Making weight loss easy and even pleasurable sounds crazy so I like to break down the six facets that are necessary to lose weight. One of the most unbelievable facets is: breathing. After you hear how each of these facets plays a role in creating your best body, it will be easier to understand how and why weight loss seems hard, but really isn’t at all.
We are, collectively, focussing on the wrong things. The whole fitness and weight loss industry is currently based on one false belief: that the reason we gain weight is to hang onto calories.
The “Calories-in-Calories-out” Falsity
If we only gained weight to hang onto calories, then no other factors would play a role in weight loss: the “calories-in-calories-out” equation would have proved itself true. We would lose weight when we exercise or diet. We would certainly lose weight when we do both! Yet there isn’t a conventional weight loss company in history that can claim it has worked significantly! (Weight Watchers is the most/only company with “significant” success rates and they are primarily only significant by comparison to the total failure of other: At Weight Watchers only 6% of people ever reach their goal weight, out of those who successfully achieve their goal weight — 2 out of 1000 keep it off for 5 years. That’s a 0.24% success rate as per the British Journal of Nutrition)
The calories in vs. calories out has indeed proven itself to be a false hypothesis. Or, at least, a far too simplistic one to be considered of very much merit.
The truth is, from what top weight-loss advisors-to-the-stars have found, there are 6 facets of weight loss (without mentioning your wellness in all four areas of your mind-body connection: Mental, Emotional, Energetic & Physical Alignment) and they play equally important roles.
The facet we’ll discuss today is: breathing.
One of the Most Overlooked Facets of Weight Loss is: Breathing.
Most of us aren’t breathing properly—not breathing deep into our diaphragms (Harvard). The reality is, on a molecular level, fat is released via carbon dioxide. It was an Australian scientist who found out that triglycerides, which are fat, break down into hydrogen and carbon particles. So, fat is essentially broken down into 1/5th water, which is exhaled through water vapor, and 4/5th carbon dioxide, which is exhaled, too, via the lungs (British Medical Journal).
The lungs are the primary excretory organ for weight loss.
“Most people believed that fat is converted to energy or heat, which violates the law of conservation of mass. We suspect this misconception is caused by the “energy in/energy out” mantra.” – Ruban Meerman, Scientist
Weight loss also requires that we unlock the carbon — exercise can play a very healthy role in this — and it may explain, at least in part, why when you go and talk to anybody in the health and fitness world about weight loss they say the same thing: Exercise, yes, diet, for sure, but what kind of exercise? Cardio.
Cardio is the be-all-end-all of fat loss: Exercise that gets your heart pumping and … breathing hard.
There’s a study at the University of Southern California that showed people doing breathing exercises were burning far more than calories than people on a stationary bike machine. This study isn’t conclusive; they have been challenged but the discussion is on the table.
Breathing: a key Reason Cardio is Effective at Fat Burning
It has been postulated by scientists that the reason — or at least one of the reasons — why cardio is so effective is because it increases oxygen intake, it increases breath.
If you talk to anybody in the breath exercise world, they’ll tell you that we are tragically underbreathing. I heard one Olympian actually say that the reason why we get runner’s cramps is because we don’t breathe to the diaphragm, so we are tragically struggling to lose weight, to be in our ideal bodies, to be healthy, lean, and light the way that nature intended us to be.
3 Breathing Exercises for Weight Loss
a. Yoga
Get a teacher who actually focuses on breath. Very few do, but yoga is breath and they should NOT be separated. Every movement should be aligned with an in-breath or out-breath and which they are is specific!
b. UpRoots Body MODi
We incorporate the breathwork of yoga with better alignment principles of other types of physical training like pilates and ballet. The result is gentle workouts that deliver extremely good results.
Find out more about this unique practice and how you can get access to them here.
c. UpRoots MIDi
Breathwork is the introduction to every MIDi therapy and we show you all kinds of different styles. If you can’t get into the membership courses, at least breath deeply – into your diaphragm – NOW!
The jury may be out on how crucial breathing, or at least breath exercises, are to weight loss, but it can be agreed on that proper breathing can only benefit your pursuits.
What is conclusive about breathing and weight loss in the research is that:
- It provides the cell with oxygen.
- It helps absorb nutrients.
- It fires up our lymphatic system, allowing us to detoxify better and faster.
- It supports your Central Nervous System, which is pivotal to cortisol.
- It also stimulates the Parasympathetic Nervous System.
- It aids in digestion.
All of these things help you lose weight.
Add the benefits of stress management to this list and it is easy to understand why proper BREATHING is one of the 6 facets the best bodies in the world rely on to keep their fit forms.
“Breathing correctly is the key to better fitness, muscle strength, stamina, and athletic endurance.”
–Dr. Michael Yessis (GMU)
