Weight Loss - Pilates exercises

Pilates is a set of exercises (similar to Yoga) designed to improve the practitioner's posture and flexibility. Pilates was developed by Joseph Pilates, an English born Self-defense instructor. Although Pilates has only been made popular in the past 10 years, it has been around since 1926.

What are the benefits of pilates?

Improving the general health through better body posture and alignment.
Building a stronger Core Muscles (muscles around the mid section of the body, which include the abs and the lower back muscle).
Refreshing the mind and the body.
Strengthening the muscles in unisom and in balance with each other, without making the practitioners muscular!
Improve flexibility which prevents sports injuries and bad postures.

How to find a good Pilates teacher:

Fortunately, all teachers who teach Pilates in major sport centers and Gyms, must be qualified to do so. All teachers are expected to attend a course and will then be required to sit an exam before they are awarded their certificate. If you attend an independent teacher in a local village hall, then it is recommended that you ask to see their qualification certificate before you attend the class. Remember, as with any exercise, if taught badly, it may be more harmful than beneficial!

Who would benefit from Pilates?

Its beneficial to anyone of any age, sex and abilities. Naturally, as with any weight loss exercise, it is important that you consult your GP to be on the safe side, but in general, its a harmless set of slow moving exercises designed to help people with varied abilities.

How can Yoga and Pilates help with your weight loss program?

Unfortunately it is a well known fact that obesity also effects a person's posture. This is because the excess weight throws the body out of alignment.This therefore means that when a person looses weight, the body needs to then be "re-aligned" to extenuate the weight loss even further (it also prevents future back and joint problems). This is where Yoga and Pilates are extremely useful as they are designed to focus on body posture and flexibility.

It is important that you realize that Yoga or Pilates do not in themselves help you to loose weight, but they do help as part of a holistic weight loss program.

What is the difference between Yoga and Pilates?

Yoga

Yoga is an eastern method of gentle movement designed to encourage flexibility and better body awareness. However, certain deeply religious people see Yoga as a form of eastern religion rather than gentle exercise, and as such refuse to partake in any Yoga classes. Therefore, we have also included Pilates for those people as it is the western approach to flexibility and body awareness/ control. Remember, you can use Pilates and Yoga for weight loss.

Pilates
As with Yoga, Pilates is developed specifically to encourage a better body awareness and posture. It is the "western" approach to the eastern Yoga. It is a set of very gentle exercises designed to promote flexibility and better posture.

As you can see from above we have included Yoga and Pilates specifically in our Weight Loss website as they focus on providing you with a better posture. Having a straight posture will make you look and feel slimmer. Both Yoga and Pilates classes can be found at any local sport center.

Children & Obesity

In simple terms, obesity is caused when the body stores excessive calories. Obesity in civilized countries is reaching epidemic proportions. What is worrying is that the children too are now more obese than ever before in the history of man kind!

Child Obesity and Weight Loss

Calories and Weight Loss

Weight loss depends on the amount of calorie intake. Calories are used by the body to perform its day-to-day functions. However, when the calories taken in is greater than the energy burnt, then the excess calories are stored as fat. The most common reasons for excessive consumption of calories are:

Psychological
Emotional
Lack of knowledge
Habit

calories and weight loss

Weight loss plans

There are a number of VERY dangerous diet plans used to target weight loss. A dangerous, or misleading, diet is one which provides "rapid" result. Remember, in order for a diet to be effective and safe, your body needs time to adjust to the change in your lifestyle. This is because rapid dieting will almost always have health consequences, and in fact research has also shown that as soon as your body adjusts to the diet, you will start to put on weight at even a higher rate than before.

Weight loss diet

Weight Loss plans to be avoided

For legal reasons we are unable to actually name dangerous or misleading weight loss diets, however, the following is a list which should help you identify these diets for yourself.

Any diet that cuts out any essential food groups (Specially carbohydrates!)
Any diet that promises or guarantees fast result
Any diet that involves you drinking only liquid food.
Any diet that involves you buying processed and ready made "food substitutes".

Weight loss diets

Diet

The food you eat is the single most important factor in your weight loss program. Weight loss is only achieved through a healthy diet.

Weight loss diet and health

Exercise

Exercise is vital not only to a safe weight loss plan, but, is also crucial to the general operation and well being of the human body.

Weight loss exercise

Measuring Body Fat

Measuring the Body Fat is a much more accurate way of measuring how your weight loss program is going than using a bathroom scale. The bathroom scales are highly misleading!

Measure Body Fat

Swimming

Swimming is a VERY effective and safe way of burning calories. Its one of the safest ways of exercising as you do not put any excessive force on the joints.

Swimming

Walking

Walking is one of the safest form of exercise as you burn those calories without excessive wear and tear on the joints.

Walking

Pilates and Yoga

Pilates and Yoga are important to any weight loss program as they both encourage good body posture and alignment.

Pilates