Does doing Yoga in a heated room help with weight loss compared to doing yoga in a regular temperature room?

You will lose water but not fat!

Practicing Yoga in an environment that is pumped with excessive heat it not only unhealthy but it goes against the principles of Yoga. Patience, acceptance and union.

For sure there is a world wide trend and a growth in "Core Power Yoga." Why?

1 - The extreme heat aids mobility and flexibility. As a result, clients "feel" as though they are improving in their postures. The ego is satisfied!

2 - The rapid water loss caused by the high heat creates a "high." It soon becomes addictive.

Many traditional Vinyasa or Iyengar teachers shy away from the heated Yoga for good reason.

Excessive heat produces sweat as your body's way of cooling off.

I don't agree with exercising in an extremely intentionally hot environment for any reason

Water loss is fake weight loss and actually can be detrimental and ultimately unhealthy

When you sweat you will temporarily lose weight—but this weight is just water weight (water and electrolytes) and not fat weight, and you will put it straight back on as your body is re-hydrated. In addition, as little as a 2% loss of body mass from fluid loss will impair exercise performance. This means a 150-pound student who loses roughly 3 pounds during a heated yoga class from excessive sweating can experience increased heart rate and decreased blood volume, causing a loss of strength and endurance.

Sweat is first and foremost your body’s thermoregulation unit, a means to cool the body down. It essentially will only “cleanse” your skin much in the way a sauna would. “Less than 1% of toxins are lost through sweat” says Dr. Donald Smith, Professor of Environmental toxicology at UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Dee Anna Glaser, professor of dermatology at St. Louis University, and founding member of the International Hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating as a medical condition) Society agrees, “Sweating for the sake of sweating has no benefits and will only release trace amounts of toxins.”

In general...Sweating is not Fat...Exercising in a heat environment is not the best IDEA to do with your clients because you dehydrate the body from water and other very important elements. If you do YOGA in the heat is great for the mobility of the joints but the heat mast be in a safe range around 28 Celsius and not more is a good. And don't forget Hydration before , during and especially after the class!
We mast keep our clients in the most safe zone !

I agree with Malcom 100%.

Malcom nailed it. You'll lose weight but, it will be mostly water weight that you should be sure to replenish soon after.

there are per chiropractors/dr's the most injuries related to yoga from heated rooms vs. non heated rooms. You can sweat and heat up your body plenty without heating the room first.
You can lose plenty of weight and more benefits, watch this video:
"A man loses 365 lbs thx to yoga": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wti0O-0Kthg

Yoga may burn calories during the performance of the physical exercises, but it can also help a person lose weight in other ways. Growing a yoga practice can assist a student in becoming more aware of their physical body and how it is feeling. (Many students come to yoga with poor proprioception and other forms of self-knowledge about their own bodies.) Learning to pay attention to the feelings--physical and otherwise--in a post can assist with paying attention off the mat. This may translate to improved skills in determining whether I am actually hungry, and therefore need to eat, or whether I am really just bored, or sad, or something else. Further, a yoga practice may encourage people to examine the specific foods they choose to eat, and the quantities in which they choose to eat them, as they learn to recognize the cause and effect connection between food and how they feel after eating it.

Heat by itself does NOT cause you to burn more calories or up the intensity of any exercise, yoga included. If it did, the most popular way of losing weight would be to lounge around in the sauna! Because heat makes you sweat more, participants in heated exercises often feel like they had a more intense workout, even though this is not necessarily the case.

Heated yoga practice is also not appropriate for all students. It may be inappropriate for people with heart conditions, cardiovascular disease, or uncontrolled blood pressure, among other health conditions. A heated room can lead to heat-related injuries for some individuals, including dehydration. Without air circulation, sweating is a less effective means for the body to cool itself, and some bodies are unable to maintain a proper body temperature in a heated and humid environment. If you are going to teach heated yoga, it is important to give your students information on how to practice safely in the heat and educate them on the signs of heat-related health problems. There is an excellent article on heated yoga and the specific physiological effects on the body available in the electronic library of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, written in plain language that is easily understandable.

A steady practice and muscular engagement during the physical practice will aid a yoga practitioner in losing weight. Standing poses in particular can help build and work muscles when they are performed engaging the muscles. It takes an experienced, well-trained teacher to help newer students learn how to perform asanas this way. There isn't anything "wrong" with doing asanas a different way--for example in a purely flowing, aerobic style--but a combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercise has consistently been shown to be most effective in weight loss. It isn't any different with the physical practices of yoga.

By it's nature, a regular daily yoga practice can create weight loss. Many of the poses work to bring balance to the endocrine and digestive systems, supporting weight loss. The classical sun salutation, for example works every system within the body, increasing strength, flexibility and endurance. I've had many students, over the years, who changed their bodies through daily practice. A moderately heated room (80 F) is enough the warm the body and increase flexibility in a safe way. Producing sweat during asana practice is a good thing - purification through heat.

The main problem with a heated room for yoga practice or any exercise is that if the body can not cool it self through sweating core temperature rises, the heart rate and blood pressure start to rise to compensate. Along with excessive sweating, cardiovascular stress, and the inability to cool (unless you run out of the room!), you are putting yourself in a real and risky situation. Yes you can lose weight but you better replace it and fast when the class is over.... Loss of water is responsible for the immediate decrease in weight. (You could just buy a rubber suit and sit out in the sun on a hot day... overheating and losing a lot of water as your body desperately tries to bring your core temperature down so you don't die!) Yes you will get the benefits of the exercise but I suggest you skip the high heat and enjoy the benefits of YOGA for weight loss which can often come from the stress reduction practice, breath work, mindfulness and the challenge of the asanas. Always stay hydrated, work hard if you are ready, and listen to your body. Get healthy and fit with less risk and skip the "rubber suit".

well i do not believe doing yoga in heated room will help in losing weight.In fact its all connected with your habits, i mean how much your life is in discipline? Well everybody knows if you sleep eight hours , eat three proper meals and two snacks plus minimum three litres of water,thats it you are done. Ofcourse you need to do some kind of workout also but not in heated room please. Maybe it will help you to sweat too much and well it can increase your flexibility also a bit but for all those kind of results can be possible only on one equipment in this world right now and that is TRX TRAINING. Let me tell you this is a mind bogling equipment. Well i am sure you have got your answer. Take care .
Regards
Kunal sharma
kunalsharma9@hotmail.com

I agree. The heat helps with flexibility but, as for fat burning, not so much. I'd rather burn my calories "heating up" personally.

Like all exercise regimens, Hot Yoga does have risks and may not be for everybody but just because it is a newer discipline of Yoga such as Power Yoga, it may not necessarily follow the same principles as the older disciplines.

In Core Power Yoga the room is heated as in Bikram. It includes both abs-focused Vinyasa Yoga asanas which primarily focus on the abs, back, hips and pelvis AND a number of cardiovascular exercises.

Short term weight loss due to water loss is most likely the result, from being in a hot environment.

Mac Dodds, M.A., CSCS

goodlifefitness.biz

So grateful there are more eloquent and wise (through knowledge and experience) who have replied thoughtfully to this question (over a year ago!) I practice and teach Hatha Yoga in the Iyengar style for soooo many good reasons.
Keep up the great work, those of you who are here to serve!

Namaste~

You lose water weight due to the high temperature room you are working out in. I agree with those responses that support this.