Yoga: inner peace and thinner waist?
The ancient practice of yoga is supposed to lead to inner peace, but millions of people do it for less lofty reasons--like to fit into a bathing suit. Yet there haven't been scientific studies to look at whether yoga, besides helping you become more flexible and less stressed out, also leads to weight loss.
Now a new study suggests that practicing yoga consistently during middle age may indeed help ward off the pounds that tend to accumulate and may even help already overweight people lose weight--just not in the way you might think.
Researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle studied the weight and exercise histories of 15,500 healthy adults, looking specifically at the years between 45 and 55. They wanted to see what effect, if any, practicing yoga had on weight variations, independent from other forms of exercise and diet.
What they found is that most such people gained about a pound a year--but the normal-weight people who regularly practiced yoga gained 3 fewer pounds over the 10 years than those who didn't. Among overweight people, those who practiced yoga lost 5 pounds during that decade, compared with a 14-pound gain among overweight people who didn't practice yoga.
And consistency, not hours spent in the downward dog pose, was key: The researchers defined a regular yoga practice as at least 30 minutes, one time per week, for at least four years.
The study was published in the current issue of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine.
Pretty good results--but they don't come from the huge calorie burn offered by yoga. Even in the more briskly paced iterations of yoga, like hatha yoga, most people don't work hard enough to really burn significant calories, says Alan Kristal, lead author of the study and an epidemiologist at Fred Hutchinson. Instead, he suggests, yoga makes you focus on yourself in a new way.
"You get a more accurate sensitivity to what is going on in your body," he says. Being more aware of how your body feels and works during class may spill over to the rest of your life and make you aware of why you are eyeing that doughnut--are you really feeling hunger pangs, or are you bored and just looking for distraction? For the overweight, yoga may also be a gateway to other forms of exercise, and it may provide a sense of community (if you take a class) that helps people commit to watching their weight.
The study is not definitive. It relied on research subjects' reporting their own past food consumption and exercise expenditure, and that isn't always accurate. In addition, it's hard to generalize the experience of a limited group (only a small percentage actually practiced yoga regularly). It would take a huge, cumbersome, and therefore impractical study over many years to clearly settle the question of yoga and weight loss, says Kristal.
But this new research suggests that people who want to stave off middle-age spread or even lose a few pounds might want to join those in search of flexibility, strength, and inner peace in a yoga class.
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