Is Not Exercising Just as Bad as Smoking?

I made a typo when I first published this post back in May, so I'm making the changes and publishing it again. Sorry for my bad editing.

When you see someone smoking, you might question “Why would you do that to yourself when you know it could kill you?” Do you react the same way when you know someone doesn’t exercise? You should.

You can always spot someone who doesn't exercise, has a bad diet, and has some health issues. It's usually obvious and most of the time it's from inactivity and eating the wrong foods. Inactivity is usually because of a busy lifestyle and eating the wrong foods is generally from eating in restaurants and too much snacking on the wrong foods or drinking the wrong drinks. 

When I was at a recent fitness seminar, one of the presenters reminded the audience that research has shown physical inactivity to be as deadly as smoking. I was shocked at this when I first heard it a couple of years ago, but I think I was just as shocked hearing it the second time. My guess is you are too. It’s hard to imagine being inactive could be comparable to smoking, but it is.

You wouldn’t dream of smoking (and if you do smoke, you’re likely trying to quit), so why poison yourself with inactivity? But many of us do. Nearly 80% of us don’t get the recommended amount of exercise. Many experts agree the inactivity epidemic is more concerning than the obesity epidemic. Obesity is just a result of inactivity and an unhealthy diet.

The benefits of exercise are numerous and irrefutable. It helps prevent heart disease, diabetes, breast and colon cancer, dementia, depression, and more. If you exercise, chances are you’ll live a longer, healthier life, period.

What’s so powerful about exercise? Take heart disease, for example. Heart disease is associated with inflammation in the body. Exercise is a natural inflammation fighter. When you move, your muscles send out anti-inflammatory chemicals.

Also, every time you get up and move, your blood sugar, cholesterol, and triglycerides improve. When you sit down, they get worse. It’s just about moving more. High blood sugar levels will keep you from losing fat. No matter how healthy your diet and how much you exercise, high blood sugar will keep you from losing fat. 

If you’re not active now, I’m sure it sounds overwhelming to start an exercise program. The good news is you can see health benefits with even a small amount of activity. Even taking a daily 5-minute walk around the office will improve your health. Slowly build up from there. Some health improvement are small and you can't notice them, but I think you can see the results of not being active over time. 

Ultimately, you want your goal to be 30 minutes  more, at least 5 days a week, of moderate exercise. We’re talking about a brisk walk– hard enough that you can talk comfortably but not able to sing. But take your time getting there. Throw in resistance exercises a couple of days a week, and you’re on track.

If you’ve tried exercise before and didn’t lose weight, don’t be discouraged. You are still getting health benefits even if you’re not shedding weight. If you’re overweight but active and fit, you can expect to live as long and healthy as someone who is normal weight and fit. Even if you’re obese, being active helps you live a longer, healthier life than a normal weight person who isn’t active. Losing body fat is about eating fresh, healthy foods. You can exercise and not lose weight and you will become a healthier person, but to lose fat you have to change your diet.

Think you’re too old for it to matter? Hardly. Regardless of your age, getting active has enormous benefits even in your 80s and beyond. We’re not just talking about living longer, but living better with a higher quality of life.

As British-American anthropologist, Ashley Montagu once said, “The idea is to die young as late as possible.”

I write about losing weight, how to lose weight, what foods to eat when you're trying to lose weight and exercise that will help you lose weight. 

I wrote an ebook that will give you all the info in one read. It's a how-to book that also tells you about the mistakes I made and how to avoid them.

My ebook is available at www.amazon.com, www.B&N.com, iBooks (download the app), kobo.com, scribd.com and many more. My ebook will go on sale for $1.99. This special will only last for a limited time.

Should You Weight Yourself Daily?

If you are struggling with overweight or obesity, or otherwise would like to maintain your weight or prevent obesity, you may be wondering if it would be beneficial to weigh yourself frequently, and, if so, how frequently.  Recent research has finally shed some light on this question.

Benefits of Daily Weights

A recent study has shown that weighing yourself daily—and then plotting your daily weights on a chart every day—can improve your weight-loss progress, particularly if you are making changes in your dietary habits and specifically trying to lose weight.

Researchers tested daily self-weighing and visual feedback (in the form of the daily weight chart) to see how helpful this could be as a weight-loss and weight maintenance tool over the course of two years. The study authors found a significant difference in weight loss, which was greater in the group weighing themselves daily. This was particularly true for male participants.

Another study also found that daily weighers lost significantly more weight than those who weighed themselves less than daily.

