Lose Fat On The Mat

By Nicole Beland

Yoga doesn't just calm you down; it can also help you shed pounds. Here's how some Sun Salutations helped one skeptic get skinny


A month ago I was rarely exercising and had 5 extra pounds packed on my thighs and backside to prove it. My favorite jeans were banished to the back of a drawer, and I was fidgeting in bed every night, exhausted but too wired to sleep. It was awful. But I'd be lying if I said it was unusual. As a freelance writer, part-time editor, and live-in girlfriend to a night-owl musician, I work crazy hours and go out as often as I can. Sure, I'd go on mini health kicks for a week here and there. Then I'd get bored and return to pulling all-nighters and gorging on nachos. In a way, I was the worst person to test yoga for its weight- loss potential. But, in another, I was the best. Most people fall off the exercise wagon as quickly and as often as I do. If I could make yoga stick and slim down, it would bode well for yo-yo dieters everywhere. It would also be pretty surprising, considering that yoga is far better known for promoting relaxation than burning fat.

As a sporadic fitness fan, I'd taken yoga classes at gyms and studios around New York, and had even done Bikram one or two times a week for almost a month last summer (until a beer-soaked trip to Europe broke my momentum). My objective was to find a way to do yoga no less than four times a week and see if that alone--I planned to eat the same as always, no dieting--would melt away my excess flab. It took a hefty amount of trial and error to find a routine that fit my unpredictable life. But by the end of Week 3, I was shocked to discover that yoga was starting to become a part of who I was--and the number on the scale was steadily dropping.

Week 1

No Way Om

Since I had fond, if fuzzy, memories of hot yoga, I slotted it in for two of my four weekly workouts. Only now I lived 30 blocks from the nearest Bikram studio and, on most days of the week, work would make my only option an 8 p.m. class. Not ideal, but worth a try.

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