THE 9 BEST YOGA POSES FOR WEIGHT LOSS

Try these best Yoga poses for weight loss, and start shedding the pounds today!

Yoga isn’t inherently a weight-loss workout—it’s a form of exercise more focused on muscular endurance, core strength, flexibility, and mobility.

However, thanks to the difficulty of some of the poses, you can build serious strength and eliminate body fat using Yoga.

Give these poses a try, and you’ll see a huge difference in your efforts to shed pounds.

Our list of the best Yoga poses for weight loss can be the helping hand you need to kick your weight loss into overdrive!

9 Best Yoga Poses for Weight Loss

Plank – The Plank is, hands down, one of the best exercises you can do to shred your core muscles. It’s not just focused on your abs, but it even targets your lower back muscles, not to mention all of the upper and lower body muscles that are recruited to maintain the stable position on your hands and knees.

The great thing about this core workout—and all core workouts, really—is that they activate your abdominal, lower back, and oblique muscles, all of the muscles you want to focus on to burn that extra fat around your belly, waist, and hips. Strengthening your core muscles is crucial for not only losing weight, but eliminating the unwanted gut fat.

Chair Pose – Try holding the Chair Pose for more than 30 seconds, and you’ll absolutely feel the burn! What’s great about Chair Pose is that it targets your lower body, but it engages your lower and upper back muscles to support your arms while you hold the pose. You’ll find that this full-body engagement leads to serious calorie-burning, which always translates into great weight loss.

Warrior Two – Warrior Two is a pose that focuses on balance and stability, but with your front leg bent, your quads get one heck of a workout. It also takes your core muscles to maintain proper posture and stay stable in the pose, and your shoulders are engaged to keep your arms lifted and outstretched.

Put together, Warrior Two isn’t just one of the hardest of the Yoga poses to maintain for a long time—it’s also one of the best to build muscular endurance in your legs and shoulders.

Bow Pose – Bow Pose is a fascinating exercise, one that limbers up your spinal muscles and engages your abs to lift your body off the ground. What makes it so amazing is that it takes nearly your entire body to maintain the pose. Your arms have to pull to lift your upper body, but your legs have to push to counterbalance the lift and elevate your lower body. Meanwhile, your abs are doing a lot of work of keeping the upper and lower body balanced and synchronized. Hold the pose for 30-60 seconds, and you’ll burn some serious calories!

Shoulder Stand – The Shoulder Stand is an intermediate-level Yoga pose, but it offers some truly amazing benefits. Like all inversion poses, it can aid in digestion and help your body better absorb the nutrients from the food you eat. It’s also known to increase thyroid function, which plays a role in your metabolism and helps with weight loss. Plus, it targets the muscles in your abdomen and spine, improving your posture and providing extra fat-burning benefits.

Sun Salutations – The combined movements of the Sun Salutations (forward bends, Downward Dog, Upward Dog, etc.) is more than just a great way to warm up for your Yoga workout. It also mobilizes your body, gets your blood pumping, and activates your internal fat-burning mechanisms.

If you make it a bit more intense by adding in a Push-Up between each transition, you’ll find that it turns into a truly amazing muscle-building routine that can torch a lot of fat before you even get started with the full Yoga session!

Bridge Pose – Bridge Pose is a great way to target your lower back muscles, strengthening them and increasing the support for your spine. It’s a simple exercise that has a very low risk of causing lower back injuries, but it can work wonders to elongate your spine and increase your range of motion. Plus, if you add a leg lift into the Bridge, you double down on the difficulty of the exercise and increase the targeted fat-burning.

Boat Pose – Boat Pose is one of the harder core-focused Yoga poses, which is why it definitely deserves a place on the list of the best Yoga poses for weight loss. Your abdominal muscles have to work overtime to keep your legs up, your spine straight, and everything well-balanced while holding the pose. It’s incredibly difficult, which means it’s pushing your muscles to the limit and burning more of the fat around your abs.

Side Plank – While the regular Plank pose focuses more on your abs with a bit of lower back engagement, the Side Plank pose targets your obliques, while still adding in some lower back and abs engagement. The result is an exercise that feels a lot more difficult than you’d expect, and which offers some truly excellent fat-burning benefits! 

Learn the Best Yoga Poses for Weight Loss and So Much More with Get Yoga Lean

If you’re interested in learning the best Yoga poses for weight loss—and for your health in general—you need Yoga Lean.

Yoga Lean is a program specifically targeting weight loss and fat-burning through Yoga, combining all of the best poses (including those listed above) into simple yet highly effective workouts that you can do daily at home.

Thanks to Yoga Lean, you can harness the power of both your mind and body to increase your metabolism, strengthen your muscles, and see serious weight loss results. You’ll learn the best Yoga poses for weight loss and SO MUCH MORE!