The Fitness Cheerleader is Taking Yoga!

Happy Tuesday folks!  How’s the healthy living going?  Are you staying active and planning your meals?

Yoga Class

Today I started taking a Yoga class.  Yes, yes, I know my main philosphy is that we as woman don’t work out hard enough to lose weight (or even to maintain our body weight), but trust me – I’m not being hypocritical.  Yoga has a role to play in what I call “active rest”.  Rest days are very important to training – as they allow the body to recover from  HARD workouts.  That said, I don’t believe in total rest* – I like to call it “active rest” and elite athletes call it easy days.  No matter what you call it, it’s important!  This is why I’ve signed up for a Yoga class to do on my “active rest” days.

Besides being a great way to stay active on my rest days, Yoga has a whole pile of other benefits!  Yoga, aimed to unite the mind, the body, and the spirit is also great because it:

• helps you become more aware of your body’s posture, alignment and patterns of movement – teaching you balance which is really important in preventing falls later in life.
• makes the body more flexible, and therefore preventing injuries.
• helps you relax even in the midst of a stress stricken environment.
• Increases your cardiovascular efficiency.
• Increases your respiratory efficiency.
• Normalizes your gastrointestinal functions (do I need to elaborate? *wink*).
• Improves your quality of sleep.
• Decreases anxiety and depression (this is an important factor for me because my depression is managed with exercise and healthy foods).

(To learn about more of the benefits of Yoga, I urge you to visit: http://www.abc-of-yoga.com )

The one thing you have to remember when doing Yoga is that it doesn’t burn very many calories.  An hour burns about 80 calories, compared to an hour of running which burns about 600 calories.  So just because you did some yoga doesn’t mean you can eat a big ol’ chocolate chip muffin.  On my active rest days I reduce the number of calories I consume. This week my poll is: Have You Ever Taken a Yoga Class?

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