And yet another study, which looked at the effects of daily weighing on weight loss over a six-month period of time, found that those participants who weighed themselves daily were able to lose significantly more weight than those who weighed themselves less frequently.

The Right Combination

What these and other studies seem to show is that it is the combination of weighing one’s self daily and keeping track of these daily weights in a visual format--whether by a chart, graph, or other means—that is most beneficial for helping to achieve meaningful weight loss.

Additionally, since a common mistake that leads to weight gain is not weighing yourself with any frequency, it stands to reason that one way to stay on top of your weight and prevent obesity is to step on that scale every day. If you wait until your pants or skirt are too tight, you’ve waited too long to check in on your weight.

Do yourself a favor and let an objective measurement of your weight, such as the scale, and of your waistline, such as your waist circumference, be the information on which you rely to tell you whether or not you are slowly gaining weight. These, along with body mass index (BMI), are objective measures that you can compare with nationally recommended ranges.

Best Way to Weigh Yourself

The best way to weigh yourself is on the same scale, at the same time, every day. I advise my patients to weigh themselves first thing in the morning on their home scales before eating anything, preferably before they step into the shower so they are not wearing any clothing that can contribute to the final total weight.

For menstruating women, weights can fluctuate depending on the time of month and cycle, and for everyone, weight can vary by a few pounds dependent upon salt intake and water retention. Keeping a log of your weights will show you your patterns over a few months and the relationship of your weight to hormonal and dietary factors.

Your weight will fluctuate from one day to the next and that's normal but weighing every day will keep your mind on the goal, it helps to keep you focused. At the end of a week, you want to see that you're moving in the right direction. And if you log weight, exercise, food, and drinks you can see where your mistakes are and you will slip, but that's normal too. The log will help you get back on track.

I write E-books and blogs about fitness and weight loss. I’ll show you the cheapest, inexpensive way to lose weight. Right now and for a limited time, my E-book, "How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight”, is $1.99 on all the major sites. Amazon.com, iBooks, B&N.com, Scribd.com, Kobo.com and many others in several other countries. 

How Healthy Are You?

Surprisingly Simple Longevity Tests

Most of us think that we're in good enough shape. We tend to judge ourselves by other about the same age. Actually, that's probably not good. We tend to judge ourselves by others who aren't in good condition. I don't know anyone who compares himself with the 80 year olds that Golf three times a week. If you don't know anyone like that it might be you don't live in Arizona or Florida.

Your physical condition is a good indicator of "how long you'll live". Most people think they're in better shape than they really are. As a result, they're usually shocked to find out the results. Try it for yourself.

No one can predict exactly how long you'll live, but researchers have devised some surprisingly simple tests that are strongly correlated with a risk of early death - or a longer life - in the years to come.  Here's a look at some basic ways scientists are attempting to assess your physical capability and the associated chances of living longer.

1.   Sitting-Rising Test:  Developed in the late 1990s by Brazilian scientist Claudio Gil Soares de Araujo at Gama Filho University in Rio de Janeiro, this test simply involves going from a standing position in a small (2 meters by 2 meters) area to a sitting position on the floor, and then rising again.

Subjects are scored according to how many supports they require to perform the cycle: a point lost for using a hand, forearm, or knee, for example, to either sit or stand.  Another half-point is deducted for generally unstable execution.  A total of 10 points can be achieved for each full cycle.

In a 2014 paper published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, Araujo and others discovered that older adults had a 5 times greater risk of mortality during the 6.3-year follow-up period, if they scored only 0-3 points on the test, relative to the top-performers scoring between 8-10 points.  A total of 2002 adults between the ages of 51 and 80 years participated in the study.

Araujo's team writes that the Sitting-Rising Test (SRT) is a simple gauge of musculoskeletal fitness, with the capacity to predict mortality among community-dwelling adults in this age range.

Another version is the Chair Rise Speed Test, which calculates how many times you can rise from a chair and sit back down again, within a minute.

 A 2014 paper published in the British Medical Journal compared the fastest sitters with the slowest among 2766 53-year old adults. At baseline, women performed anywhere from 21 stands/minute on the low end to almost 37 stands/minute.  The range among men was just under 22 stands/minute for the low performers, to 39 stands/minute at the high end.

After 13 years, those of either gender who performed poorest at the outset had more than twice the risk of death from any cause when compared with those with a higher chair rise speed at the start of the study.

