Weight Loss Secrets: The Power of Hot Yoga

August 9th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Weight Loss Secrets

Hot yoga is a great way to detoxify the body and mind. It has been known by yogis the work over that yoga is great for purifying and detoxifying the body and mind but hot yoga ramps up the detoxification process all the more. If you haven’t tried hot yoga yet, you’ll definitely want to give it a try. You’ll be amazed by how pure and clean you feel after just one work out.

Hot Yoga and Your Body

It’s well known that yoga is good for the body. When you do even the basic yoga movements you are making your body move in ways in which is may not move every day. This movement encourages for blood to flow to all of the tissues and organs of the body, cleansing out the toxins that may have built up there over the period of days, weeks, months or years. The more often you do yoga the more detoxification you will go through, making you look and feel better.

Even the way we breathe when we do yoga is detoxifying. When you breathe deeply, as you do in yoga, you are actually clearing out toxins that have built up at the bottom of the lungs. Because we don’t usually use the bottom of our lungs to breathe, even when doing other forms of exercise, these are expelled through our breath, allowing us to breathe more freely and more purely.

When you do hot yoga you are intensifying the detoxification process because heat induces sweating, and sweating is the process of removing toxins from the body. When you sweat your body is able to carry away all of the toxins that have built up throughout the body, including within the skin. When you combine the detoxifying movement of yoga, the detoxifying breath of yoga, with the heat of hot yoga that makes you sweat, every ounce of your body is being cleansed in the most thorough manner.

Many people feel that they have to go on the strictest diets and go to doctors to help them cleanse. While eating right is good and living a positive life is good for you, yoga can take care of much of the rest. What seems like simple movements and breathing techniques to the experienced yogi is actually working to detoxify your body, and when you put these techniques to work in a hot room you are sweating out what the movement alone wouldn’t have taken care of.

As you can see, hot yoga really is a great way to cleanse the body, look great, and feel good. When your body is free of toxins you will feel better in every way possible. Many people start out not being sure of hot yoga, but then when they feel what it can do for their body they realize that there is not another yoga method out there for them. If you haven’t had the experience of hot yoga yet, be sure to check it out!

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Weight Loss Secrets: Bodyweight Exercises

August 7th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Weight Loss Secrets

You may have never heard of the term bodyweight exercises before, but chances are that you have already had the opportunity to partake in this particular type of exercise many, many times. In fact, you may do bodyweight exercises every time you work out! The term simply applies to any exercise that you can do without any fancy machines or extra parts. You are simply getting exercise because of your body weight. Think about it, push ups, squats, sit ups these are all exercises that work your body based on only your body weight.

Benefits of Bodyweight Exercises

Too much focus is put on what you use to make you lose weight when the weight of your body really is all you need. If you can afford a gym membership or simply don’t have the time to make a stop at the gym to make weight loss happen, it’s not a big deal. You can use your body weight and exercise just as well and just as effectively as if you had all of the expensive machines in the world. Bodyweight exercises are free and are able to be performed any time.

In addition to being free and not needing to go anywhere special, bodyweight exercises help to boost your metabolism. When you strength and interval train you are getting a boost to your metabolism, but when you use bodyweight exercise you are combining the benefits of the two so that you are better able to burn calories and fat while you exercise as well as when you are done exercising. This is important because you want to boost your metabolism overall so you are literally a walking fat burning machine.

Bodyweight exercise is also preferable for weight loss because through these exercises you will build muscle. When you lose weight you want to look good, and it is the development of muscle that makes you look good. Bodyweight exercises are the epitome of body sculpting because the exercises naturally burn the fat and develop the muscle at the same time, making you look great while you also feel great. In addition, with bodyweight exercises you aren’t destroying or overworking the muscle like many people do with other strength training techniques.

