Yoga vs gym which is better to lose weight
Yoga vs Gym: can you stretch your way to lose weight?
Maybe you had put some weight during this pandemic situation sitting around home all day and night. Now, it’s time to lose that fat.
If it were before, you might have gone for an intense cardio workout like running, swimming for the fat-burning process. But maybe during the lockdown, you’ve got to do a bit of Yoga to relax, or just watched the sensational Netflix documentary Bikram Yogi and now thinking, Yoga vs Gym, which way to go.
To know which is better, yoga or gym for losing weight, you should keep on reading.
Yoga vs Gym: Which helps to lose belly fat better?
When you see someone work out in the gym or do those intense endurance training like running or swimming, you see how fast and hard they have to hit the ground. It’s all about the intensity: work up the sweat, get the heart pumping fast for long period. That’s how you burn those calories to lose weight.
Now, when you come and look at someone doing yoga, you don’t witness the same intensity. Therefore, you don’t feel like it works the same way as cardio. Hence, gym vs yoga, the later doesn’t push you hard enough to lose the fat. That’s what you think.
Yoga vs Gym: Busting the myth
European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, in one of their study, made a sensational revelation. In yoga vs gym workouts, the earlier works as well as the conventional cardio training.
And it’s not just that it helps to reduce body fat. From lowering blood pressure to getting the cholesterol level down, you get plenty of other benefits from doing yoga. Gym training can’t even manage to give you that.
Lowering stress:
Stress level can cause you to put weight. Don’t have to think in a scientific way. Just imagine a regular life scenario. Many of us eat more when we’re in stress. Pints of ice cream in one sitting. And even if you don’t eat, the stress level increases a hormone in the body, that stores the fat in the body, doesn’t let it burn much.
The worst part is when you do too much intense training and get all exhausted, the same hormone increases in the body. So, you don’t get the result you expect to see standing on the scale. But Yoga will help you to remove the stress.
Working on everything:
When you run fast, you just burning calories. Even working out in the gym lifting weights, you work in parts of the body, not the whole thing. Yoga vs gym for weight loss is different because yoga works on the entire structure. Every single muscle, body part gets worked out when you do it. It stabilizes the core from one pose to another.
While running you make the heart pump faster, but don’t work on the muscles. In the gym, it’s the other way around. But yoga does that all at the same time.
Kinder to you:
Another reason to favor yoga over the gym is its kindness. No doubt, the workout is intense. Those yogis who do advanced level poses know how far it can push you. But unlike the traditional exercises, it doesn’t force you to do what you can’t. You take things slow.
That’s why it doesn’t cause your body to ache. Yoga treats it like a temple. But you can’t say that about running or doing weightlifting as you would come up with sore muscles, or even bad injuries that will keep you out of the gym for a long time. Yoga vs Gym workouts—points to yoga.
Flexibility:
With cardio exercises like swimming or running, you get lean. Lifting the weights in the gym, you build the muscles. But none of those things increase your flexibility. Yoga, on the other hand, opens up your body.
It stretches you out in ways you never saw to be possible. Without putting too much pressure, it takes you to levels where you can just do impossible things with the body.
And the best part is, doing so, you just don’t become lean, you build strength in every part and core in your body.
More than the body:
In the regular training methods, you’ve got to follow a certain set of exercises. Yes, there is a couple of variation here and there, but mostly it’s the same thing. And all that’s just for the body.
But in yoga, you can do something new every day. And that’s not just to get in good shape. That’s one part of it. The other part is about what lies inside. With every asana you do, you help your mind to get in shape too.
For instance, some postures improve concentration. Then others help you to calm down and find inner peace. You’re not just taking care of the body, you also are taking care of the soul.
That’s why it works better to lose weight. To naked eyes, yoga body vs gym body might look the same, but yogis enjoy something more that doesn’t meet the eyes.
Control your cravings:
In the end, whatever you do, you can’t lose weight, if you can’t put a stop to your cravings.
When you do, hardcore endurance training, the body urges with a hunger attack. That’s its natural response.
But if you ask anyone who does both yoga and gym, in the battle of yoga vs gym which is better in terms of controlling food craving, the former wins.
That’s because yoga lets you understand your body better. It helps you to get the upper hand in this department. Plus, unlike endurance training, the cravings aren’t that often and not that much.
It’s easier therefore to control it.
Conclusion:
So, yoga vs gym, which is better for losing weight? They both are great. But if you want a stable and more reliable option, just not to lose weight, but also gain strength, Yoga is the way.
It not only fulfills the need of the body but improves the mind too. Don’t just think it is all breathing and stretching, it has more to it than you see.
