Yoga is known for it’s centering and spiritual practices, but many people don’t know that yoga is also a great way to achieve weight loss and fitness. Yoga practiced in an upbeat way that centers on toning, core, and wide-legged postures, can help you create long lean muscles, improve your flexibility, and achieve weight loss.
It worked for me! Yoga helped me lose 30lbs after having children. I also combined it with my Mindful Elimination Program and saw amazing results and kept the 30lbs off. Yoga is now how I maintain my weight and stay physically fit and healthy.
In this post I will be discussing how you can achieve your weight loss goals by implementing a yoga morning ritual.
What Is a Yoga Morning Ritual?
A yoga morning ritual is set up practices that you commit to doing each morning before you start all your obligations and to-do’s for the day. I am a big proponent of having a spiritual morning routine that creates a state of mind, body, and emotion that helps you go through your day centered, joyful, and content.
A yoga morning routine centers around the aspects of yoga that we use to create our morning ritual. This includes:
- Deep Breathing
- Meditation
- Yoga Postures
- Self-Reflection and Prayer
All of these aspects of yoga work together to first get your body functioning at it’s highest level, and then creating the body, mind, emotion, spirit connection that helps make your life fulfilling and joyful. The word yoga means to “yolk or bind together”, that is the root of the word.
It is in this set of yoga ritual practices that we create that binding together of the body and mind that allows it to function not just properly but at it’s best. This is how you will achieve your weight loss goals and how you will learn to listen to your body, and be really in-tune with your body.
How To Use Yoga as a Weight Loss Ritual
Practice an active style of yoga. This means participating in a yoga style that is more high energy and requires more movement so that you are getting your heart rate up, burning calories, and working on your fitness levels.
I teach Vinyasa Yoga. My classes are known for being upbeat, working on postures that make you work hard in your body, and can build up a sweat.
My classes also will tone, strengthen, and lengthen your muscles, so you become strong and will help you burn calories long after you are done with the class.
Interested in trying some quick Vinyasa Yoga? Check out my Online Yoga Workouts & Postures Bundle! This bundle of yoga workouts was designed for anyone having a busy lifestyle, but wants an option to have a quick workout each day. Each video is only 20-25 minutes so you can get a daily workout every single day if you choose.
Yoga helps you lose weight because it also offers functional flexibility. All too often people will lift heavy weights, breakdown and build up muscles and never learn the benefits of also stretching your muscles.
There is very little use of building muscles if they are tight. You will feel sore, uncomfortable, and still have plenty of aches and pains if you don’t also work on your flexibility.
Flexibility and agility are one the best ways to help aging bodies, even if you are in the mid-age. I have learned that after 30 something years of life and having children, my body wore out more easily and was less naturally agile.
Stretching and also practicing yoga’s balancing postures, helps work on that flexibility that makes aging easier. I always say strength without mobility is just a waste!
The mindfulness aspect of yoga helps tremendously with weight loss. So, it makes sense to implement a yoga morning ritual to help with weight loss.
Using meditation, deep breathing, centering, body / mind connection, and deeper body awareness to morning routines helps us lose weight from a mental perspective.
It helps us make greater choices when deciding what to eat.
It helps us realize when we are eating not out of hunger but out of boredom or emotion.
It helps us become more aware of the foods that don’t make us feel our best or that may be a food intolerance.
It helps us eat until satisfied and not over eat.
It helps be more appreciative of our food, where it comes from, and the way we live.
Can Doing Yoga In the Morning Help You Lose Weight?
Doing yoga in the morning can definitely help you lose weight. There are a few reasons why I believe morning to be a great time to do yoga. Let’s review them here.
Hormones
In the morning the hormone cortisol is high, this is what wakes you up and tells you that you are hungry. The problem with cortisol is it is the stress hormone and if it stays high then it can be the cause of weight gain especially around the belly area.
Yoga actually turns on the rest and digest nervous system in the body and can help counter the stress hormone in the body.
Centering & Mindset
Yoga in the morning can help you lose weight by helping you get centered and in a good mindset for the day. When you feel good, you will choose better foods to eat, you will make decisions in your life from a good mental space, and you will more than likely respond to people and situations in a more calm way.
All of this will keep your body in a balanced state instead of constantly going in and out of stress. This is key to losing weight and staying healthy.
Getting Active
Morning yoga means that you are getting active first thing. If you practice an active style of yoga, you will burn calories and continue to burn them throughout the day.
You will kick your metabolism into gear, and you will see an increase in your energy all day long.
Won’t Miss Workout & Mindfulness Practice
Morning yoga ritual means that you don’t miss your workout and mindfulness practice. I believe in a morning ritual so much because I know that stuff happens!
