Massage is great for reducing stress and improving mental and physical health. However, there is growing evidence that massage can actually help with weight loss. While you’ll still have to monitor your calories and engage in exercise, massage can be part of a healthy lifestyle that promotes losing weight. These effects can be attributed to two things. First, massage can reduce your stress levels, which can aid your body in shedding pounds. Also, massage nourishes your muscles and helps you burn more calories both passively and actively. Combined with other healthy lifestyle choices, massage can give a useful boost to a weight loss plan.
Reduces Stress
Stress is terrible for our bodies and our decision-making process. A massage can lower levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol, in your blood. This reduction in stress increases levels of dopamine and serotonin. Having more of these chemicals in your brain naturally reduces the need to seek them out from delicious but fattening foods. A greasy doughnut can briefly spike your happy chemicals, as the sugar and fat spike your blood sugar. But, it’s a short-term boost with a long-term price tag, and it’s easier to say no to it when you feel good anyway.
Massage can also boost mood in a long term way. This bonus can help improve mental health. If emotional eating plays a major factor in your relationship with food, proper mental health can help you change that. This can aid in changing how you eat, and, in time, your weight.
Nourishes Your Muscles
Massage makes it easier to build muscle, and then recover from your workouts. These two factors play a huge role in your ability to burn calories. The more calories you burn, the more you can eat and still lose weight. Plus, exercise and a higher muscle to fat ratio are both correlated with increases in health across the board. You can drastically improve your health even before reaching your goal weight if you’re building muscle.
Massage nourishes your muscles. When you exercise, your muscles break down and are depleted. Certain amino acids need to be flushed out of your body before your muscles can heal. Once they’re gone, your muscles need other proteins offered by your bloodstream to rebuild stronger. Massage flushes out what needs to go, and aids your blood in saturating your muscles with what they need to stay strong. This allows you to build muscle faster. Muscle, even at rest, needs more calories to survive than fat does. Increasing your muscle mass means that you burn more calories just staying alive than you would with the same weight in fat cells.
Massage also reduces the healing time between workouts. This allows you to see results quicker and push yourself further than you could without massage. You can get into the heavy, calorie-burning workouts that trim fat.
Massage is a great boost to weight loss. If you’re already exercising and following a nutrition plan, massage can help you reach your goals more quickly. It can boost your mood, reduce emotional eating, and get you back to the gym more quickly.
