If weight loss or fat burn is your ultimate goal, it's critical to establish a long-term health and wellness habit for yourself. While diets can be beneficial, the right amount of physical activity is critical to ensure weight and fat loss. Our Cult.fit Yoga expert Naveen Sharma has put together a list of must-do yoga asanas for weight loss, read on.
Yoga is a good option if you're looking for a low-impact activity that can help you lose weight, improve strength and flexibility, while also focusing on your mental health as a bonus. Like other workouts, it helps you lose weight by burning calories.
If you are new to yoga, here is a A Beginner’s Guide To Yoga which can help you get started.
An hour of yoga can help you burn as much as 180-360 calories! Another scientific reason as to why yoga aids with weight loss is that it stimulates the endocrine glands that control the metabolic rate, which speeds up the metabolism.
Wondering what exactly is metabolism? Read more about metabolism & metabolic damage.
When in stress, yoga helps your body respond to it more effectively by lowering your heart rate and blood pressure. When you're under less stress, you can maintain a healthy weight more easily. What does stress to to your body? - stress might throw off key hormones that help you control your appetite and may cause you to seek comfort food (which leads to weight gain). Hence, controlling your stress can assist you in losing weight as well.
In addition to this, just losing weight isn’t enough. It is also essential that you develop body strength and flexibility for holistic fitness. This helps you to perform your stances better and reap maximum benefits out of it.
Below are some Yoga asanas which help with weight loss while effectively building strength and flexibility,
Chaturanga Dandasana or Four Limbed Staff Pose
Benefits of Chaturanga Dandasana or Four Limbed Staff Pose
- Strengthens arms, wrists, and abdomen
- Improves back muscles and is beneficial for anyone suffering from back problems.
- Helps improve flexibility, balance, and stability
- Strengthens your triceps and biceps
- Strengthens your wrist muscles
- Helps tone the abdominal muscles while strengthening the core
Urdhva Mukha Svanasana or Upward Facing Dog Twist
Benefits of Urdhva Mukha Svanasana or Upward Facing Dog Twist
- Helps enhance posture
- Helps to strengthen your spine, arms, and wrists
- Helps stretch the chest muscles, lungs, as well as the shoulders and abdominal muscles
- Increases the capacity of the lungs to breath
Kaliasana or Crow Pose
Benefits of Kaliasana or Crow Pose:
- Helps open your hips, legs, and chest
- Helps strengthen your legs, calves, abs, and knees
- Helps stimulate the uro-genital system and the pelvic floor
- Helps open up the groin muscles
- Helps the shoulder joint to be strengthened and stretched
- Works your inner and outer thighs
Utkatasana or Chair Pose
Benefits of Utkatasana or Chair Pose
- Helps improve lung capacity and stamina
- Helps improve the strength of your arms, shoulders, legs, and ankles
- Helps aid in toning the muscles of the chest and back
- Helps in maintaining and improving the body’s balance, resulting in better posture
Dhanurasana or Bow Pose
Benefits of Dhanurasana or Bow Pose
- Stretches the abdomen and the abdominal organs stimulating the reproductive organs
- Helps strengthen the ankles, thighs, groins, chest, shoulders, neck, backbone, and abdominal muscles, making them flexible
- Helps you to shed calories and burn body fat, especially in the belly region
- Helps in toning the legs and arm muscles
- Helps stimulate the nerves in the navel region, offering better efficiency and improving the kidney and liver functions, digestive system, and reproductive system
- Helps in better blood circulation
- Helps with dyspepsia (obesity), rheumatism and gastrointestinal problems
Trikonasana or Revolved Triangle Pose
Benefits of Trikonasana or Revolved Triangle Pose
- Helps strengthen the bottom half of the body, particularly the thighs, calves, and buttocks.
- Helps aid in the alleviation of indigestion, gastritis, and acidity, as well as stimulating our neural system
- Helps in the alignment of the spine and shoulders
- The triangle position of trikonasana helps to alleviate tension in the lower back while also activating the core muscles
- It gives our body a sense of balance and stability
Parsvakonasana or Extended Side Angle Pose
Benefits of Parsvakonasana or Extended Side Angle Pose
- Helps stretch your hamstrings, adductors (groin muscles), and lats (latissimus dorsi—back muscles that assist support your spine)
- Strengthens your legs, knees, and ankles
- Helps tone your abdominal muscles and pelvic floor
Sounds Interesting? There is more!
If you are someone who is looking to start on this incredible journey of spiritual, physical and mental well-being while focussing on fat & weight loss; our Balanced Burn Program is perfect for you.
Our 4-Week Balanced Burn Program is designed to help you with fat reduction, building core strength along with improving flexibility with yoga. The program will be spread across over a span of 4 weeks with 5 sessions per week including Fridays and Sundays as rest days. The program will be a combination of affirmations, asana, breathwork, suryanamaskar, healthy lifestyle tips and daily 6k steps. It aims to follow a balanced approach towards fat loss, stronger core and flexibility while ensuring a calmer mind.
Join the program here.
Summing Up
Success in yoga necessitates consistency and perseverance. Even if you don't see the pounds drop on the weighing scale, the key is deliberate and diligent practice.
The characteristic of a seasoned practitioner is gradual improvement rather than vigorous or inconsistent practice. Weight loss is an indication of good practice, but it shouldn't be your primary objective. Other physical and mental benefits include improved cognitive performance, increased awareness, and increased resilience, to name a few.
So keep practicing Yoga, don't overdo it, and get advice from a professional. You'll not only reduce weight, but you'll also enjoy a slew of additional physical, mental, and emotional advantages.
More from
Weight Loss
category
