How Often Should You Do Yoga For The Best Results

By Alex Assoune Mar 16, 2021

How often should you do yoga for the best results? It depends on what you are trying to achieve.

If you want to lose weight, get stronger, more flexible, mindful, regular yoga practice is key to improve. But how often should you practice before seeing any results?

Results may vary from one person to another. We all have different body types and metabolism. Our minds function differently. Our environment is different. The style of yoga we practice has also a huge role in the results.

But don't focus on the results. Instead, focus on the journey. Breathe, focus, have fun, and enjoy yourself while practicing yoga.

Practice regularly and see what yoga can do for you. Some people learn and progress faster than others. It all comes down to how much time and effort are you willing to put in to achieve your goals.

If you are a beginner yogi, start very slowly, get comfortable with your yoga practice, and listen to your body closely. Take your time and progress at your rhythm. The key to success is consistency.

Here is what a regular yoga practice can do for you:

Regular yoga practice burns a lot of calories if get your body moving often.
Yoga relieves stress and anxiety, helps avoid weight gain.
Doing yoga improves mindfulness, awareness of the body, the mind, and emotions.
Yoga helps adopt healthy habits to lose weight.

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The many benefits of yoga for health and weight loss

Practicing yoga regularly provides many health benefits. It helps fight inflammation, infections, and chronic diseases. It also boosts the immune system, the cardiovascular function, and prevents heart diseases.

Plus, yoga is a great way to lose weight and get rid of excess body fat. Yoga also makes practitioners get healthy, improves their mood, and helps avoid stress and anxiety that lead to weight gain.

But how often should you do yoga to reap its many benefits for health and weight loss? Do you have to spend a lot of time and invest in expensive classes and equipment to see results?

How to practice yoga to lose weight

All yoga poses from beginner to advanced level offer many benefits. All postures or asanas promote good health for the body and the mind. Some poses are more calming than others and provide inner peace.

On the other hand, the most intense sequences build strength, burn calories, and improve flexibility, stamina, and balance.

If you want to lose weight, you don't need to do challenging yoga poses.

Beginner yoga flows can be very effective at burning fat. Choose a style of yoga that appeals to you the most, that you can do regularly and have a lot of fun with.

Although more intense flows like hot yoga, power yoga, and vinyasa yoga are more effective to burn calories, the most important factor that will help you achieve your body goals is consistency.

So pick a yoga practice that you enjoy first and foremost, then go from there.

You can burn around 600 calories per hour doing yoga that demands both muscle strength and high cardiovascular activity.

By raising your heart rate, you will improve blood flow, metabolism, the rate at which your body uses calories for energy.

How long should an effective yoga practice last

It's necessary to spend an hour every day doing intense yoga to lose weight. Just make sure to get your body moving regularly and take in fewer calories than you expend.

Take a class 2 to 3 times a week and practice at home the other days. This is the most helpful and effective strategy, especially if you are a beginner yogi that would find advice from a yoga teacher helpful.

Some people get amazing results by taking 10 minutes out of their busy schedule to do yoga. If you keep at it, doing yoga regularly can bring you the results you expect, even if it's only 10 minutes at a time.

Yoga should be part of every healthy weight loss plan as it combines intense cardiovascular activity with strength training. Regular yoga practice contributes to weight loss by lengthening and strengthening muscles.

Doing yoga with make you acquire stronger muscles with denser muscle fibers. More muscle mass means more calories burned, even when you aren't doing any physical activity.

Do yoga every day to reduce stress and anxiety

Stress and anxiety lead to weight gain. It's quite easy to overeat and seek comfort foods. This helps you feel better and compensate for worrying thoughts and emotions.

A high level of stress results in high production of the stress hormone cortisol, which encourages the body to store fat.

Practicing yoga regularly is a solution to prevent these problems. 15 to 30 minutes of restorative yoga every night help you deal with stress and anxiety, sleep better, and have more energy the next day.

