wellness hub

How yoga can help you lose weight

Our lives are busy, stressful and sometimes this can have an impact on our weight loss goals despite feeling like we are training consistency and eating well.  Pinnacle Wellness founder, Emma went through this journey personally and introduced yoga into her life as she needed this outlet to help manage her stress levels which in turn improved her body’s ability to manage stress and achieve her goals.  Read more about the benefits of adding just one yoga class per week into your routine.

Feel like your working hard in the gym, eating right and not losing weight? Find out how slowing down and adding a yoga class to your schedule can help you finally shift the weight.

It’s one of the most common complaints we receive from members and clients, that they’re struggling with their weight loss goals, despite eating well and exercising regularly. A common problem for gaining weight and struggling to shift it is stress, and managing our very busy, plugged in lives is conducive to high stress.

Our bodies don’t handle long term stress very well. Our body doesn’t perceive emotional stress (where most of our stress comes from in modern day) differently to physical stress and so it switches on it’s self-protective system for storing energy and shuts down our fat burning mechanism. Essentially our bodies think that it may be a while before we have access to food again (although obviously not the case in Western society), and so prepares itself by storing calories for later use.

While exercise is important for our health and stress relief, when we are chronically stressed, intense exercise can actually be counterproductive to losing weight as it further stimulates the stress response. Fad diets also do this to the body.

So what should we do? Incorporating exercise or techniques that de-stress and promote the parasympathetic nervous system, so that the body can react the way we would like it to when participating in higher intensity exercise (i.e. burn fat). One way we recommend you can do this, is to incorporate a yoga session into your week (more is great of course but if you’re new to yoga, one is a very good start).  Yoga does just that by focussing on breath and mindfulness. It’s a fantastic way to move the body, and even better at supporting you in our fast-paced worlds. Plus you’ll learn some great breathing techniques that you can take away and use in your everyday life to de-stress.

What type of yoga should I participate in?

Of course if you tend to be attracted to high-intensity exercise, then you may be resistant to this advice, but in fact, it’s very suitable for you.

Whilst you may be inclined to attend a Hot Vinyasa/Power Flow because you think that if you don’t sweat that you have wasted your time, in fact a gentle flow, yang and yin, yin or restorative are the styles we recommend to compliment a nervous system calmness and to bring your cortisol levels down.

Plus other benefits of Yoga

Yoga has a range of benefits, from strengthening the mind and body, increasing flexibility to promoting good energy and a sense of calm and clarity for the day post yoga. You may even find you have a better outlook on life and approach things in a more positive way!

We offer a complimentary session into our yoga basics or gentle flow if you’re considering incorporating yoga into your week but have never tried it before. Or as a bonus, we include a yoga session weekly as part of our 6 week change program.