Bodyweight exercise really is a simple thing to get started with. Is it hard work? Absolutely, but when all you need is your body to get started you have no excuses. A typical workout may be something as simple as:

∙ Pushups

∙ Prisoner Squats

∙ Split Squat

∙ Elevated Pushup

∙ Step-up

∙ Sit up

∙ Mountain Climber

Doing just 10 reps of each of these exercises will allow you to burn fat, build muscle, lose weight, and feel great! Doing all of these exercises properly with 10 reps each will allow you to complete a full circuit in just 20 minutes per day! Can you imagine being able to change your body without ever leaving your home, paying for expensive equipment or a gym membership in just 20 minutes a day! This really is possible and the benefits are truly unlimited, as are the changes that you can make to your life.

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Bodyweight Exercises for Weight Loss

August 3rd, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Weight Loss & Exercise

How Bodyweight Exercises Work

Basically bodyweight exercises are exercises which are done using your own bodyweight as muscle resistance.  No equipment is used as one’s own weight takes the place of traditional gym weights.  A commonly known bodyweight exercise is the pushup.  You place your body in a position where it has to fight against the weight of itself.  In a pushup, the arms and shoulders are strengthened and toned by raising the rest of the body higher then lower to the ground.  Bodyweight exercises work well for weight loss and for muscle toning.

Types of Bodyweight Exercises

  • Pushups.  Pushups are a great traditional exercise that helps to strengthen the arms and shoulders.  They are one of the best upper body workouts that you can do.
  • Squats.  Squats are good for strengthening and toning the thighs and buttocks.  Stand with feet shoulder width apart, arms folded across your chest, and back straight.  Slowly lower yourself until your thighs are almost parallel to the ground then repeat.  They are an easy enough exercise to do but have great results.
  • Lunges.  Lunges also work wonders for the thighs and bottom.  From a standing position, you step forward and slowly lower your back knee to the ground, then raise yourself back up.
  • Chin-ups.  Chin-ups use the arms, back, and shoulders to pull yourself up from the ground onto a bar.  You touch your chin to the bar, then lower yourself back down and repeat.
  • Dips.  Dips target the triceps and are great for toning and shaping this part of the arm.  Dips require the use of a chair or bench that is stable.  Position yourself in front of the bench with your back to it.  Place your hands on the edge of the bench with palms down and fingers forward.  Your heels should be on the ground legs’ length in front of you, and your arms should be supporting your bodyweight.  Slowly lower your bottom to just above the floor using your arms, then slowly return to the beginning position and repeat.

Advantages
There are numerous advantages to using bodyweight exercises.  They are flexible and easy for everyone to incorporate into a workout.  One of the major benefits to using bodyweight exercises is that they are free with no equipment required to buy.  Another advantage to no equipment being needed is that you can do these exercises anywhere.  If you go on a trip, you don’t need to worry about not having your weights or local gym.

You can workout in your own hotel room.  This is also nice so that you can avoid going to the gym as often.  Some people feel self conscious at gyms.  With bodyweight exercises, you can workout in the privacy of your own home.  Bodyweight exercises have a dual function to both build muscle and increase your heart rate.  Another positive is that these exercises can easily be incorporated into any other workout that you may be comfortable with.

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Weight Loss Secrets: The Power of Yoga

July 31st, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Weight Loss Secrets

Are you wondering if yoga can help you detoxify and purify your body? If so, you’ll be happy to know that through yoga you can detoxify your body very efficiently and effectively. Many people go to great lengths to rid the toxins from their body, never knowing that yoga is a very simple, gentle, and effective way to go about the cleansing process. Yoga is good for the mind and body, in more ways than most regular practitioners realize. Many people indulge in yoga because the way it makes them feel, not realizing that much of the way that they feel is owed to the detoxification process.

Detoxifying Through Yoga

If you are already into yoga and have been a practicing yogi for some time, you may know that your body is being detoxified every time you indulge in yoga. If you didn’t know this, well, just consider the detoxifying qualities of yoga an added bonus. If you are considering taking up yoga for the detoxification process that your body will go through, you are making a great choice.

