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Lost 1 kg of fat and gained 1 kg of muscle in 1 month doing yoga

Learn how I lost 1 kg (2 pounds) of body fat and gained almost 1 kg of muscle in a time span of 1 month doing yoga and eating healthy.

Okay, so I cannot attribute all of the fat loss to yoga. I’m also on a pretty "clean" diet that involves eating (or drinking) lots of fruits and vegetables and minimizing the amount of processed foods that I eat. A good book on the latter topic is "In Defense of Food".

So today I had a weigh-in and took body fat measurements. While I’m not doing yoga to lose weight, I thought it would be nice to find out whether it has had a positive effect on my body composition. And I was surprised to see that it had…

As the title of this article says: I lost 1 kg of body fat and gained almost 1 kg (0.7 kg to be exact) of muscle or lean body tissue in 1 month. Percentage-wise, I lost 1.5% of body fat.

However the results are not that surprising if you think about it well. I have been doing yoga primarily to increase strength in my muscles without having to go to a gym.

While strength has more to do with nerve-endings in the muscles than with muscle size, it does have a positive effect on increasing the amount of muscle on your body. So naturally, by getting stronger through yoga, I also added more muscle to my body.

Muscle burns fat while you are resting. I am not currently doing any cardio, which would have made me lose body fat much faster (see Fastest way to lose weight by combining 3 strategies).

But the added muscle is burning fat on its own. In addition, I’m keeping the amount of fat I eat in check. Much of the fat I eat comes from olive oil, avocados, and almonds (also see Foods that help you lose weight). Note that I’m not on a calorie-restrictive diet either, but that I’m only on a high-vegetable-high-protein diet with a minimal amount of processed foods.

So that’s the wrap up for today. I’ll take another body composition measurement within about a month’s time and see whether I have lost some more body fat.