Question: I have started doing more Pilates and yoga and less cardio and weights. Can I lose weight doing yoga and Pilates?, Answer: Yoga and Pilates are both great forms of exercise and mind-body health; they are, however, very different from each other.
It can be really difficult to find time to do everything from cardiovascular training to weight training to flexibility exercises, and most people want to know how many calories they are burning for each mode.
It can be very easy to get hung up on the number of calories you burn during one bout of exercise, but you should also think about the increase in metabolism, as well as other benefits such as flexibility, core strength and stress relief.
Yoga is a great way to strengthen your body, calm your mind and loosen up any tight muscles. The amount of calories you burn doing yoga is highly dependent on what form of yoga you are doing; power yoga (Asthanga) tends to burn higher calories since the movement is more continuous and is a more intense form of exercise.
An hour of power yoga can burn close to 500 calories for an advanced person, but less intense forms will burn far less, but yoga also can help calm your mind. The breathing exercises and patterns really cause you to slow the breath and focus on your internal body. As well, there is a calming effect after your yoga session is over.
Yoga also can lessen your hunger and tendency to stress-eat. This can help you accomplish your weight loss goals without necessarily burning more calories during the workout.
Pilates is a great practice for strengthening and lengthening your muscles, particularly your core. Again, like yoga, the amount of calories you burn with Pilates is highly dependent on the intensity at which you are working. If you are a heavier person who is working at an advanced level on a reformer, then you could burn upwards of 400 to 500 calories an hour. However, if you are taking it easy in a mat format and not pushing yourself intensely, then you might only burn around 150 to 200 calories in an hour. But Pilates can help strengthen your body, and if done properly, it also can aid in increasing your metabolism as you increase your lean mass.
Both yoga and Pilates can help you lose weight if perform it in combination with other healthy lifestyle habits. Although some people can lose weight and maintain a healthy weight with just yoga and/or Pilates, I highly suggest you still try to integrate cardiovascular exercise for heart health and weight training for bone density and strength.
You only need to perform one to two days of weight training a week to make small increases in lean mass and cardiovascular exercise. It could be anything from a brisk walk at lunch to a cycling class. So try to vary your workouts and the way in which you exercise for maximum weight loss results. If anything, changing your routine every month or so can help your body lose weight since your metabolism is always being challenged by different forms of exercise. If your mind is getting bored with your workout, then your body probably is too, so change it up constantly.
Lastly, what you eat is most important in weight loss, and you want to make sure that you eat enough that you do not lose muscle mass. Eat a healthy, nutritious breakfast, followed by healthy choices throughout the day.
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Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
New York Invaded By `Downward Dogs'
The Great Lawn in New York’s Central Park is about to be infested with thousands of downward dogs.
That’s because next Tuesday (Jun. 22), the arts and culture blog Flavorpill is holding the world’s largest yoga class there.
Flavorpill founder Sascha Lewis is expecting 10,000 yogis to participate and help break the U.S. record for the largest yoga session in history.
Not only will yogis get a chance to mingle with one another and practice their favorite form of exercise, they’ll also be sending positive vibes out to the world with their body- bending moves.
Lewis explains, “Yoga can make the world a better place through its tremendous health benefits and as a conduit for greater awareness. Yoga at the Great Lawn will make those benefits accessible to a much larger community.”
He believes the monumental amount of yogis at the park will “inspire us all” to be conscious of the world around us.
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That’s because next Tuesday (Jun. 22), the arts and culture blog Flavorpill is holding the world’s largest yoga class there.
Flavorpill founder Sascha Lewis is expecting 10,000 yogis to participate and help break the U.S. record for the largest yoga session in history.
Not only will yogis get a chance to mingle with one another and practice their favorite form of exercise, they’ll also be sending positive vibes out to the world with their body- bending moves.
Lewis explains, “Yoga can make the world a better place through its tremendous health benefits and as a conduit for greater awareness. Yoga at the Great Lawn will make those benefits accessible to a much larger community.”
He believes the monumental amount of yogis at the park will “inspire us all” to be conscious of the world around us.
