How many calories do you burn in hot yoga? On average, a person can burn between 300 and 500 calories in a single hot yoga class. The exact number depends on many things, like your body size, how hard you work, and the style of yoga. For example, a Bikram yoga class, which is usually 90 minutes long and follows a set series of poses in a very hot room, might burn calories at a rate similar to moderate exercise. So, if you’re asking how many calories in hot yoga class, think in that 300-500 range, but know it can change a lot.
Image Source: www.sweatboxyoga.com.sg
The Idea Behind Hot Yoga
Hot yoga is yoga done in a heated room. The room is much warmer than normal. It can feel very warm and sometimes humid.
There are different types of hot yoga. Bikram yoga is one famous kind. It uses a set of 26 poses and two breathing steps. You do these poses in a room heated to about 105°F (40°C) with 40% humidity.
Other types of yoga, like Vinyasa or Hatha, can also be done in heated rooms. The temperature might be a little less hot, maybe 85-100°F (30-38°C).
People do hot yoga for many reasons. Some want to stretch more easily in the heat. Some think the heat helps them sweat out bad things. And many want to know about the calorie burn Bikram yoga or other hot yoga styles offer.
Why Hot Yoga Burns Calories
Your body works harder in a hot room. Think about it. When it’s hot, your body tries to cool itself down. This takes energy.
Here’s how the heat affects your body:
- Sweating: You sweat a lot in hot yoga. Sweating is your body’s way to cool down. This process uses energy.
- Higher Heart Rate: Your heart pumps faster to move blood to your skin. This helps cool you. A faster heart rate means more energy is used.
- Body’s Effort to Cope: Just being in a hot place makes your body work to keep its normal temperature. This work burns calories.
On top of this, you are doing yoga poses. You hold positions. You move your body. This movement and holding also burn calories. So, it’s a mix of the heat effect and the exercise itself. This is why people look into hot yoga weight loss. They hope the extra heat boosts the calorie burn.
Calorie Numbers in Hot Yoga
Finding an exact number for calories burned hot yoga session is tricky. It’s not the same for everyone. But we can talk about averages.
Most reports say the average calorie burn hot yoga class is between 300 and 500 calories.
- For women: A typical hot yoga class might burn around 300-400 calories.
- For men: Men often burn a bit more, maybe 400-500 calories or even more. Men usually have more muscle mass, which can mean a higher calorie burn during exercise.
If you do Bikram yoga, which is usually 90 minutes, the Bikram yoga calorie rate might be higher per session just because the class is longer. Some studies on Bikram yoga show a burn rate of about 330 calories for women and 460 calories for men in that 90-minute class. This fits within the general range but shows Bikram can be quite demanding.
Remember, these are just estimates. Your own burn rate could be higher or lower.
What Changes Your Hot Yoga Calorie Burn
Many things change how many calories you burn in hot yoga. Knowing these can help you guess your own burn rate better.
These are the main factors affecting hot yoga calorie burn:
Your Body Size
Your weight matters. A heavier person burns more calories doing the same activity than a lighter person. This is because a bigger body takes more energy to move and work in the heat.
Your Fitness Level
How fit you are makes a difference. If you are new to yoga or exercise, your body might work harder and burn more calories at first. As you get fitter, your body becomes more efficient. It might use less energy to do the same poses, but you might also be able to hold poses longer or try harder ones, which could increase the burn.
The Room Heat and Wetness
The actual temperature and humidity in the room play a big part. A hotter, more humid room makes your body work harder to cool down. This pushes your calorie burn up. If the room is only slightly heated, the extra burn from the heat will be less.
The Yoga Style
Different hot yoga styles have different poses and speeds. Bikram yoga has set poses and a set order. Hot Vinyasa yoga might flow more quickly between poses. How much you move and how hard the poses are will change the calorie burn. A faster flow or harder poses will burn more.
How Hard You Try
This is a big one. If you put a lot of effort into each pose, hold them fully, and engage your muscles, you burn more calories. If you take breaks or don’t push yourself, you burn less. Your personal effort level is key.
How Long the Class Is
A longer class means you are working in the heat for a longer time. A 90-minute Bikram class will burn more total calories than a 60-minute hot Vinyasa class, assuming similar effort and heat levels.
