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 Desire for the Eastern approach to wellness is steadfastly growing as evidenced by the 16 million people now practicing yoga in the United States.  With weight gain on the rise, yoga offers a great alternative as a weight loss tool for people over 40.  Not all yoga insists on pretzel poses and yoga is a remarkable tool for motivation.  Many of us have a difficult time with losing weight because we simply lose the motivation when we’re on the 5th carrot stick of the week.    Motivation is like showering, we need to practice it daily.  

The mind and body are married, and intimately united; when one suffers, the other empathizes.  The enormous benefits of Eastern style wellness is based on improving total emotional and physical health by providing a work-out that leaves a person exhilarated, not exhausted with a workout that includes your mind.  Yoga incorporates mindfulness, a required state for conquering the battle with weight.  

1.  The Power of Practicing Mindfulness

Food is vital for life to make energy.  If your body were a temple, you would not take putrefied foods, poisons, anything that is noxious in terms of touch, smell or taste.  You would think carefully and choose with tremendous diligence what you put into it.  Knowing what you ingest has an impact that can last for years and add or subtract years to your life.  As you look at something, despite the temptation – pick and choose your body fuel as carefully as you would choose a mate to share your life with.  Because your body is yours and given to you so that you can make careful choices as to what you put into it.

            However, eating healthy doesn’t mean choosing a life of deprivation and starvation or, that you have to shun fast food restaurants.  You can incorporate tasty treats and guilt free foods when you practice the power of choice.

            “We think of choices in terms of the major ones: what job should I take? Whom should I marry? Should I start a diet or just throw out my old clothes?  Each choice we make moves us down one road or another.  The little choices we make accumulate and dictate the kind of life we live.  Yoga helps how you think about each food choice and fine tunes your awareness to give you the healthy life you deserve.

While on your weight loss plan, yoga can help you achieve increased vitality, a stronger, flexible mind/body and an inspired spirit that motivates you to continue enjoying the rewards of a healthy weight.

2.       Yoga is educational as well as inspirational and offers a meaningful, enjoyable alternative to traditional forms of exercise.  Yoga integrates flexibility, strength and stress release techniques to help you achieve your weight loss goals. 

3.      Yoga is designed for people who desire immediate stress release, total fitness, and increased mind/body/spirit energy without the high impact of jumping.

4.      Yoga guides you to your untapped health and wellness potential that lies within you and allows you to practice the power of prevention.  Yoga, with its emphasis on flexibility alters the onset of arthritis pain, by lubricating joints and limiting body stiffness.

5     Meditation, included in yoga practice, is a means to give the brain a true vacation from anxious thoughts and achieve a heightened awareness by eliminating distractions that deter you you’re your goals.  Stress often leads to a craving for carbohydrates and this leads to weight gain.  Yoga gives you the time to rejuvenate, still the overactive mind, and focus on what is important. Quieting thoughts to receive positive affirmations helps you discover a place that leaves your mind feeling clearer, and focused on the goal of reaching a healthy weight.  You’re worth the time and energy it takes to believe in yourself.  I believe in you.

By combining exercise, meditation, mindfulness, Yoga’s restorative powers can help you achieve the healthy mind, body you were meant to have. In Galatians 5:22, it says, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.” From the moment you commit to coming from a place of love, you transform your world, and become whole in mind, body and spirit. When you use your mind to love your body, you begin to make healthy choices that allow your spirit to feel light, and free to discover the restorative powers of yoga.

1. Yoga Helps You Find Life Purpose

Yoga can help guide you to rebuild your love of self by decreasing your stress hold and turn you energy from tarnished silver to gold. Energy is vital to help you find your passion, your purpose in life.

You may have asked, “What is my purpose? Why am I here? How can I know what my purpose is? It’s really quite simple. Think in terms of passion. Not only in the usual sexual way – but in what really, really turns you on. That is your passion, your love – why you are here. We were all created to do our special thing, as unique as we all are – each with our own fingerprint – your purpose is yours and yours alone. Whether it is doing yoga – feeling your body, mind, spirit connections – reading – playing an instrument, listening to music – your passion and purpose are the symbiotic twins, the eternal connection to a life rich with love.

