Yoga for Weight Loss

I was hesitant about using this title for the blog piece this week. I know it’s kind of clickbait. But here we are. People are always interested in losing weight, especially in January. If you type ‘Yoga for…’ into any search engine, ‘Yoga for weight loss’ invariably comes up time and time again. Open one video or another, and you might find Yoga for fat burn, Yoga for a flat tummy, Power Yoga for weight loss, and so on.

Personally, having found a practice that has, little by little, helped me love and respect my body independent of its outward appearance, the fact that we practise to sculpt and change our bodies gives me a slight sense of discomfort, and yet guilty recognition thinking about my relationship with Yoga, weight and image.

Can Yoga help you lose weight? The short answer is yes, it absolutely can. The long answer is, let’s look at this in more detail, shall we?

Chubby Kid

I was a chubby kid, and for my whole childhood, I can’t remember a time I wasn’t told I needed to lose weight. I loved food (and still do) and hated exercise. I used to go to Korea in the summer holidays when various relatives and acquaintances would comment on my weight year after year - always the first point of discussion, usually to suggest diets or boot camps or other drastic measures for my predicament. Like many children, burdened and judged by their relative fatness, the issue of weight lingered in the background of my life into adolescence and then into adulthood.

In my 20s, I’d go to the gym not to be healthier but to be thinner. When I started Yoga in my 30s, weight loss was still a fairly constant consideration in my mind. And when I think I’m getting to an age where I shouldn’t care so much about my appearance, I surprise myself that I still care. “You’ve lost weight?!” - a compliment that still gives me a sudden pang of delight and validation. And I feel conflicted. Do I practice Yoga to help me maintain a healthy weight and feel better about myself? Yes, I suppose I still do, partly. Is that wrong?

Image Problem

The issue of weight is an issue of image. Something that influences acceptance and adoration in a culture that values thinness.

I have a friend, Cathy, who is a long-term Yogi herself, now gloriously radiant in her 70s. When she asked me where I was training to be a teacher, she scrunched her nose and said, “Ooo, I couldn’t possibly go there… It’s a place for the body beautiful”. Studios can feel a little like that, as can some Yoga people. All a bit intimidating: impossibly lithe limbs in matching athleisurewear, perfect hair and perfect poses. An environment which breeds a sense of physical inadequacy, even though it may not intend to.

Yoga perhaps has an image problem, perpetuated by the Instagram-curated pictures of glistening bodies on beaches and the like. Undeniably though, beautiful images attract interest. And when you want people to ‘click’, come to your class, and listen to what you have to say, looking a certain way can be helpful. No wonder studios, companies and teachers feel the need to sell themselves in this way. The aspirational image is a powerful driver.

Question of Health

Of course, weight loss isn’t all about the superficial but rather, more importantly, about health. Whilst I’m all for the body positivity movement and learning to love ourselves whatever shape we are, we cannot deny that excess weight is not always good for us. Many of us need to lose weight for our health, period.

Yoga can certainly help us to lose weight. It makes me chuckle a bit as I scroll through the fat burn and flat tummy videos - knowing that exercise in and of itself does very little for weight loss. In my opinion, Yoga helps us lose weight not by the calorie burn but by teaching us self-care, understanding what the body needs and how to enable its healthiest state organically without force without deprivation. Yoga impacts a whole host of factors that work together - reducing stress, improving sleep, amplifying mindfulness and healthy choices, maintaining muscle and prioritising movement (any movement). And, of course, by feeding the superpower agents of change - positive psychology, self-acceptance, self-respect, love and connection.

The Yoga Body

The Yoga Body has no ideal size or shape. It’s any body which proactively takes the time to listen and feel inwards. A body-mind which learns to attune to our innate inclination to be well - a natural state that yearns to lean fully into health. I like to think that Yoga bodies, alive with awareness, transform themselves into their healthiest versions - in whatever perfect fleshy shape they are meant to land for that age, time and circumstance.

At times I still catch myself in painful self-consciousness and curse my still-fraught relationship with my body after a lifetime of conditioning. As I ran outside the studio to get a coffee with a friend one day, I peered down at my white leggings, pulling my jumper down. I asked her, “Hey, does my bum look big in this?” and couldn’t believe what I’d said so automatically! I do wonder when the day will come when I’ll graduate from asking such silly questions.

Yoga for weight loss isn’t altogether a bad goal, especially if it gets us to move and become healthier. But I like to think that the practice itself teaches us to travel beyond this surface intention. Amazingly, something so focused on the body helps us get beyond the body, eventually. Little by little, I love and respect myself, independent of my outward appearance. Thank you, Yoga.

Let’s practise.