2.    Grip Strength:   The strength of your hand grip is typically measured using an electronic dynamometer.  In numerous studies, a stronger grip has been linked with lower all-cause mortality, especially among older adults. In the 2014 UK study of adults aged 53, women's grip strength ranged from 21kg (46lb) to almost 34kg (75lb), while the men squeezed from 36kg (79lb) to 54.5kg (120lb).  Averaged across both sexes, and taking other risk factors like body mass index, smoking status and physical activity levels into account, the 53-year olds with the poorest grip strength had anywhere from a 29% to 98% greater risk of death from any cause during the 13 years of follow-up.

3.    Standing Balance Time:  The same 2014 BMJ paper examined how long its subjects could stand on one foot with their eyes closed.

 The resulting times were short, with a maximum average of just 19 seconds for men, and 10 seconds for women.  The good news: achieving simply those brief standing balance times was linked with lower mortality.  Poor performers of the standing balance test -  clocking in at just 3 seconds for both women and men - had a 2.5 greater chance of dying from any cause, during the 13-year study.

4.    Sitting Height:  If you think your overall height is the only tallness measure researchers are interested in, you're wrong.  Sitting height, an anthropometric measurement which compares the relative proportions of the torso and legs, has been linked in Western populations to the incidence of heart disease. Greater leg length (and less relative sitting height) has been viewed as an indicator of better childhood health, which may protect against age-related illnesses like heart disease and diabetes in adulthood.  

Data on other ethnic populations are less clear, however; a 2007 Chinese study found that greater sitting height was linked to more diabetes and abnormal lipid levels (dyslipidemia), whereas a 2011 paper published in the International Journal of Epidemiology found no relationship between height (including sitting height) with mortality among 136,202 adults in the Shanghai Women's and Men's Health Studies.

5.    Gait Speed:  Can how fast you naturally walk say anything about your longevity?  Yes - according to epidemiologists from the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere, in their 2011 paper published in JAMA. The researchers examined 9 separate studies involving a total of 34,485 participants and found that among both sexes, gait speed was linked with survival at all ages. A natural gait speed of 0.8 metres/second (about 1.8 miles/hour) corresponded with average life expectancy for each age; walking faster than that as a natural pace was linked with better than average longevity.

Since walking requires energy, balance, and engages multiple organ systems to work together, the researchers suggest slower speed may indicate hidden illness or poor overall conditioning.

6.    Waist to Height Ratio:  Some researchers believe that waist to height ratio - calculated by dividing the waist circumference in centimetres by a person's height (also measured in centimetres) is a better predictor of disease than weight or body mass index.  The advice is simple: keep your abdominal fat down, and make sure your waist measurement is not greater than half your height.

Bottom line:  These tests are simple tools to measure the statistical probability of an early death, as indicators of overall health and conditioning.  You can improve your own odds of living a long, healthy life by staying physically active, eating an anti-aging diet, staying active within your social circle, keeping stress at bay, not smoking, and drinking only in moderation.

Medical science knows little about how long human should live. They can only go by past records. But they do predict that humans will live longer in the future because we are learning more about the body and what we need to do to take care of ourselves. The benefits of living a healthy lifestyle will be to age slower and to stay young longer and if that leads to a longer life, okay, but for me, I want to enjoy my days as long as a can. 

If you really want to lose your body fat than look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $1.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, B&N.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com, just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

Follow the 80/20 Rule for Losing Weight

What I want you to know is that living a healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to be complicated. It is not something you are “on or off” like that “diet” word I don’t advocate. To help you meet your fitness goals, I’ve rounded up nine simple tricks I do as a fitness trainer and you can do too. Get ready to live your healthiest life possible.

1. Follow the 80/20 rule. Eat healthy 80 percent, or most of the time. This rule is easy to follow because you can assess your day or week and know if most of the choices you are making are healthy.

Choose to eat clean (real food!) most of the time and use that 20 percent as your wiggle room. I’m probably more like 90/10 but if you can aim for 80/20, that’s great. If you eat fresh produce and lean proteins most of the time and have a dish of ice cream on the weekend, you are following the rule. Plan for indulgences.  I know this can work if you don't overindulge. That's the reason most people can't make the 80/20 rule work for them. Instead of indulging on a bowl of ice cream once a week, they want to indulge every day with something small thinking it won't hurt the diet, but it does hurt and it will cause your diet to fail. When your diet gets you a 1 or 2-pound weight loss every week, it doesn't take much to erase that loss. 