2. Yoga Helps You Rediscover Love of Self

Love is the height of pure energy translated into a total acceptance of the wholeness of yourself and others. A magical experience. It actually transforms you into an elevated state. By getting in shape, you are essentially saying to your partner and all those that love you, I love myself enough to take care of my health and I want to be around a long time to share my life with you. From the moment you realize you love yourself enough – a paradise lost is regained. Those seeds of wholeness – given to us at creation are within us. Use them and become aware of everything you were meant to be. You were placed here on this earth to have a purpose, not to sit idle and allow your mind/body to decompose. That saying, when you don’t use it, you lose it, is very true.

3. Yoga Guides You To Find Your Deepest Truth

Your life was not a random event; it was a gift of love- God’s love. Knowing who you are, how you can use your energy to put love into the world, you are fulfilling your purpose, age being no deterrent. At each stage of life, each decade, we become a different part of ourselves. It is there, at birth, but it needs time, to roll out, like unfurling that gorgeous Persian carpet you fell in love with at first sight. And now that you’ve walked on it for all these years, it has not lost its magic. Such is life. Living longer than ever before, we live our deepest truths, enjoy our total freedoms and love by giving our gifts deep within ourselves, to others. We are not here only for personal gain, but to magnify love, openness and depth. You have discovered your deepest truth. Live it, love it. Just as Yogi’s practice Sayta – beholding truthfulness – you are capable of flourishing with your own truths. What are your truths? Why is it so hard for you to get the weight off? Go ahead, find your truth, and answer it – the weight will come off. Give it everything you’ve got. That’s your life – in bloom.

4. Meditation Helps You Lose Weight

Meditations are a superb way of bringing your body, mind, spirit into focus. A calming, relaxing practice, daily meditation helps you move up the ladder of yourself and connect with the real motivation to lose weight and keep it off. Motivation is a major factor to getting the weight off, and surprisingly it is often overlooked in most diet plans. Yoga incorporates the missing link not normally found in an exercise class because it intertwines motivation with meditation.’ A skilled Yoga meditation helps you reconnect to your inner motivation. Practice meditating every evening and the weight will come off.

Basically a Yoga Diet is a totally vegetarian diet. The spiritual reason behind it is the fact that people who practice yoga gain some consciousness of mind which does not allow them to eat meat of living beings. They practice kindness to all animals and lay emphasis on the benefits of vegetarian diet.

Yoga Diet has been able to stand the test of time and has been around for a number of years. It primarily consists of whole grains, cereals, fresh vegetables and fruits. Practicing it not only takes care of your health but also helps in rejuvenating your soul and spirit. Also it helps you to lose weight and remain healthy, thus making you feel better.

The main contents of a Yoga diet and the ways and means in which you can stay healthy with a yoga centered diet are discussed here.

As the yoga diet is typically a vegetarian diet without any meat or fish, the protein requirement of your body is taken care by the incorporation of beans and legumes in your diet. A good quantum of salads, sprouted beans, lentils, bean soups and dishes made from lentils and beans are instrumental in providing you the much needed protein intake. Dairy products such as milk, cheese, butter, yoghurt etc. are allowed and are helpful in providing energy to the body. Seasonal and organic vegetables are the main source of nutrition. Dishes such as curries, appetizers and entrees can be made out of such fresh vegetables.

Plenty of water intakes are recommended for a healthy mind and body. According to the prescription of a Yoga Diet, your body should get at least 2 liters of water everyday which may be consumed in the form of plain water or fruits and vegetable juices, nut milk, soy milk and other liquids. Mainly recommended food are those which can be digested easily such as juices, fruits, vegetables, milk, honey etc.

Foods which are difficult to digest must be avoided. The main concept of yoga is to keep your immune system in good shape and if you intake lots of heavily processed food which cannot be digested easily then the whole purpose of Yoga diet will be defeated. You should avoid consuming food made with white flour or white sugar and packaged food which are added with preservatives to keep them fresh for a longer period. This type of food can be detrimental to your health.

Yoga diets also prescribe that you must eat your food slowly and chew it properly before swallowing so that it can be digested easily. Fibrous foods and green leafy vegetables are most recommended for easy digestion.

If you follow a proper yoga diet and supplement it with yoga workouts, you are sure to stay fit and lose weight at earliest. This is also sure to reduce the chances of heart attack, kidney diseases, stroke and cancer. Meat lovers are more prone to cancer and heart attacks than those who follow a balanced vegetarian diet.

A well chalked out yoga diet provides all the necessary protein and minerals to your body and the yogic exercises practiced along with pure vegetarian diet provides you with spiritual rejuvenation thus making your body, soul and spirit work in the right union and yield positive results.