Yoga helps to detoxify the body in many different ways because every day our lives are filled with toxins as is our mind. When you do yoga you are able to detoxify your every body part as well as your mind. For example, when you partake in twists you are bringing oxygen to the kidneys and to the liver by bringing more blood to the tissue. When you look at yoga in this way, it proves that yoga can help to detox the body starting with the organs that we can help become more effective because we are bringing more blood to them. Even something that is as well known and as common as “rapid fire breathing” also known as “bellow’s breath” is a detoxifying yoga tradition as it does away with metabolic waste that derives from the very bottom of the lungs.

Yoga also helps to detoxify the mind! When you practice yoga you are practicing things that are meant to purify the body and the soul. When you use mantra and meditation kriyas and things of this sort, you are able to rid your mind and body of the negativity that you take in every day. Yoga is a way of life, a life that prompts the practitioner to live a life filled with positive interactions, compassion, and empathy. It can be simple to fall into negative thoughts and to be affected by it, but through the practice of yoga one is able to move out the negative thoughts and replace them with positive thought.

Yoga in and of itself is a very detoxifying process even if you don’t really live the lifestyle but you just use yoga as a means of losing weight or staying fit. When you move your body through the yoga movement you are bringing blood to all of your organs, and thereby moving the toxins out of your body in a very efficient and effective way.

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Weight Loss Exercises: Yoga is So Fun!

July 23rd, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted in Weight Loss Secrets

Many people think of yoga and they think of a mind and body experience but they don’t realize that yoga can actually be good for weight loss. Most people will not lose hundreds of pounds through yoga alone, but it is a great way to boost the metabolism, cleanse the body, and simply feel better about yourself. When you want to lose weight, it makes sense to incorporate yoga into your weight loss regimen.

Why Yoga For Weight Loss

If you are trying to lose weight and you are having a hard time because you just feel really depressed and fatigued, you should definitely think about taking up yoga. When you practice yoga you will find that you are naturally more energetic and less depressed and you’ll have the energy that you need to become more active so that weight loss can become less of a burden and you may actually find that you look forward to it. Through yoga you’ll have the energy and motivation that you need to lose weight!

Yoga also helps to lose weight because when you practice yoga you are able to make your muscles work in ways that they usually do not work. The more you work your muscles the more you can increase your metabolism. When you increase your metabolism you are able to more effectively burn fat and calories, leading to more effective and efficient weight loss. You want to work muscles, and when you do yoga you are working muscles that you may never work doing any other exercise and in new and exciting ways. Many people find that though yoga is not a fast way to lose a lot of weight, it is effective and reliable. Because you use the muscles in yoga, you are also going to find that you can tone muscles very easily through repeated yoga exercise.

Anytime your body moves it is burning calories and you have the potential to lose weight. Many people increase the weight loss potential of yoga by pairing it with other exercise. When you combine yoga with other forms of exercise, such as cardiovascular exercise, it is easy to lose weight. When you also eat a more balanced and healthy diet you will find that yoga is what keeps you going as the pounds literally drop off of your body!

Yoga is not the way a lot of people choose to lose weight, but it is possible to lose quite a bit of weight through yoga. Whether you use it to motivate you, give you energy, tone your muscles, or simply boost your metabolism, yoga is a great way to shed that extra weight that you are tired of carrying around. If you need to lose weight and you enjoy yoga, why not start out doing something that you like and then adding on from there as you see necessary. Yoga is a great way to get your body moving, making exercise and weight loss an enjoyable experience.

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Weight Loss Secrets: Interval Training

July 18th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Weight Loss Secrets

Many of us think about spending one more monotonous minute on the treadmill and we want to give up on losing weight all together, but this is not the way that you need to think or feel about weight loss. There is a secret weapon to weight loss and athletes have been using to condition their bodies and maintain their weight for years. The secret is interval training and it can take your boring routine and spice it up, while helping you to lose weight more effectively.