Here is a simple look at how things change the burn:
| Factor | If It’s Higher/More… | Calorie Burn Will Likely Be… |
|---|---|---|
| Your Weight | More | Higher |
| Your Fitness | Less (if very fit) | Could be lower per pose, but maybe higher overall if you push harder |
| Room Heat/Wetness | Higher | Higher |
| Style | More demanding/faster | Higher |
| Your Effort | Higher | Higher |
| Class Time | Longer | Higher |
This table helps show that it’s a mix of things inside and outside your body that figure out the calories burned hot yoga session.
Hot Yoga for Weight Loss
Many people try hot yoga for weight loss. Is hot yoga good for burning calories for this goal? Yes, it burns calories, and burning calories is needed for weight loss.
To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you eat. Hot yoga can help you burn those extra calories. The average calorie burn hot yoga sessions provide can add up over time if you go often.
But hot yoga is not a magic fix for weight loss. It’s one tool. Eating healthy food is just as important, or even more important. You can’t out-exercise a bad diet.
Also, some of the weight you might lose right after a hot yoga class is just water weight from sweating so much. This weight comes back as soon as you drink water. True weight loss means losing body fat, which happens when you consistently burn more calories than you take in over days and weeks.
Hot yoga can help with weight loss because:
* It burns calories (as we’ve seen with the Bikram yoga calorie rate and general estimates).
* It can build muscle. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat.
* It can reduce stress. Stress can sometimes make it harder to lose weight or make you want to eat unhealthy food.
* It can make you feel better and more mindful about your body and health choices, which can lead to better eating habits.
So, is hot yoga good for burning calories for weight loss? Yes, it is. But it works best as part of a bigger plan that includes healthy eating and maybe other types of exercise too. It’s the total picture that matters for hot yoga weight loss.
Comparing Hot Yoga and Regular Yoga
How does hot yoga stack up against regular yoga in terms of calorie burn? Let’s look at hot yoga vs regular yoga calories.
Regular yoga, done in a normal room temperature, still burns calories. The amount depends on the style and how hard you work.
- A gentle Hatha yoga class might burn around 150-250 calories per hour.
- A more active Vinyasa or Power yoga class could burn 250-400 calories per hour.
Now compare this to the average calorie burn hot yoga: 300-500 calories per hour (or session, depending on length).
Generally, hot yoga burns more calories than regular yoga of the same style and length. Why? The heat. Your body has to work harder to manage its temperature in the hot room. This extra work uses more energy, which means more calories burned.
So, if your main goal is to burn the most calories possible from yoga alone, hot yoga usually wins over regular yoga. However, regular yoga still has many great benefits, like building strength, improving flexibility, and reducing stress, even if the calorie count is a bit lower. The best choice depends on your goals and what you enjoy most.
Measuring Your Hot Yoga Calorie Burn
How can you tell how many calories you burned in your hot yoga class? Measuring hot yoga calorie burn is not perfect, but there are ways to estimate.
Fitness Trackers and Smartwatches
Many people use fitness trackers or smartwatches like Fitbit, Apple Watch, or Garmin. These devices use your heart rate and other data (like your age, weight, and height that you enter) to guess how many calories you burn.
Can they measure hot yoga well? Sometimes, but maybe not perfectly.
* Heart Rate: They can measure your heart rate accurately. Your heart rate goes up in hot yoga because of the poses and the heat. A higher heart rate usually means more calories burned.
* Movement: They track your movement. Yoga has less step-like movement than running, but trackers can still measure some activity.
* Heat Effect: This is where it gets tricky. Most trackers are not great at knowing how much of your heart rate increase is from the exercise itself versus how much is just from your body trying to cool down in the heat. This can make the calorie number they show too high sometimes. They might think you are working harder physically than you are, because the heat raises your heart rate.
So, while a tracker can give you an idea, take the number with a grain of salt. It might overstate the calorie burn slightly due to the heat’s effect on your heart rate.
Online Calculators and Estimates
You can find websites that ask for your weight, the type of exercise, and how long you did it. They give you an estimated calorie burn.
These are based on averages. They don’t know how hot the room was or exactly how hard you worked. They can give you a general idea, but they are not precise for hot yoga because the heat factor is hard for them to include correctly.
The Best Way?
There is no perfect way to measure calorie burn outside of a science lab. For hot yoga, using a heart rate monitor (some fitness trackers do this) can give you a better idea than just movement tracking alone. But remember the heat effect.