Our days can turn unpredictable in a matter of minutes. So often people fall off their routines because people, situations, work, children, and friends end up getting in the way of creating that time for your workout and yoga practice.
If you do your yoga routine first thing in the morning, then you leave little room to miss it. That consistency over time is what will help you achieve weight loss.
What is the Best Diet for Energy and Weight Loss?
Here’s the thing, I hate using the word diet because I think it is full of problems in our society. It is associated with fads, extreme restriction, and eating unhealthy meals.
When I talk about diets, I truly mean your diet – the food you put into your body. The best way to eat, that I have found (after being a serial dieter with some body image issues), is an anti-inflammation diet.
I have tried all the diets! Science and experience has proven anti-inflammation eating works wonders on your health, to help you lose weight, and to find your ideal weight.
When you combine this style of eating, that helps you remove foods that cause havoc in the body like soy, with the mindfulness aspect of yoga, you will not only see big weight loss results, but you will see yourself creating a new lifestyle.
This lifestyle is how you will keep that weight off and stay healthy and happy. I teach exactly how to do this – what to eat, what not to eat, how to eat and the best methods of eating for this positive lifestyle in my Mindful Elimination Program.
I have helped so many people lose weight, stop eating their emotions, and create healthy and fulfilling habits around food. I would love to help you too!
Best High Energy Breakfast for Weight Loss
Eat a well rounded breakfast to make the most impact on your weight loss. This includes the three aspects of eating that I concentrate on: proteins, produce, and healthy fats.
You want to keep your sugar levels and cortisol levels in balance. These hormones greatly affect your health and weight.
To learn more more about a balanced hormone diet you can get my FREE 3-day hormonally balanced diet jumpstart meal plan. Use this meal plan to eat delicious foods, that are comforting and satisfying, while still losing weight and keeping your hormones in balance. Just fill in the form below to grab it now.
One other thing to remember when deciding what to eat for breakfast is that you don’t drink your breakfast. I did this for years in the forms of shakes and protein drinks, that honestly had more harmful ingredients than good.
Plus, your body likes to chew and swallow and eat it’s food. This is part of how we were designed,
There is a system of connections in the body that are in place that take chewing and breaking down of food, to send messages to the brain that you are full and satisfied. You can get all the nutrients and protein you need from eating your food.
Here is an example of the best high energy breakfast for weight loss:
- 2 eggs your favorite way and having some
- Leftover roasted veggies from the night before (cooked in avocado oil or ghee)
- Slice of sugar-free bacon (optional), and
- Nut-yogurt with fruit OR a cup of fruit.
This is the breakfast that I eat every day. As you can see, you will be eating your fruit rather than drinking it!
Steps for Weight Loss Through Yoga Morning Ritual Or Routine
Step 1 – Commitment & Consistency
The way to do this is to pick the days of the week where you are committing to waking up and participating in your yoga routine at the same time each morning. This trains your body to wake up at the same time, and to be ready for your workout.
This makes things so much easier. Sporadically fighting ourselves awake and ready to workout in the morning just makes it too hard.
Step 2 – Find the Ritual that you Love Doing
If you pick a style of yoga or practice that doesn’t speak to you, then you will find it harder to wake up and stick with it.
Step 3 – Make the Ritual Well-Rounded
Be sure to include all the aspects of yoga that will help you further your weight loss goals, not just the “workout” part of it. This includes deep breathing, meditation, stretching and self-reflection.
Step 4: Sit Down and Eat your Breakfast
Round out the workout by getting your hormones in balance and putting food in your body. This will promote a healthy metabolism, and kickstart your healthy eating for the day.
This is super important because your diet plays such a vital role in your weight loss.
Which Type of Yoga Is Best For Reducing Belly Fat?
I find Vinyasa Yoga to be the best type of yoga for reducing belly fat. Vinyasa Yoga includes a lot of core toning postures that are important for creating a strong mid-section.
It is burns calories and builds heat in the body, which is great for burning fat around the belly. Vinyasa style yoga promotes deep breathing, as each movement is done on an in or out breath.
This deep breathing helps control the hormone cortisol in the body, the stress causing hormone, by promoting relaxation and turning on the parasympathetic nervous system. This is what will keep you from holding on to fat around the midsection.
Starting a yoga morning ritual combined with a healthy diet routine is a great way to achieve your weight loss goals.
Yoga helps you burn calories, tone, and stretch. It also teaches you how to create a body-mind connection that you will carry into your life to help you make better eating choices and learn to love your body more and more each day.
I am so thankful yoga helped me lose 30lbs when combined with my Mindful Elimination Program, and I think yoga will forever be one the best routines I have ever started in my life.
As described here implementing a yoga morning ritual will be a big help for reaching your weight loss goals, so get started today!
