People who practice yoga regularly become mindful with their choices of food and what they eat, and because of this are far less likely to become obese.
These are the findings of a study, put together at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer research Centre, in the United States .
The reason the study came about was findings that became known almost four years ago. The initial findings were for people whom were overweight; they were far more likely to lose weight. If doing yoga, this would prevent the normal middle age spread that people tend to get as they get older.
These were the benefits for people whom regularly practiced yoga. Although the researchers did not quite know why the yoga was helping the participants, they came to the conclusion it was more to do with the actual doing of yoga, but not the exercise that you get from it.
The researchers concluded that it was more to do with actual body awareness more than anything else was, which was creating the effect. A follow-up study confirmed their suspicions, which published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, in August.
They say that the research that they did found that people, whom practiced yoga for a period of 10 years, did in fact gain less weight. Than those whom did no yoga at all.
This confirmed everything they thought, they didn’t add any other factors to the research either such as physical activity and what they ate. They concluded that yoga makes you more mindful about food choices, and once you have eaten enough and feel full then you will stop eating. Whereas if you are a non-mindful, eater then you just eat whatever you want and don’t consciously think about it.
This could be because you either have some anxiety related issues or may be depressed. It is very easy to eat more food when you. Could be either stressed or depressed because you are eating with your emotions.
One of the researchers involved in this particular research, who has been interested in Yoga for a number of years now, says that because of the way that you have to, stretch your body into various different positions and keep relaxed at the same time is one of the reasons why it brings about the mindfulness.
It is this actual inner calmness that makes us more focused when it comes to eating, so instead of making choices of foods with our emotions we make choices with rational thinking. In turn we make better choices, here is something to think about? Have you ever noticed that when you may be having a bad day you can tend to turn towards food for comfort?
To finish this off they, did a questionnaire, and some of the factors that were in it are a small summary below so you can see it. This questionnaire, distributed to 300 people in order to find out whether or not as a conclusion, that yoga does affect mindfulness with regard to eating.
- Being distracted, doing other things whilst eating food
- Overall awareness of food seeing how it looks, tastes smells, and overall texture
- External influences, such as advertising, eating in unison when it’s being displayed
- Emotional eating, you tend to eat when you’re either stressed or depressed
- Being full, you still tend to eat even though you are full
When the results came back 40 percent of the people whom filled the questionnaire in practiced yoga for approximately one hour per week, 46 percent of them walked for 90 minutes a week as exercise, and 50 percent of them or more did some sort of physical activity for 90 minutes which was either vigorous or moderate in nature.
Of the ones that had a higher mindfulness score as they called it were the people that had a lesser BMI and the overall conclusion was that. The people whom did the yoga had a better overall BMI than those who did not.
So yoga it would seem has the thumbs up and it doesn’t look as if you have to practice it a awful lot to become mindful yourself. So this is something that you could incorporate into your weight loss plan in order to double the effectiveness of it.
Source and references http://www.sciencedaily.com
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