Focus less on the exact number and more on how your body feels. Are you challenging yourself? Are you consistent? Those things matter more for results like hot yoga weight loss.
Getting More From Your Hot Yoga
If you want to make sure you’re getting a good workout and burning calories in hot yoga, here are some tips:
- Engage Your Muscles: Don’t just stand in the poses. Actively use your muscles. Pull in your belly, press your feet down, reach through your fingers. More muscle work means more calorie burn.
- Hold the Poses: Try to hold poses for the full time given by the teacher. The longer you hold and work in a pose, the more energy you use.
- Listen to Your Body: Work hard, but don’t push yourself too far, especially in the heat. If you feel dizzy or sick, rest. Pushing too hard isn’t safe and doesn’t help in the long run. Find a balance between challenge and safety.
- Go Regularly: Like any exercise, doing hot yoga often is better than doing it just once. Regular classes add up calorie burn over time, which helps with goals like hot yoga weight loss.
- Stay Hydrated: Drink plenty of water before, during, and after class. This helps your body handle the heat better and allows you to perform better, which can support calorie burn. It’s also vital for safety.
Remember that while calorie burn is one benefit, hot yoga also makes you stronger, more flexible, and can help calm your mind. These benefits are also very valuable for your health.
Deciphering the Calorie Count
Let’s sum up what we know about how many calories do you burn in hot yoga.
It’s clear that hot yoga, including specific types like Bikram yoga, does burn a good number of calories. The heat makes your body work harder than in a normal room, adding to the calories burned by the yoga poses themselves.
We looked at the average calorie burn hot yoga provides, often falling between 300 and 500 calories per session. We also saw the Bikram yoga calorie rate fits into this range, maybe leaning towards the higher end due to the class length and intensity.
We talked about the many factors affecting hot yoga calorie burn: your size, fitness, the room heat, the yoga style, your effort, and class length. These are why the exact number is different for everyone.
We discussed that is hot yoga good for burning calories for weight loss goals. Yes, it contributes to calorie burn, which is key for weight loss, especially when combined with healthy eating. But remember the water weight effect.
We compared hot yoga vs regular yoga calories, seeing that the heat generally pushes the calorie burn higher in hot yoga.
Finally, we touched on measuring hot yoga calorie burn, noting that fitness trackers give estimates that might be high because of the heat.
So, while you get a solid calorie burn from hot yoga, don’t get too hung up on the exact number your tracker shows. Focus on the effort you put in, the regularity of your practice, and the many ways hot yoga benefits your body and mind. The calorie burn is a great perk among many others.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many calories in a hot yoga session?
Most hot yoga sessions burn between 300 and 500 calories. The length of the class and how hard you work change this number.
Is Bikram yoga good for burning calories?
Yes, Bikram yoga is known for burning a notable amount of calories because it is a set series of poses done in a very hot room for 90 minutes. The heat and the length make it a good workout for calorie burn.
Does sweating a lot mean I burned more calories?
Sweating means your body is working hard to cool down in the heat, which does use energy and burn calories. So, you do burn calories through the sweating process. However, the amount you sweat is not a perfect measure of the total calories burned from both the heat and the exercise itself. Some people just sweat more than others.
Can hot yoga help me lose weight quickly?
Hot yoga can help with weight loss by burning calories. But fast weight loss is often just water weight from sweating. Losing body fat takes time and needs consistent effort with both exercise (like hot yoga) and healthy eating.
How often should I do hot yoga for weight loss?
Doing hot yoga 2-4 times a week can help with weight loss as part of a healthy plan. Consistency is more important than doing it just once.
Is hot yoga safe for everyone?
Hot yoga can be hard on the body because of the heat. People with certain health problems (like heart issues, low blood pressure, or if you are pregnant) should talk to a doctor before trying it. Always listen to your body in class and leave the room if you feel unwell.
How does the heat increase calorie burn?
The heat makes your body work harder to keep its normal temperature. Your heart rate goes up, and you sweat a lot. These actions use extra energy compared to doing the same poses in a cool room.
What style of hot yoga burns the most calories?
Styles that are faster-paced or hold challenging poses for a long time, like hot Vinyasa or Bikram, tend to burn more calories than slower styles done in the heat. Your personal effort level in any style is also a big factor.