Weight Loss the Yoga Way

Ramji Bhai used to eat large quantities of meat every day, drink at least two bottles of alcohol every day and can’t remember how many packs of cigarettes he would smoke. Weighing 122 kilograms, he had many disorders ranging from hypertension to arthritis.

He lost nine kgs in seven days, after attending a strict yoga camp. Several months later, he looks taller at 82 kg having lost his girth and becoming a complete vegetarian and a teetotaler. His arthritis is almost over and hypertension, too, is in the past.

Quite a few friends of Ramji have taken to yoga too while others having found them boring have left their company. “Now I get back home from work early in the evening…no more socializing and boozing with friends….I have become a family man”, he says with a winning smile on his face.

Other students of the yoga camp have similar success stories too.

For Yoga enables our body to consume as little food as it needs.

Dependence on smoking and alcohol, according to the tenets of yoga, is the recipe to physical and spiritual downfall.

Yoga enables its practitioner to stop smoking and drinking alcohol over a period of time, though it takes an effort of willpower to move towards this abstinence.

Consumption of meats also follows suit – the intake of meat will reduce and become eliminated from one’s diet as one progresses with the yoga regime. Meat, as per yoga, is an unnatural food. It brings to its consumer the stock of all the stress hormones the animal has at the time of butchering apart from the excessive fat and the protein that again will convert into fat when it is assimilated into our body.

Vegetarianism, according to yoga is not a choice but the only way of life.

Cigarettes have no place in the life of a yogi, the yoga practitioner. Smoking must be avoided to get better results in a weight management program under yoga. Smoking stimulates artificial hunger through increase in digestion and the other metabolic activities, thus forcing overeating.

As one progresses through a yoga regime eating itself gets curtailed as less food suffices. One tends to sleep less too and the energy level maintains all day long. This happens over a few days of yoga practice

One is advised to take his weight before one starts with yoga and check it every few days - the gradual reduction in weight will be very pleasing.

Add comment June 8th, 2006 Written By: lalitgambhir

Healthy Living

Healthy living, for long, has remained an abstract concept. When I was a kid, the concept of staying healthy was drummed into my head by all and sundry - dad, granny, physical education teacher (the equivalent of gym instructor). I am sure this is the experience of all of us - we knew we should live healthy, what came of living healthy, but we only had a very basic idea of the ‘how’ aspect.

This is in stark contrast to kids today. In a world of evolving technology, sensibilities, lifestyles, and mindsets, living healthy is no longer a concept. It is a mantra. You have girls barely in their teens working out. You have young boys enrolling for gym class in a bid to stay fit and look impressive. Middle-aged people throng the sidewalks in the early morning hours, some walking, some jogging, in their frantic efforts at joining the ’staying fit’ club. Narcissus is in. The lean and ‘beautiful people’ look is everywhere - from the advertisements on television to high school classrooms.

All this is good. It would be almost hypocritical, in a sense, to claim we care for others when we don’t really make the effort to care for ourselves. However, there is a limit to this. Being healthy is one thing. Being obsessed with staying healthy is another. And both are not the same.

There is, therefore, the need to strike a fine balance between the two. It is true that we can enjoy our lives much better when the basic framework, i.e. the body, is healthy and fit. However, it doesn’t make sense to direct all our energies to the act of keeping ourselves healthy and fit, and thereby not having the time to enjoy much else.

Balancing is the key, as it always is!

Add comment June 8th, 2006 Written By: daisy