Yoga vs. Belly Fat: is your gut trying to tell you something???
When women want to lose weight, it's usually a full body need to decrease fat and increase muscle, but that being said, the one area that they always "point to" is their lower abdomen.
"I jog, I do pilates, I work out at the gym, but I still don't have a flat stomach," they say.
This is because although all forms of working out are fantastic, none of them address stress the way that yoga does.
Although you'd like to think that belly fat was simply a quick fix of decreasing or changing diet and increasing exertion, the simple equation of what you take in versus what you put out; it isn't always that simple for most people.
For most adult women in this era, they've gone through a lot. Through birthing babies or sitting at a desk job, they've developed slack abdominal muscles and poor back health. Look at most people who have a "bad back" and look at their lower abdomen. It is rare to see someone with a back weakness or injury who does not have a bit of a swelling to the lower abdomen.
Also, stress alone triggers certain body reactions. Stress is stress; your body has no idea if you are pissed off at your boss or nervous about your third graders upcoming flute concert versus being chased by a dinosaur. Your body just knows "uh oh, I better reserve energy".. how does your body do that? By hanging on to fat.
For some people, all the exercise in the world, unless you make it almost your job, is not going to decrease belly fat (or some other fat on your body).
This is why many people who do even minimal yoga, who have the whole "yoga thing down pat" enough, really don't diet or exercise in other ways. They get cardio from their more dynamic classes like Power, and they get their stress reduction in any way that they have learned (all yoga classes address this, at least at my studio and every studio I've been to). When you have a balanced stress level, your body isn't in that "uh oh" phase and you don't hang onto fat as readily.
Remember that any stress can cause this. If you are the happiest person around and have tons of great things happening but still do not know how to balance your emotions, you can gain weight from "Eustress" which is "good stress".
Also, eating poor food choices even if you practice meditation until the cows come home, puts stress on your body. Your body does not recognize one of those little trendy cupcakes as a sweet indulgence, but instead, just a ball of crud you should not be eating. Your body needs to counteract that so what does it do? It hangs onto fat to help get the energy to fight the toxins.
This is not all the time or for all of the people but it is a common theme. If you eat more pure, and you focus on stress reduction, you will see your body relax into it's healthy, happier state.
Yoga is proven to help this; be it at Paiva or anywhere, talk to a yoga instructor and develop a plan for yourself. Your plan should not be all about "going to class" with a yoga studio. An authentic teacher will give you tips on how to develop a home practice to not only learn to recognize stress but to cope with it, and tactics to remedy it. Your belly fat may not be just fat, it may your body signaling you that you are in a state of "uh oh".
"I jog, I do pilates, I work out at the gym, but I still don't have a flat stomach," they say.
This is because although all forms of working out are fantastic, none of them address stress the way that yoga does.
Although you'd like to think that belly fat was simply a quick fix of decreasing or changing diet and increasing exertion, the simple equation of what you take in versus what you put out; it isn't always that simple for most people.
For most adult women in this era, they've gone through a lot. Through birthing babies or sitting at a desk job, they've developed slack abdominal muscles and poor back health. Look at most people who have a "bad back" and look at their lower abdomen. It is rare to see someone with a back weakness or injury who does not have a bit of a swelling to the lower abdomen.
Also, stress alone triggers certain body reactions. Stress is stress; your body has no idea if you are pissed off at your boss or nervous about your third graders upcoming flute concert versus being chased by a dinosaur. Your body just knows "uh oh, I better reserve energy".. how does your body do that? By hanging on to fat.
For some people, all the exercise in the world, unless you make it almost your job, is not going to decrease belly fat (or some other fat on your body).
This is why many people who do even minimal yoga, who have the whole "yoga thing down pat" enough, really don't diet or exercise in other ways. They get cardio from their more dynamic classes like Power, and they get their stress reduction in any way that they have learned (all yoga classes address this, at least at my studio and every studio I've been to). When you have a balanced stress level, your body isn't in that "uh oh" phase and you don't hang onto fat as readily.
Remember that any stress can cause this. If you are the happiest person around and have tons of great things happening but still do not know how to balance your emotions, you can gain weight from "Eustress" which is "good stress".
Also, eating poor food choices even if you practice meditation until the cows come home, puts stress on your body. Your body does not recognize one of those little trendy cupcakes as a sweet indulgence, but instead, just a ball of crud you should not be eating. Your body needs to counteract that so what does it do? It hangs onto fat to help get the energy to fight the toxins.
This is not all the time or for all of the people but it is a common theme. If you eat more pure, and you focus on stress reduction, you will see your body relax into it's healthy, happier state.
Yoga is proven to help this; be it at Paiva or anywhere, talk to a yoga instructor and develop a plan for yourself. Your plan should not be all about "going to class" with a yoga studio. An authentic teacher will give you tips on how to develop a home practice to not only learn to recognize stress but to cope with it, and tactics to remedy it. Your belly fat may not be just fat, it may your body signaling you that you are in a state of "uh oh".
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