Interval Training and You

Many people think that they have to go full speed for 30 minutes to an hour every day to lose weight, but this simply is not true. With interval training you will still be doing cardio exercises, but you’ll be going about then differently and more effectively. If you can’t stand the thought of exerting yourself for another 30 minutes, you’ll want to learn more about interval training and what it can do for you and your body.

Interval training is quite simply short bursts of intensive exercise that is then put together with more moderate exercise. For example, you may want to go full speed on your elliptical machine or treadmill for two minutes and then you slow down for three minutes and go at a moderate speed. You’ll really ramp things up during the intense minutes and then you’ll allow yourself to rest when you are in the more moderate exercise period.

Interval training is great for weight loss because what it does is force the body to use stored fatty acids, which is exactly what you want! When you do interval training it allows for the body to use these fat stores unlike it would when you are doing just constant intensely paced exercise. In fact, there are studies out there that indicate that those who partake in interval training instead of continuous workouts actually increase their weight loss by over 30%!

If you have not tried interval training now is the time to hop on the bandwagon and try it out. It is known to help you lose weight faster and also improve your overall cardio fitness in less time, too! When you get into interval training your metabolism will kick into high gear, allowing you to burn fat and calories faster and easier, even when you are not exercising!

While many people think that interval training is simply a quick fix, it is not. Even interval training will require commitment and you will need to stick with the program if you want to begin to lose weight and keep it off. Interval training will continue to help you lose and maintain weight over time, so if you are serious about changing your life and your body, this is a great way to lose weight, and anyone can do it! The great thing is that you really don’t even need to leave your home to make interval training to work for you!

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Interval Training for Weight Loss

July 13th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Weight Loss & Exercise

What is Interval Training?

Interval training is an exercise process which focuses upon alternating high and low intensity periods of exercise.  Training alternates between high and low intensity training.   High intensity training inhibits your body’s ability to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide.  Your body begins to eliminate lactic acid and your muscles lose their capability to contract.  When this occurs, interval training calls for a switch to low intensity exercise.  Low intensity training gives the body a chance to recover from the strain, but without the pulse dropping so much as to lose the aerobic benefit.  The alternating between these two forms of intensity throughout an aerobic workout is interval training.

How to Apply Interval Training

You may wonder how you can use interval training in your own exercise regimen.  It’s easy to incorporate this form of training into any exercise.  If you jog, walk, or use a treadmill, this is how you would go about using the technique.  Begin at a walk or your typical warm-up pace.  Once you have warmed up, you can break into a sprint, jog, or whatever your high intensity level is.  Maintain this intensity/speed until your muscles begin to tire and you feel that you cannot go much longer.  Then reduce your speed to a jog or energetic walk.  Do not slow down to the point of losing your aerobic heart rate.  Only slow down to a point where you feel that you could maintain the speed for a longer period.  This is the recovery time for your muscles.  Once your muscle burn goes away and your breathing and heart rate have leveled off, you can repeat the cycle and begin sprinting or jogging again.  Gradually you will be able to increase the length of your high intensity periods.

Achieving Weight Loss

Interval training is a great way to achieve weight loss through an exercise program.  You are strengthening your body’s aerobic and anaerobic systems.  This will cause your body to learn to burn calories faster.  By adding more muscle, you are also upping your metabolism which will cause fat to burn more quickly.  By continuing with an interval training program, you are training your body to burn fat more efficiently.  Weight loss and better health are certain to come.

It’s a Good Thing

Interval training is a great tool for achieving weight loss.  It also has many other perks to encourage its practice.

  • Time saving- by incorporating your aerobic and anaerobic exercises into one activity, you will save time in your workout.
  • Fun- interval training breaks up the monotony of aerobic exercise by functioning in cycles.
  • Results- often with a workout program, people hit a plateau which they cannot break past; interval training is a different option that helps people get through their plateaus.
  • Easy- the exercise program will be easy as you do not need to switch machines or learn anything new to receive a full and effective workout.