2. Stick to the 2-day rule for exercise

I never go more than two days in a row without exercise, even if I am traveling. If I ever miss two days in a row, I will do whatever it takes to get a workout in on that third day, even if it’s running stairs inside of a building.

Using this rule will help you build routine and rhythm around your workouts. You can skip any guilt-trip you give yourself and just get right back into exercise on day three. Now you have a realistic game plan to keep you exercising for the long haul. Rules that fit the reality of “life happens” are rules you can work into your lifestyle.

3. Strength Training

Strength training builds muscle, improves posture, strengthens bone density, and increases confidence and quality of life. Having muscles is key to performing daily activities (gardening, home repair, picking up the kiddos) and there are a ton of benefits to feeling stronger and more confident as a person.

Strength training can reduce the risk of degenerative diseases and the overall quality of life. As we age, our strength levels and metabolism both decrease. That’s why it’s so important to stress your body through exercise so it can grow stronger. Plus, the more muscle you gain, the more calories you burn at rest!

4. Never skip breakfast

Breakfast sets the tone for your day. When you skip breakfast or don’t eat until several hours after you are awake, you are more likely to overeat at lunch or make less than healthy choices because your hunger is driving the bus. Eat a satisfying protein-based breakfast to start your day off fueled and strong. It doesn't have to be complicated—some of the best breakfasts are no-cook! 

5. Find exercises that you like.

Some people love exercise and can’t live without it and some people claim to hate it... and there’s a whole range of opinions in the middle.

Search for a form of exercise you love. When you love an activity, no one has to convince you to do it. You won’t have to work on your commitment to go to spin class or lift weights at the gym if those are both activities you love to do. Maybe you pick a group sport. Join a new gym. Find adult dance classes. Do aerial yoga at a studio, or resistance band training at home. You could surprise yourself with your love of running, or kettlebells.

I’m a professed group fitness junkie and can’t get enough of spinning, conditioning classes, and boot camps. So what’s your calling? Perhaps it’s nature, hiking the trails. You’ve just got to keep trying different exercises on until you’ve found the right fit for you.

6. Keep a positive attitude

Living with a positive attitude is something I preach and live because nothing productive happens out of negativity. I’ve got science on my side because research shows that when you are happy first, you are more likely to succeed in life. Having that positive attitude and being optimistic gives you the ability to set goals, believe in yourself and look for solutions to challenges.

With the right mindset, you have faith in your abilities and you are more likely to take action steps to reach your goals. Like attracts like, so if you are positive, it’s like opening your arms up for all the positive things coming right back at you. 

7. Drink Lemon Water

Every single morning, before I eat or drinking anything—and that includes my coffee—I reach for a big glass of lemon water. I squeeze about half a lemon into 12 to 16 ounces of room temperature water and sip. So simple, yet so good for your body! This has always been of my favorite tips to share with people who ask for an easy, start today tip, for better health. Lemon water flushes out toxins, balances your pH levels, and boosts your immunity. 

8. Do HIIT exercises

Okay, I’m partial to HIIT (high intensity,S interval training) because I love intense workouts, but I also love HIIT because you will see results.

HIIT is a type of workout where you give maximum effort through quick intense bursts of exercise followed by short recovery periods. HIIT workouts train and condition both your aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. You get your heart rate up and improve your cardiovascular fitness level while burning more fat and calories in less time.

So what is HIIT? It's nothing more than starting off slow and after you want up speed up for 1 minute, then slow down for 1 or 2 minutes, then speed up for 1 minute, and repeat that routine for 6 times and that interval training. Read up about HIIT and see if it works for you. 

9. Never go out to eat starving

If you are watching calories, you might think skipping meals leading up to a party can help you save up your calories for the party, but that’s asking for trouble. When you go to a party or cookout starving, you are more likely to overeat and eat all the wrong things.

It’s okay to be hungry when you head out the door, but don’t go famished or you will eat too much and regret it later. Have a handful of nuts or something healthy that takes the edge off your hunger before you head out.

I write E-books and blogs about fitness and weight loss. I’ll show you the cheapest, inexpensive way to lose weight. Right now and for a limited time, my E-book, "How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight”, is $1.99 on all the major sites. Amazon.com, iBooks, B&N.com, Scribd.com, Kobo.com, and many other sites around the world.

