Friday Q&A: Does Yoga Make You Fat?

Very Salty Water by Brad Gibson

Q: I have a student, a 55 year old male, who has been practicing twice a week regularly for about four months. He recently commented that he has gained weight. How does yoga relate to metabolism? The classes he takes are general hatha style.

A: Thanks for writing in about your student who complains of weight gain despite two yoga sessions a week. Right off the bat, it is unlikely that two sessions a week would have a sustained effect in improving his metabolic rate. Any form of exercise, and here we will say that yoga asana is his exercise, would likely need to be aerobic in nature and done at least every other day, for at least 30 minutes, to affect his metabolism. Likewise, it is unlikely that amount of yoga would lower the metabolism, resulting in weight gain.

I’d also like to respond in general to the issue of yoga and metabolism. If nothing else, Maureen Dowd’s strange “editorial” two weeks ago in the New York Times claiming that yoga makes you fat (see here) raises intriguing questions regarding the effects of regular yoga practice on weight loss or gain that unfortunately won’t be answered until Broad’s book is released in February of next year. The piece will likely boost early orders of her colleagues book, but it casts yoga in the middle of our wonky relationship to “weight” in this country. From my experience as a yoga instructor for more than a dozen years now, I’ve never once heard a student complain that their yoga practice had contributed to weight gain. And on occasion, I’ve been told just the opposite. Of course we don’t know what style of yoga those folks in the alluded to study were practicing, nor for how long and how frequently they practiced. But nothing in Ms. Dowd’s article would lead me to contemplate not practicing yoga. And keep in mind that poor health can sometimes be accompanied by weight loss, and for those individuals, gaining back weight via yoga would be considered a very welcome benefit of a regular practice. So until February, I still confidently prescribe yoga! —Baxter

A: Maureen Dowd set the yoga world abuzz two weeks ago with her editorial that quoted from a not-yet published book by William Broad:

“For decades, teachers of yoga have hailed the discipline as a great way to shed pounds,” Broad writes. “But it turns out that yoga works so well at reducing the body’s metabolic rate that—all things being equal—people who take up the practice will burn fewer calories, prompting them to gain weight and deposit new layers of fat. And for better or worse, scientists have found that the individuals most skilled at lowering their metabolisms are women.” 

See here for full article. So who are these nameless scientists? And can we see the original studies, please? Our own staff scientist, Dr. Brad Gibson, said skeptically that he wonders if any of this is true. And he promises that when the book comes out, he’ll review the original studies to see what, if any, conclusions he can draw from them. In the meantime, if you read his post from last week on science, aging and yoga (see here), you’ll understand why most of the scientific studies on yoga do not really merit conclusions that are as definitive as the one that Ms. Dowd cites. Our advice for now:

1. Get out your saltshaker.
2. Shake vigorously.

—Nina

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