Give interval training a try for your weight loss goals.  You’ll find that it is a fun and easy way to get the results that you are looking for.

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Yoga for Weight Loss & Detoxification

July 6th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Weight Loss & Exercise

What is Yoga?
Yoga is an ancient Indian spiritual practice used to keep the mind and body clear and healthy.  In India, the practice is primarily to achieve mental and spiritual well-being.  In other countries, the practice of yoga is spreading as a great form of exercise.  This kind of yoga uses a combination of stretches, different postures, and breathing to achieve the health benefits.  Yoga is useful for meditation, weight loss, muscle toning, flexibility, and circulation.  Yoga can also be used for detoxification on all levels- physical, mental, and spiritual.

Need for Detoxification
Cellular waste tends to accumulate inside of the body.  The accumulation of these toxins can cause numerous ill effects such as

  • Loss of energy
  • Speeding of the aging process
  • Lack of overall enthusiasm

Detoxification is necessary to flush out all of these toxins in the body and reverse the symptoms.  Just like automobiles need to have their oil changed regularly, you need to flush out the impurities from your body’s circulatory system to ensure proper functioning.  Detoxification involves infusing the body’s bloodstream with oxygen to carry away the harmful accumulations.

How Toxins Work
You may wonder why and how all of these toxins get into the body and why they harm it.  Our environment, including stress levels, nutrition, and hormones, can cause toxins to form around the body’s cells.  These toxins become free radicals which are highly unstable and cause cellular degeneration.  The free radicals lead to premature aging and loss of energy.  Therefore, detoxification should be a crucial and necessary part of your self-care routine.  Detoxification is just as important as nutrition and other forms of exercise.

Benefits of Yoga
Yoga is a great way to detoxify the body.  Exercise that is too strenuous can actually have an adverse effect upon the body.  The body produces lactic acid in certain levels of exercise.  This acid can undo all of the positives that the exercise would have otherwise accomplished.  Stretching positions of yoga help to make sure that good blood supply is flowing to all parts of the body.  Meanwhile, breathing exercises create an ample supply of oxygen in the blood.  This oxygen flowing throughout the body flushes out and carries away the toxins which have accumulated from cellular activity.

Establishing a Routine
Yoga should become a regular part of your routine.  Yoga is not a one time thing that you do.  Yoga must be practiced on a regular basis to have a healing and detoxifying impact on your body.  You should establish a regimen of at least once per week to focus upon your yoga.  You will begin to feel better and have more energy the more regularly that you cleanse your body through yoga.  Yoga has positive effects both physically and mentally for those who practice it with conviction.  Once you settle into a comfortable yoga program, you will begin to feel your body and mind reacting to the healing treatment.  Your bloodstream will detoxify, and you will feel better in general.

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Yoga Weight Loss: Fact vs. Fiction

July 6th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Weight Loss & Exercise

Common Myths
Many fans of high impact exercise would tell you that yoga is useless for weight loss.  They would say that yoga is good for staying mentally fit but ultimately ineffective for serious weight loss and muscle toning.  Although yoga is not as powerful for immediate, drastic results, to say that it is powerless for weight loss is entirely untrue.  However, the goal of yoga is not to simply shed pounds quickly.  There are obviously other exercise regimens which would yield a faster result.  Yoga involves more than weight loss alone and incorporates a mental change toward healthier living.  Yoga promotes spiritual growth along side a shrinking waist.

What Yoga can’t do
Doing a half an hour of yoga per day cannot compete with doing a half hour of running or lifting weights as far as calories burned are concerned.  Therefore, don’t go into a yoga program expecting fast, dramatic results.  Yoga is far different than traditional weight loss programs, and this should be recognized from the start.  Yoga does have many benefits which do not accompany traditional exercises.  Talk to an expert before beginning a yoga weight loss program and set reasonable goals for yourself.