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Losing Baby Weight: 3 Yoga Moves for Mom and Baby
There are days when taking care of a baby (or two or three!) feels like a work out. On those days, losing baby weight is not your top priority.
If you feel like winding down, yoga for moms and babies might be just what you need.
Many yoga moves can be done easily in your living room. Of course, check with your doctor and make sure you are cleared for exercise before you try working out after having your baby.
Here are some mom and baby yoga moves that don't require you to be a yogi to learn them:
Boat Pose: Begin seated with you knees bent and your feet flat on the ground. Have your baby straddle your hips. Lift up the chest, then pick the feet up. Either hold on to your passenger or extend your arms out in front of you in-line with your shoulders. Inhale and exhale 5 to 8 times.
Downward Dog: Lie the baby on the ground in front of you. Begin on your hands and knees with spread fingers. Curl your toes under, exhale and push your hips toward the sky into an inverted V. Gently push your heels toward the floor and look back toward your knees. The best thing about this: At any time when you feel your hamstrings burning, you can look down and smile at your baby.
Cobra Pose: With your baby in front of you, lie flat on your stomach with your palms besides your shoulders. Hold your feet together while pointing toes, push your head and chest gently off the ground while lifting your head up fully. Inhale while pushing up and exhale on the way back.
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If you feel like winding down, yoga for moms and babies might be just what you need.
Many yoga moves can be done easily in your living room. Of course, check with your doctor and make sure you are cleared for exercise before you try working out after having your baby.
Here are some mom and baby yoga moves that don't require you to be a yogi to learn them:
Boat Pose: Begin seated with you knees bent and your feet flat on the ground. Have your baby straddle your hips. Lift up the chest, then pick the feet up. Either hold on to your passenger or extend your arms out in front of you in-line with your shoulders. Inhale and exhale 5 to 8 times.
Downward Dog: Lie the baby on the ground in front of you. Begin on your hands and knees with spread fingers. Curl your toes under, exhale and push your hips toward the sky into an inverted V. Gently push your heels toward the floor and look back toward your knees. The best thing about this: At any time when you feel your hamstrings burning, you can look down and smile at your baby.
Cobra Pose: With your baby in front of you, lie flat on your stomach with your palms besides your shoulders. Hold your feet together while pointing toes, push your head and chest gently off the ground while lifting your head up fully. Inhale while pushing up and exhale on the way back.
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Yoga Energy: Mind Body Spirit Balance For Health
Fundamentally, the word "health" comes from the root word "whole." So what we call "feeling healthy" means that we have a sense of wholeness in us. Medically, a person may be free of diseases, but that is only one part of health. When you feel like a complete human being in your body, mind and spirit, then you can be fully healthy. So there are any number of people who are healthy by medical standards, but unless they experience that sense of wellness from within, they are still lacking something. If human beings have to experience this sense of wholeness, this sense of wellness within themselves, it is important that their body, mind and above all their energies function at a certain level of intensity.
Let's say a man is walking down the street. If you look at the way he walks, you clearly know whether his body is well-exercised or not. The very way he strides, you can tell. Similarly, if you look at his face, you can see whether his mind is well-exercised. There are also ways to see whether his energy is well-exercised. So as there are ways to keep the body fit through physical exercise and the mind fit through the process of education, there are also ways to keep the energies fit.
So physically, you may be medically healthy but your energies are still lethargic. If you get this checked out, you may find that everything is okay, but still you know you are not rolling the way you should be in your life. Things are not happening for you on the inside or the outside the way they should be simply because you have not taken care of the well-being of your energy.
For every physical or psychological situation that a human being goes through, there is some chemical basis to it. Modern medicine has studied this extensively. And today, all medicine has just become chemistry. So for every problem that arises in a person's body, people are just taking one chemical or the other to come to some kind of balance; that is how the whole of modern medicine is being handled right now. But we know very well that if you use one chemical to reduce or enhance something, something else is bound to happen. For one ailment, there is an antidote. And for the antidote, there is another antidote. It's an endless chain because whatever is happening on the chemical level in your body, it is only controlled by the way your energies function. Now somebody says, "No, this man has got acids, so give him alkaline." But why does he have acids? Simply because of the way his body, mind and above all, the way his energies function.
