Body-focused yoga styles (that focus on toning, weight loss and physical transformations) are a modern, Western phenomenon. There's no doubt that the benefits yoga offers for the physical body appeals to Americans, even though yoga can be so much more than a physical fitness regimen.
So can yoga really help you lose weight? Is there any truth or science to claims that any set of yoga postures can boost your metabolism, help you slim down, or give you that coveted "yoga body"?
In my opinion, as a yoga instructor and practitioner for more than 20 years, yoga's fundamental precepts make it a formidable weight-loss contender—but not for the reasons you might think.
If we're simply looking at calorie for calorie*, when stacked against higher-intensity workouts like running (660 calories per hour), aerobics (460 calories per hour), competitive tennis (470 calories per hour) or swimming (400 calories per hour), yoga doesn't seem like a serious contender. Research shows that most styles of yoga (even "power" styles) don't elevate the heart rate to the same level as this other fitness pursuits, and that yoga doesn't burn as many calories as other aerobic activities. (At roughly 175 calories per hour, it's more akin to a light walk). *Calories burned estimates based on a 150-pound woman.
But these mainstream high-intensity exercise regimens can't hold a candle to yoga's long-term benefits. In the race for weight loss, yoga can truly be the dark horse, because, not just a calorie burner, the practice works on what's inside, both mentally and emotionally. Anyone who's ever lost weight and kept it off can attest that change has to happen there, too.
Yoga's rich legacy is imparted through each downward facing dog and warrior pose—whether practitioners realize it or not. Just like the accidental tourist who stumbles upon one of the world's seven wonders without a guidebook, the "accidental" yogi can actually reap the unforeseen reward of discovering one of life's most elusive, complex and confounding mysteries: not just how to lose weight, but how to keep it off.
My personal yoga journey took me from my back yard in Southern California to the East Coast, where my own thoughts and instincts about yoga and weight loss were corroborated. The resounding message, after interviewing yogis on both coasts, is that if you really invest yourself, not only can you lose weight doing yoga, but you can get to the root of your inner burdens and self-sabotage, putting into practice one of yoga's greatest precepts: letting go of what no longer serves you.
Yoga teaches us how to adopt a new lifestyle, which is the key to permanent change. It offers the practitioner what few other physical exercises can: a potent combination of ancient science and self-mastery, tools that facilitate the self-reflection required to discover why one gained weight in the first place, and the ability to literally (as they say in yoga-speak) "let it go."
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