Necessity of Nutrition
Any fitness trainer will tell you that a nutritious lifestyle is important regardless of how much you exercise.  This is especially true in yoga.  Yoga does not burn calories at the rate of other exercises, so set up a nutritional eating plan as you begin the program.  Don’t starve yourself, but rather eat a balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables.  If you load your body down with junk food, yoga will not be able to yield you the results which it otherwise could.  You need to have respect for your body and allow your mind and body to be truly cleansed.

How to Use Yoga
The actual practice of yoga postures needs to be in accompaniment with other aspects including

  • Nutrition
  • Mindfulness
  • Meditation

You can also use yoga in combination with another more strenuous exercise program.  A good suggestion would be to alternate yoga with, for example, jogging or weight training.  Do these programs every other day or in some rotation that gives you a good balance of exercise.  If you are steadfast in your efforts to truly benefit from yoga, you will receive the results that you desire.  Yoga is also a great way to maintain your weight once you are happy with it.

Power Yoga
A new “Americanized” version of traditional yoga techniques is emerging.  This new form is known as “power yoga,” and it is rapidly attracting followers.  Power yoga uses similar positions, but the movements are more active and paired with meditative breathing.  This breathing in combination with the active movements creates an aerobic workout that traditional yoga lacks.  The infusion of oxygen into the bloodstream during a yoga workout results in the positive aerobic benefit.  Power yoga can be an effective tool in weight loss if used in a proper manner.

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Hot Yoga for Weight Loss & Detoxification

July 6th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Weight Loss & Exercise

The Difference
How is hot yoga any different than regular yoga?  The difference lies in sweat.  Hot yoga is performed in a room at a temperature of about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  The body function of sweating provides another element to the yoga process.  The internal heat produced by the body’s performing of the yoga positions combines with the external heat of the room resulting in massive sweating.  Yoga on its own is an incredible path toward healing physically and mentally.  Combined with heat, the process becomes even more amazing.

The Skin
Most people know that the liver and kidneys serve to extract waste from the body and eliminate it.  Many do not, however, think about the skin when it comes to waste excretion.  Through the skin’s ability to sweat, it can excrete a great deal of toxic material out of the body.  The skin is powerful in its ability to sweat out toxic and unhealthy materials from the body.  Other than protecting and water-proofing the body from external forces, this is one of the skin’s primary functions.

For Detoxification
Hot yoga is an ideal program for detoxification.  Detoxification is a recommended part of everyone’s health routine.  It is important to eliminate toxins which build up in the body over time.  Detoxification should be a regular part of your overall health maintenance.  Hot yoga provides one of the most ideal ways to rid your body of these toxic accumulations.  Regular yoga in itself is a wonderful way to use oxygen to flush out toxins in the bloodstream.  Hot yoga adds the value of sweat to the equation providing another way for toxins to leave the body.  Hot yoga functions through several different ways to bring healing and toxic elimination.

  • Posture- Hot yoga utilizes a series of different postures to maximize blood flow to all areas of the body.
  • Breathing technique- When practicing hot yoga, you must use a specific style of breathing to maximize the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream.
  • Relaxation- When the mind relaxes, stress toxins are lowered.
  • Temperature/sweat- The differentiating factor of hot yoga is the 100 degree temperature of the room which causes heavy sweating (a pathway for toxins to leave).

Combined with other Programs
The keys to detoxification lie in a balanced and healthy life.  How you achieve this balance is up to you.  Hot yoga is a great way to detoxify your body.  You can also, however, combine this practice with other detoxification treatments.  Colon cleansing is becoming a popular way to clean out toxins from one’s digestive tract.  Foot pads are also now being sold which claim to draw toxins from the body through the feet and onto the pad.  The trick is to find what works for you.  Colon cleansing may be too drastic for your tastes, and the stress toxins you create could outweigh the benefits.  Determine which detoxification program works for you, and then stick to it. If you do this, you’ll be ready to live a healthier and happier life.

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