Friday Q&A: Regaining Weight After Unwanted Weight Loss

Potatoes in Yellow Dish by Vincent van Gogh

Q: Is there anyway yoga can help one regain lost weight? I've recently lost weight post surgery. Not good; already thin... Normally I've always quickly regained any loss from things that come along such as a cold or flu... It's just never been an issue as I'm quite healthy, but this time very slow. I've only gained back 1-2 pounds. I'm eating normally, my usual good diet, but my weight seems to be settling, instead of popping back to normal... I've been rather over-worked lately, which is most likely the real issue... Need more yoga, including restorative, weights, dancing, & walking to build muscle along with a less demanding pace...

A: Well, where shall we begin? First off, weight loss after a significant surgery is not unexpected, especially if your daily activities and normal dietary intake decreased following surgery. The Mayo Clinic website puts it like this:

“Your body weight is determined by your calorie intake, overall health, age, nutrient absorption and other factors. After you reach middle adulthood, your weight should remain relatively stable from year to year, although a decrease of a few pounds is rarely cause for concern.”

Once someone who has lost weight like our reader is back to normal daily activities and eating habits, you could expect gradual weight gain back to your preoperative weight. The presence of real or perceived stress can have the effect of causing some people to gain weight and others to loss weight depending on the constitution, so the presence of higher levels of stress could certainly be slowing down our reader’s progress to her goal. We have written exhaustively on the benefits of yoga and certain tools of yoga on improving stress management, and certainly a well balanced asana practice along with gentle and quieting practices, as the reader herself has suggested, could be helpful.

So that is a good first step, but I’d recommend that you don’t make your “treatment” worse than the stressful workload you are already dealing with, especially if you're feel like you don’t much free time. Keep it simple, starting with a nice restorative practice one day, trying a bit more activity the next at the gym or with a slightly more vigorous yoga session the next day. Exercise, in general, is known to stimulate your appetite, so take advantage of the increase in hunger and take in a few more healthy calories than you might normally.

Next, it turns out that strength training to build bigger, stronger muscles is another way to gain weight, usually in conjunction with eating more calorie-dense foods. Take a look at my post Yoga for Strength for some ideas on how to modify your yoga practice to save you a trip to the gym. And you might consider consulting with a good nutritionist about a healthy diet for you at this time, as he or she may have some recommendations that you haven’t considered.

Finally, if the weight loss persists or worsens despite your attempts to gain weight, it might be time to go in to see your family MD for a thorough check-up. The Mayo Clinic website points out:

“Unexplained weight loss or losing weight without trying — particularly if it's significant or persistent — can be a symptom of an underlying medical disorder. …. Unexplained weight loss of 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) or more, weight loss of more than 5 percent of your body weight, or persistent weight loss should be investigated.”

And the list of possible underlying conditions that can lead to unexplained weight loss is long, so don’t delay getting this checked out by a professional if you fall into this situation.

However, the fact that our reader has been able to gain a bit a weight back already is a good sign, and putting some of the ideas above into play may add on those desired extra pounds!

—Baxter

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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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