It sounds like a fairy tale, right? You just enter your favorite spa, lose your clothes, and lay down on the bed with some chill music and beautiful scents. Slowly, the massage therapist comes and applies some oils on you before rubbing your skin and relieving all your stress, pain, contractures and worries. Soon, you start feeling better, more energetic and at the same time more relaxed. By the moment the session ends, you get up from the bed and feel as if you dropped some years to be lighter. Doing that routine periodically to lose weight and feel better than ever? If it sounds too good to be true, read on as we explain all the procedure for you.
Massage Therapy Gets you in the Right Mindset
The right mindset to start losing weight is to be free of the nervousness that takes you to losing control over food. Most people start a diet and an exercise plan to soon find out that the rhythm they have in their life messes with that routine and end up dropping it. Some even bounce back from the weight loss and go back to weighting what they used to and even more.
According to recent studies, massage therapy can help you avoid that effect by relieving you from the pressure, nervousness and stress of everyday life. If you don´t have to cover for emotional emptiness, overworking and sleeping badly with the crave for food, then you can be more in control of your body and yourself. Of course, you will need to make an effort to lower weight like a diet plan with some exercise, but if you do them in parallel, then results will most likely be positive. While the exercise turns fat into muscle and diet help you to eat healthy and in the right proportion, massage therapy will keep you focused and in the right mood not to give up too soon and really lose weight.
Massage Therapy Prepares your Body for Exercise (and Recovers it Too)
Being comfortable in your own body is very important to exercise regularly. Those who get regular massages know that besides the regular benefits, they get their bodies perfectly tuned to push them into the limits at the gym. It is important to notice that massage therapy does not replace exercise but makes it more comfortable to do it. In the case of people who have been inactive for a long time and suddenly discover they need to do some exercise and go full-on as if they were Olympic athletes, massage therapy can help relieving the muscles from the pain and tension after a workout session.
Also, massage therapy alleviates chronic pain, posture problems and can help with injuries. If muscle tension builds up and is not taken care of, it can turn into an injury. If injury is not properly healed, then you might have chronic pain from a chronic injury. To avoid all that to happen, massage therapy can help you remove the tension. There is nothing worse for a weight-loss program than stopping your exercises because you have to recover from an injury. Some people never make it back and all the effort they had put until that time goes away. To avoid that from happening, go to see your massage therapy frequently, especially during weight-loss periods.
Lymphatic Drainage
Lymphatic drainage is the best way to manually reduce the edema and the swelling to make the physical appearance and mobility better. When applied to swollen legs, ankles and waists, the lymphatic drainage will serve as a tool to flush out the extra fluid your body is accumulating. What most people aim for is reduction of the hip circumference.
Also, this technique is great for stress reduction. The stress reduction can lead to a better relationship with your life in general and can lower the craving for food. Nervousness, insomnia, and other stress derivate aid weight gain instead of loss. When you are deprived of the eight hours of sleep you usually get, what happens is that your metabolism changes and you are no longer burning fat but keeping it for rough moments like the present one.
When you go for a lymphatic drainage make sure that your therapist holds a certification by the Academy of Lymphatic Studies.
Complete Exercise and Dieting Program
To aid the weight loss promoted by your massage sessions, you need to adhere to a program that will help you burn calories. If you do the program and also work with a massage therapist, chances are they will be boosting each other´s results. On one hand, the exercise program will help you be fit and train the muscles in your body while burning the fat you want to get rid of. On the other hand, the dieting program will keep a balance between what you ingest and what you burn to keep you strong, healthy and losing weight. Also, the dieting program balances what you eat to give your body the right amount of proteins that will work as fuel to be stronger at the gym.
The role that massage therapy plays in this combo is to keep everything into place. With a good massage therapy, you will lose the tension in your muscles that can lead to injuries. Injuries will keep you out of the gym and the original plan will be broken. Also, massage therapy will allow you to reduce stress, nervousness and insomnia, which can be the reason of overeating and skipping your dieting program. Finally, massage therapy like lymphatic drainage has a visual effect in your body that will make you feel pumped to go on doing what you are doing.
Conclusion
Massage therapy on its own will not make you lose weight, but it will help you a lot when combined with other strategies like dieting and exercising. Complement your plan with a good massage therapy and enjoy the benefits that it can bring to your life.