Exercise and Fat

Author Laurie J. Goodyear, PhD, is a senior investigator at Joslin Diabetes Center

I had to copy this post for my readers because this author has it right. Most dieters are not doing the right exercise to help them burn fat. Most people step on the scale and all they see is the number and they don't bother thinking about what the number means. Most of the time it means you adding more fat, which means you need to lose fat and that's more than just losing weight.

Most people know that exercise burns fat. It’s the reason most people hit the treadmill in the first place.

But fat isn’t just a place we park extra calories. “The tissue has a lot of other properties.

“Exercise really makes fat healthier and helps it burn more energy.”

Specifically, she says, exercise shrinks the size of individual fat cells, and the cells develop more energy-producing parts called mitochondria.

That means that fat tissue is burning more calories, even at rest, Goodyear says.

“What we’ve realized is that fat isn’t simply storage,” she says. “We see about 4,000 genes in fat tissue change with exercise. It’s not just that fat cells get smaller.”

Exercise also affects the lining of blood vessels, a layer of tissue called the endothelium that’s just a single cell thick. When this layer of tissue is damaged, it’s easier for dangerous blood clots to form.

Science has discovered that when the body is inactive, the cells in the endothelium get sluggish and don’t sit in the vessel wall properly. But exercise, which causes blood to flow more swiftly and under greater pressure, realigns the cells.

About 12 hours after a single bout of exercise, the cells have repositioned themselves to be in line with the flow of blood. This helps blood vessels work better, keeping them open and elastic, rather than stiff, narrow, and clogged.

In the brain, recent studies have shown that physical activity makes the brain more connected by bulking up the white matter, the wiring that transmits signals between nerve cells. And older adults who exercise have more gray matter in areas of the brain responsible for self-control, memory, and decision-making.

Exercise also beats medication for some ailments. In head-to-head tests, it works as well or better than pills for depression. In other conditions, like Alzheimer’s and arthritis, it’s been shown to delay disability.

It’s enough to convince anyone to lace up. Or at least it should be.

Yet that message seems to be falling on deaf ears. This year’s survey by the Physical Activity Council found that 28% of Americans say they are totally inactive. It’s the highest level of physical inactivity measured by the survey since 2007.

To keep himself healthy, he tracks his own steps every day.

If you're ready to get going but not sure where to start, Thyfault recommends three levels of fitness.

He says level one is just to walk and keep track of your steps. You can do this with a trendy fitness tracker, but even an inexpensive pedometer or a smartphone app will do the trick. Your goal should be at least 8,000 steps a day.

Once you’re hitting that goal on a regular basis, level two is to do three to five defined exercise sessions each week, with a goal of 30 to 45 minutes of aerobic activity -- like running or pedaling on an elliptical -- each time.

Level three is to add a couple of days of resistance training each week.

Goodyear agrees and says getting more exercise will make a difference you can feel. “I always feel that if I’m consistently exercising I have more energy. People sleep better when they exercise routinely, and then your body just becomes more efficient,” she says. When your body is working better you feel better, your happier and you have more energy.

I write E-books and blogs about fitness and weight loss. I’ll show you the cheapest, inexpensive way to lose weight. Right now and for a limited time, my E-book, "How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight”, is $1.99 on all the major sites. Amazon.com, iBooks, B&N.com, Scribd.com, Kobo.com and many others in several other countries. 

Avoiding Stress Will Help You Lose Weight

We can have stress and not even know it. A fast paced life is 

stressful. Stress will cause a person to concentrate on those things 

that worry them most. They lose their focus on their everyday life. 

They start to forget about their normal routine and look for a way to cut time from their schedule. They stop working out or just walking with friends and they stop doing the regular chores like cooking at 

home. They spend more time watching TV because it takes your 

mind off the stress that's worrying them. Stress is one of the biggest 

causes of obesity. It will make you less active.

People will stop eating real food and just start filling up on snack food and bottled or canned drinks. All of this is 

caused by stress. Eating too much snack food, not preparing real 

food, not caring about your food and not caring about exercise. All 

of these are signs of a downward cycle that are heading toward 

obesity. And the food manufacturers are happy to help you.

Because of our stressful lifestyles, we are constantly looking for 

convenience and preparing meals is close to the top of the list of 

those conveniences. Supermarkets are great but all the food is not always healthy. Supermarkets have to sell all types 

of food and some of it is processed food. Processed food is 

manufactured and not grown. Convenience foods and even restaurant food will only add more fat to your body. When you're trying to lose weight avoid foods that you aren't making at home. This is a good way to simplify your life by taking some of the hustle out of it. Try to take a lot of the aggravation out of life by organizing everything just a little better. 