Not all yoga sessions have to be vigorous and burn extra calories to lose weight. Gentle standing and seated poses will not raise your heart rate as much but eliminate stress and the detrimental hormone production that results from it.

End every yoga practice with restorative poses, regardless of the time of day. It will calm your spirit, release any tension in your body, and prepare yourself for the rest of the day.

Many yoga classes teach new students to be more mindful of their thoughts and emotions to deal with them efficiently. With time, you can practice alone at home and reflect on your practice by yourself.

Practice yoga often to become more mindful

Yoga is a journey. It allows practitioners to discover themselves and see the world in a new light.

Yoga changes people for the better. You realize that life has a deeper meaning by practicing yoga often. You become more mindful of your body, your thoughts, and your emotions.

You realize that destructive habits don't serve you and prevent you to reach your goals.

This has a direct effect on how you perceive healthy and sustainable living in general, your relationship with food and exercise. Mindfulness leads to great results by making you see what to focus on and what to avoid.

Bad decision-making is the source of many of our problems, particularly when it comes to health and fitness. When doing yoga often, you will become more aware and conscious about your bad choices and find the strength to make better decisions.

Mindfulness helps against unhealthy habits and make you feel good about yourself. It's an amazing way to make lifestyle changes that bring long term success and lasting results.

Every yoga practice brings you closer to your goals. It might take some time and effort to see the end of the tunnel, but yoga increases mindfulness, making you more confident in your progress and your ability to succeed.

Yoga can be practiced everywhere with almost no equipment. At home, at the park, at work, at the studio. It not only changes you physically but also improves your life, your relationships, your habits. Practice yoga often to reap its many benefits.

Do yoga regularly to adopt healthy habits

Every yoga practice brings you closer to your goals. It helps you to eliminate bad habits. While everyone is different, yoga can lead to successful and lasting results when practiced regularly.

It prevents unhealthy behavior that leads to unhappiness, depression, and binge-eating. Combined with a healthy diet, yoga helps maintain a healthy weight. No need for an expensive gym membership or equipment. You can do it all with your body weight.

Yoga increases not only your strength, stamina, and flexibility, but also your focus, mindset, and willpower. It teaches you how to get rid of bad habits and replace them with healthier ones.

You need a healthy mind to get a healthy body. Yoga helps achieve both. By practicing often with dedication, you will acquire the patience necessary to persevere through hardship and reach your goals.

But don't expect quick results. Only those that stick to it with consistency will be successful.

With a long-term commitment to adopting healthy habits, you will see improvements. Once a week is not enough to improve. If you don't practice yoga regularly, you will feel like starting over every time.

Each yoga practice doesn’t need to be excessively long. Frequency is more important to see results. Practice yoga for shorter periods if you must but make sure to do it as often as possible and make it a habit.

You can see improvements after each yoga practice. But the deep, beneficial effects that yoga has on your health, inner peace, well-being, and life balance can only be attained with consistency.

Summing up:

How often should you do yoga for the best results? The short answer is every day. But you don't need to practice for over one hour at the yoga studio every time.

Do some physical activity regularly if you want to lose weight and stay healthy. Yoga is great to get your whole body moving, burn calories, build muscle strength, and a healthy heart anywhere with little equipment.

Yoga also helps get rid of stress and anxiety that lead to hormonal changes and unhealthy weight gain. It allows you to become mindful of your body and your eating habits. Practice yoga often to make positive lifestyle changes and adopt healthy habits.

Yoga is a life long practice for everybody at any age. It increases mindfulness, awareness, and changes your life for the better healthily and sustainably.

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About the Author: Alex Assoune

Alex Assoune (MS) is a global health and environmental advocate. He founded Panaprium to inspire others with conscious living, ethical, and sustainable fashion. Alex has worked in many countries to address social and environmental issues. He speaks three languages and holds two Master of Science degrees in Engineering from SIGMA and IFPEN schools.

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