In yoga, when we say "health," we don't look at the body or the mind; we only look at the energy. If your energy body is in proper balance and in full flow, your physical body and mental body will be in perfect health. Now when we say keeping the energy body in full flow, this is not about doing a patch up job with some healing; this is about going to the foundation of your energy system and activating it in a proper way. It is about building a foundational practice which establishes your energy in such a way that naturally your body and mind are fine.
When it comes to health, no human being gets to live in perfect conditions. The pressures of life, the food we eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink can affect us in many ways. The more activities we have in the world, the more we are exposed to things that can throw our chemistry off balance and create health problems. But if the energy in our system is properly cultivated and kept active, these things will not have an effect. The physical body and the mental body will be in perfect health. There is no question about it.
See, life functions in many ways. Let us say you do not know anything about electricity. If the room is dark and I tell you that if you press a button, the whole room will be flooded with light, will you believe me? No. But if I press the button and light appears, you will call it a miracle, isn't it? Simply because you do not understand how electricity works. Similarly, life happens in many different ways. But people have limited themselves to the physical and the logical -- the physical in experience, the logical in thinking.
Right now, medical science is limited to just knowing the physical body. If anything happens beyond that, people think it's a miracle. But it is another kind of science. The life energy in you created your whole body -- your bones, flesh, heart, kidneys -- everything.
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Let's say a man is walking down the street. If you look at the way he walks, you clearly know whether his body is well-exercised or not. The very way he strides, you can tell. Similarly, if you look at his face, you can see whether his mind is well-exercised. There are also ways to see whether his energy is well-exercised. So as there are ways to keep the body fit through physical exercise and the mind fit through the process of education, there are also ways to keep the energies fit.
So physically, you may be medically healthy but your energies are still lethargic. If you get this checked out, you may find that everything is okay, but still you know you are not rolling the way you should be in your life. Things are not happening for you on the inside or the outside the way they should be simply because you have not taken care of the well-being of your energy.
For every physical or psychological situation that a human being goes through, there is some chemical basis to it. Modern medicine has studied this extensively. And today, all medicine has just become chemistry. So for every problem that arises in a person's body, people are just taking one chemical or the other to come to some kind of balance; that is how the whole of modern medicine is being handled right now. But we know very well that if you use one chemical to reduce or enhance something, something else is bound to happen. For one ailment, there is an antidote. And for the antidote, there is another antidote. It's an endless chain because whatever is happening on the chemical level in your body, it is only controlled by the way your energies function. Now somebody says, "No, this man has got acids, so give him alkaline." But why does he have acids? Simply because of the way his body, mind and above all, the way his energies function.
In yoga, when we say "health," we don't look at the body or the mind; we only look at the energy. If your energy body is in proper balance and in full flow, your physical body and mental body will be in perfect health. Now when we say keeping the energy body in full flow, this is not about doing a patch up job with some healing; this is about going to the foundation of your energy system and activating it in a proper way. It is about building a foundational practice which establishes your energy in such a way that naturally your body and mind are fine.
When it comes to health, no human being gets to live in perfect conditions. The pressures of life, the food we eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink can affect us in many ways. The more activities we have in the world, the more we are exposed to things that can throw our chemistry off balance and create health problems. But if the energy in our system is properly cultivated and kept active, these things will not have an effect. The physical body and the mental body will be in perfect health. There is no question about it.
See, life functions in many ways. Let us say you do not know anything about electricity. If the room is dark and I tell you that if you press a button, the whole room will be flooded with light, will you believe me? No. But if I press the button and light appears, you will call it a miracle, isn't it? Simply because you do not understand how electricity works. Similarly, life happens in many different ways. But people have limited themselves to the physical and the logical -- the physical in experience, the logical in thinking.
Right now, medical science is limited to just knowing the physical body. If anything happens beyond that, people think it's a miracle. But it is another kind of science. The life energy in you created your whole body -- your bones, flesh, heart, kidneys -- everything.
the fitness news
social bookmarking : share diet plans and weight loss tips
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on mybloglog
Follow us on mybloglog
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