You can make quick meals and they can still be healthy. By planning your meals and plan for shopping ahead of time by knowing what's for dinner before you go to the store. Shopping out of habit and just buying the same stuff week after week might be the expensive way to shop. Planning your meals before you shop maybe the easiest and cheapest way to shop. And by organizing just that much of your life can make a big difference in your stress level. The less stress in your life the happier you will be. You're also going to be more organized and be a better decision maker.  

I write E-books and blogs about fitness and weight loss. I’ll show you the cheapest, inexpensive way to lose weight. Right now and for a limited time, my E-book, "How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight”, is $1.99 on all the major sites. Amazon.com, iBooks, B&N.com, Scribd.com, Kobo.com and many others in several other countries. 

Yoga for Weight Loss

The Surprising Weight Loss Benefits Of Yoga

While walking around your city, you’ve probably seen a variety of yoga studios—everything ranging from Bikram to Anusara, Jivamukti, and Vinyasa yoga. Bikram is known for hot rooms and sweat-dripping bodies, while vinyasa is all about the flow of movements.

If your goal is to get lean and lose body fat, you might be wondering whether, or how, yoga fits into your program. There are a multitude of benefits to practicing yoga, but does yoga help with weight loss?

Yoga Only Burns 3-6 Calories Per Minute

In order to lose body fat, you have to create a deficit of calories. If you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight, and one pound of fat is equivalent to about 3500 calories.

Yoga classes often endure for about 60-90 minutes. According to research done by the American Council on Exercise, the average individual burns about 3-6 calories per minute practicing yoga, which equates to a total of only 180-360 calories burned during that class. In contrast, a kettlebell workout burns about 13-17 calories per minute, which equals about 800+ calories burned in an hour. That’s a significant difference in calorie expenditure.

While it depends on the type and intensity of the class– certain styles of yoga are much more rigorous such as power yoga, hot yoga, and vinyasa, whereas yin yoga, restorative, and hatha yoga are more gentle and slower-paced. Regardless of the intensity of the yoga class, circuit training is still superior in terms of overall metabolic boost and calorie burn.

But even with the calorie difference, yoga has other benefits that can help the weight-loss individual.

…But Yoga Can Still Be Effective For Weight Loss. Here’s Why

From 2000-2002, medical researcher and yogi Alan Kristal, in association with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, conducted a study on the effects of yoga on weight-loss. The study surveyed 15,500 middle-aged men and women about their physical activity and weight over time, controlled for factors such as diet, health, and other forms of exercise that could cause changes in weight. The study found that both over-weight and normal-weight adults who regularly practiced yoga for at least 4 years were less likely to gain weight than those who did not practice yoga. In fact, those who were overweight and practiced yoga actually lost an average of 5lbs during the four-year period, whereas the overweight non-practitioners gained about 14lbs.

If calorie expenditure didn’t account for weight maintenance or loss, what did? The researchers found a strong association between a regular yoga practice and mindful eating, which they did not find in other activities such as walking or running.

How Can Yoga Help You Lose Weight?

Reasons that yoga might help the weight loss process include:

Effective stress management, reducing the likelihood of stress eating

Increased body awareness, specifically relating to hunger and satiety

Mindfulness and mindful eating

Although practicing yoga doesn’t burn the most calories, it might still have a place in your workout routine. An effective fat loss program that encourages maintenance of lean muscle and maximizes calorie burn should be founded on a combination of resistance training and cardiovascular activity. 

However, yoga could be used as active recovery and flexibility training between more intense workouts. The benefits of stress reduction and mindfulness associated with yoga could lead to improved sleep, better eating habits, and increased self-awareness, which could mean more weight loss and improved maintenance of weight loss will result over time. No matter how bad you want to lose weight you can't work out hard every day. A hard workout is hard on your muscles and those muscles need time to rebuild, so you have to spread out those hard work outs. 

Regardless of the exercise you’re doing, however, good nutrition is essential. If you’re not paying attention to your diet, you won’t see the results you want. Exercise right, eat clean, and you’ll be able to realize your goals.

I write E-books and blogs about fitness and weight loss. I’ll show you the cheapest, inexpensive way to lose weight. Right now and for a limited time, my E-book, "How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight”, is $1.99 on all the major sites. Amazon.com, iBooks, B&N.com, Scribd.com, Kobo.com and many others in several other countries.