Within yoga's ability to create total well-being, lies its ability to reduce excess weight through burning calories, boosting metabolism and encouraging a healthy lifestyle. A 2018 study found that people who had restricted sleep five times per week lost less fat than the group that followed their pilates normal sleeping patterns. Though numerous gyms and yoga studios have gotten on board with yoga for weight loss programs, this is also a program that can be taken to the living room.

In this 20 minute living room workout you'll get a nice sweat while burning fat and losing weight fast. Although we can target certain body parts for toning and strengthening (like our arms, legs, abs, or glutes, for example), there is no research-proven way to blast more fat cells in one specific area than in any other.

People often ponder how they can lose weight simply by stretching and doing a few poses on a mat. When yoga is touted as the most effective exercise for weight loss, most of us wonder how just chanting and doing stationary poses can help in losing weight. Yoga has been shown to reduce cortisol levels (the stress hormone) in humans, which has multiple consequences: less stress, better sleep, and no side effects of stress, one of which is overeating.

When you realize that your real goal is to become healthier, the weight loss will happen naturally, and you will be following a diet and lifestyle that will not only maintain your healthy weight but will also support your overall health for the rest of your life.

Nine out of the eleven subjects who were overweight or obese when they started yoga practice discussed trying unsuccessfully to lose weight in the past. These methods may seem effective in the short term, but it's not uncommon for people to gain back the weight they lose because they don't know how to maintain a healthy weight.

Yoga for weight loss is also a state of mind and is a great step when it comes to self-improvement. In another study, published last year in the Journal of Alternative Medicine, overweight men who practiced yoga and breathing exercises daily lost an average of 4 pounds in only 10 days.

So, yes, yoga allows you to lose weight according to the intensity and frequency that you make of it. Yoga burns calories and strengthens your muscles, but there are other activities in which you'll burn more calories. Yoga poses for toned arms and shoulders.