ajdelong

It’s important to remember that muscle is denser than fat. The scale might not go down, but your body fat will definitely change. What matters in health is body fat, and a way more useful measurement for you to use are simple body measurements: have you lost any inches on your waist, your thighs, your hips, etc. Those are far better indicators of a shift towards health and an ideal weight for you and your frame.

So people seeing the scale go up, remember all the wobbles you might have done in chair pose or some of the other balances at the beginning? Remember how you don’t wobble so much any more? Those ‘balance muscles’ you’re building in your early days of hot yoga are having to work, and they will shape you up fast.

Also keep in mind what’s a metabolic boost FOR YOU. For me, I started doing hot yoga after several months of being too ill to do ANY exercise (I have a severe thyroid condition), so for me ANY exercise was better than my baseline of nothing. If I’d started hot yoga back when I was into running, it might not have given me as much of a ‘boost’ since it would be a change of activity rather than a jump.

I read in the book The Science of Yoga that yoga actually slows DOWN the metabolism, which makes sense in a way: Yoga would make your body efficient and healthful, so it will maximize getting calories out of food. The plus is you can do with less food! The minus is, if you don’t know this and keep eating the same as you did before, yeah, you will not be having a calorie gap to help you lose pounds.