If you’re thinking about going keto, you can definitely make changes to your life to guarantee that the diet gives you the outcomes you want. The best strategy to maximize results is to include physical activity in your daily routine, specially if you have been leading an inactive lifestyle so far. This is where yoga comes in. Yoga is the kind of exercise that goes along perfectly with the ketogenic diet since it helps you tone your body as the pounds come off.
Now why Yoga? Why not any other exercise, since they all help tone the body, right?
Yoga offers much more than just an excuse to relax and stretch; it has several health benefits as was being mentioned before. Initially no one had any idea how much of an impact yoga could have on a person’s ability to lose weight and drop those extra kilograms. Numerous studies were conducted, and they all indicated a significant link between the mind and body, and that how good our mental health is, eventually has an impact on our tenacity to lose weight. Yoga encourages and enhances mindfulness and being in the now, which raises the likelihood of having a positive outlook on life in general, thus, promoting weight loss, eating right, and exercising properly to produce results.
Yoga: Origins
The Sanskrit root Yuj, which means “unity” or “to stick together,” is where the term “yoga” originates. It is a centuries-old practice that enhances physical health and fosters a sense of oneness in the body. It is beneficial especially when starting a diet like the keto diet. Yoga is an ancestral spiritual, physical and mental practice that was first created in none other than India. It continued to be passed down through generations, and as a result, it has amassed into a collection of distinct bodily gestures and positions. Yoga can be practiced in groups, or in more conventional face-to-face sessions.
Yoga aims to bring the spiritual aspects of one’s cosmic self into harmony with universal consciousness. It is rightfully regarded as a spiritual awakening discipline that helps you let go of negative or ego-centered thoughts and actions. Through the integration of your emotions with your mental and physical well-being, the everyday practice of yoga improves equilibrium in the body and the cosmic universe.
Making a diet-related decision entails more than just determining what foods you can and cannot eat. Yoga, especially slower styles like vinyasa, is well known for reducing stress and soothing and helping the mind concentrate much better. Stress by itself raises blood sugar levels, which can make it more difficult to maintain ketosis. The benefits are immense, it helps you track your body fitness and shreds excess fats from the body, thus de-stressing and improving the sugar levels in your body.
The Blend of Keto & Yoga:
The ketogenic diet and this mind-body therapy in the form of yoga blend into a seamless fusion of clean food, pranayamas, asanas, coupled with meditation. Yoga practitioners are more likely to have a holistic approach to health, which encourages them to follow the motto “prevention is better than cure”.
The various forms of yogasana offer health advantages to the body and mind that are immeasurable. Whether you’re perfecting all 26 postures in a yoga studio at temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit or trying to reach new spiritual heights with Kundalini, you reap benefits for your soul and mind at the same time that could last a lifetime if you practiced daily.
Even though a ketogenic diet has a ton of health advantages on its own, its goodwill really spikes upwards when combined with yoga; we’ll go into more depth about this potent combination below.
While yoga helps with bodily flexibility, balance, and coordination, it reaps more advantages when practiced by people who follow the ketogenic diet. Blood sugar is highly controlled on the ketogenic diet, and the lack of glucose supports a stable mood for longer durations. Additionally, practicing yoga daily as your primary form of exercise and relaxation has been linked to lowering stress levels and enhancing feelings of zen. For example, downward dog pose is said to improve severe bouts of depression and anxiety. This has even been attested by breast cancer patients who practiced yoga on a regular basis. Yoga has been successful in lowering anxiety, both in terms of attributes and circumstances, which is particularly beneficial for those looking to reduce or eliminate symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Yoga and keto, when you think about it, have been cut from the same cloth. It could be strange for you to make the connection between yoga, a thousand-year-old exercise and the ketogenic diet, a postmodern diet concept. However, there is sufficient backing as to why so many nutritionists and physicians contend that yoga and the ketogenic diet are an excellent pair and work wonders for bringing the body and the mind together in harmony.
Keto is today one of the world’s most hyped diet forms, globally. Everyone is doing it, be it basketball player Lebron James or Victoria’s Secret angel Adriana Lima. Little or no carbs, a lot of protein and a boatload of fat (good fats), and absolutely no sugar at all in the diet is helping people achieve remarkable weight loss. This has led to the diet having its own fandom as well! Recipes on Instagram, Twitter advice, Pinterest pins, and the numerous Facebook groups dedicated to keto are all out there gathering thousands of followers for the ketogenic lifestyle.
The cornerstone of the keto diet is adhering to ingesting a very particular balance of foods in order to achieve ketosis. It helps the body metabolism to enhance and as opposed to glucose, produces which triggers weight loss.
On a regular diet, when our body requires energy, the first molecules we burn are carbohydrates, with fat serving as our secondary source of energy. During ketosis, however, ketones are naturally created (in the liver) and transported throughout the bloodstream, enabling muscles and other bodily tissues to make use of this for creating the body’s energy. According to the empirical evidence, weight loss does occur with increased fat breakdown and ketones production. By regularly following the ketogenic diet, the process of burning fats gets accelerated.
The basic tenet of yoga is to develop and enhance bodily control, flexibility, and self-awareness in order to become stronger.
The importance of boosting your body’s inherent capability to get healthier and stronger is strongly emphasized by the keto lifestyle. Yoga relaxation techniques include a variety of physical, emotional, and cerebral levels, which is exactly what you need when starting a diet that (for some people) can require some getting used to. The keto diet is a test of your mind’s resilience and pushes your limits, especially if you experience any of the severe side effects of being in ketosis, like the keto flu or just have a tendency to start binging.
Success on any diet depends on being able to control your stress, and the keto diet is no exception. The human creates cortisol to alert the body of energy deficiency (even if you haven’t eaten that many calories). High levels of stress tend to worsen weight gain since the body starts to produce cortisol when faced with stress. Consequently, your body develops a need for carbohydrates or sweets since these foods aid in the release of particular hormones which elevates your mood and makes you feel good.
However, as we all know, this feeling of well-being is fleeting, and following the sugar/carb increase, we are right back where we were.
Your brain cannot use fat as a source of energy like your muscles can, under stress. This is where yoga comes in. Its calming practices have a good effect on brain chemistry and help the body stay chilled, and not feel panicky; thus, yoga should be taken into consideration when following the keto diet. Additionally, make sure the right foods are consumed to enhance the best possible physical and mental health.
If the ketogenic diet is right for you, you should give yoga serious thought because it can accelerate superb outcomes. Yoga’s aerobic component provides assistance with the burning of fat for energy and optimizes the body environment for ketosis to begin. While any diet can make you stressed, a ketogenic diet changes your brain structure noticeably. That is why people refer to keto not as a diet, but as a lifestyle choice. It really disciplines your body chemistry into never collapsing before temptation and keeps the brain and body working together for a fitter body shape. You must always encourage a calmer, more relaxed mindset, which you can do by practicing yoga and meditation.