bikram yoga

So I've started bikram yoga.

Does anyone else do this and how do you count it in your daily activities? I'm a runner and I'm taking Bikram Yoga mainly for muscle lengthening and mental healing (as cheesy as it sounds).

I'm not really using it as "exercise" or a calorie burner... I don't even know if it burns a lot? I mean, I sweat a ton... but its 90-100 degree in there fr 90 minutes... today was my rest day, so I only did Bikram. I'm thinking of doing it 3 times a week on top of my normal running (30-40 miles a week).

Just curious on other's experience with bikram... thanks~!

I like yoga and had tried a few. I have tried Bikram Yoga twice, and found it a nice activity. 

However, I have a couple of questions:

What is yoga main purpose? How did yoga came about, in general? or Bikram Yoga for that matter?

Has anyone tried to lose weight doing ONLY Bikram Yoga as an exercise without changing any other aspect necessary for weight loss in Calorie Count?

Are there various controlled studies from different sources (professionals), that show that Bikram yoga burns that many calories? If they exist, are there critiques on these studies by peers?

Frankly, I would like to see actual facts. Because if melkor is wrong and it actually burns that many calories, I am doing Bikram and will stop running 3x/week, strength train 3x/week, and yoga 1x/week, and eating a low-calorie clean diet daily. Bikram yoga sounds a much easier and simpler form of calorie burn.

PS: In my book and experience, anyone that thinks that they are smarter than most, usually are not, for they stop learning...and sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

Oh, and that calculator? There's something wrong with it - when you do the calculations properly using the MET formula it's supposedly working from you get a very different result:

By using the standard "calories burned" formula, you can determine the approximate number of calories burned for a 90-minute Bikram session. The formula is:

(METS * 3.5 * Weight in kg/200) * Duration of activity.

Since many people go by their weight in pounds, a conversion for the METS rate can be used. Bikram is approximately a METS (metabolic equivalent of task based on rate of oxygen used at rest) value of 6. This is divided by the conversion formula for kilograms to pounds, which is 2.2, so 6 / 2.2 = 2.73.

Plugging in the data for a 150 lb. person practicing Bikram for 90 minutes, the calculation looks like this:

(2.73 * 3.5 * 150 / 200) * 90 = 644 calories.

The METS formula does not take into account a Bikram student's resting or working heart rate, or their muscle mass; therefore, the results of the calculation are approximate.

eHow.com

Plugging those numbers in, you get (2.73 * 3.5 * 170/200) * 90 = 730 calories.

 Which is just about exactly what the person wearing the HRM in Bikram class got and within expected bounds for error parameters and reasonably close to my earlier guesstimate of appropriate values.

(corrected for mistakes in calculations. Evidently I suck at things involving numbers now.)

Original Post by melkor:

You want someone with a HRM in Bikram class?

715 calories.

*Sigh*

 See what happens when you're operating from emotion instead of trying to objectively examine the evidence? You go jumping off a cliff when you get impossible results that seem to validate your preconceived notions.

715 calories, I guess I should take up Yoga this winter then to keep the pounds off.

Before I began training for my marathon I used bikram yoga only as a weight loss program (though I believe weight loss is just an added benefit of the yoga).  I went every single day for 60 days straight.  At the time I was overweight by about 15-20 pounds.  I wanted to drop those pounds to be kinder on my knees before I started running so much.  I lost 25 pounds in those 60 days.  I looked great and felt great.  And a few weeks into it, I actually increased my calories.  It definitely burns the estimated 350-800 calories!  I dropped to 3-5 times per week when I started running.  It was a great compliment to running as it is not harsh on your joints.  As common w/ running and combined w/ the yoga I had to eat about 3000-4000 calories plus a day to not lose weight.  So believe me the heat is not a false sense of a hard workout.  I was a big workout person until about 25 and I had never done anything as hard...if you give it 100%!  I've started doing it again to get in shape after having a baby...and I'm already seeing results with no other workout and eating as a busy working mother would!  Hope this helps!

I try to do Vinyassa yoga a couple times a week, I only recently got a free pass to try Bikram Yoga, and it was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I can do 90 minutes of spinning with no problems, so I like to think I'm pretty fit. I have never sweat so much before and my finger tips turned to prunes. My mat really stunk afterwards too. Gross. 

I do personally know people that have lost weight using Bikram yoga. I don't know if its from eating less or just Bikram yoga. Before I tried it I thought how hard can it be, but the second I laid down on my mat I felt how hard my heart was working just to cool down my body and I can definitely see why people lose weight doing it. The people in my class were all body sizes, but the people that did Bikram didn't have very good muscle tone, but they were on the thinner side. 

Hot yoga is not my thing, my head spins when I get up too fast from a chair, so add in the dehydration and I had a headache that wouldn't go away till the next morning. I'll stick with room temperature yoga. I hear you either love hot yoga or you hate it, and people never do both. If you don't like Bikram there's at least a dozen other hot style yogas. Bikram to me felt too much like a money machine. 

I started doing bikram a week ago and I love it.  At my weight it burns 1000 calories a session which is incredible.  In the week since I've started I've lost 5 pounds.  I think Bikram and Counting calories is definitely a good way to lose weight as well relieving stress which can contribute to weight gain.