Bellydance & Weight Loss

by Shira

"Will it help me lose weight?" and "Will it give me a flat stomach?"

This is one of the most frequent questions I hear from prospective bellydance students. As with most questions in life, there's not a simple yes/no answer to this. It depends.

I've been bellydancing since 1981. When I started, I was slender, with a figure I was proud of. Then I graduated from college, started a new job, and gained a lot of weight. Then I lost 45 pounds and returned to that nice figure. I kept it off a few years, then a new job turned me into a frequent traveler and it all came back. In 1999, I lost 55 pounds. Throughout that whole time, I bellydanced. Did it play a role in my weight losses? Yes. Did it prevent the weight gains? No.

So what's the secret?

Simply put, bellydancing is a form of exercise. The more you dance, the more exercise you get. Spend an hour bellydancing continuously, and you'll burn about 300 calories. But some dance classes give you a more vigorous workout than others. Some classes devote a significant amount of time to non-aerobic movement such as drills in slow hip circles and figure 8's, while other classes are designed to raise the heart rate and keep it going continuously. Some bellydance students practice at home in between classes, while others do not, nor do they engage in any other exercise between classes. And, the most important point of all is that belly dancing can not compensate for eating a lot of food or drinking a lot of alcohol. It's that simple.

Amount of Exercise

Attending a single one-hour bellydance class per week and then sitting on the couch watching television the other six nights per week will never help you lose weight. Most weight loss experts recommend getting no less than 15 minutes of exercise per day, and I've seen many that say you need at least 30 minutes.

So, if you attend a bellydance class one night per week, what excercise are you doing the other six nights?

If you're serious about losing weight, make the commitment to get at least 30 minutes of exercise per day. Even though some experts say 15 minutes is enough, why cheat yourself of the benefits of just a little more? This can take the form of attending bellydancing classes, troupe rehearsals, performances, teaching classes, or practicing in your living room.

Of course, your exercise doesn't all have to be bellydancing. On some days, you can go for romantic walks with your partner, attend an aerobics class at the gym, walk your dog for an hour, or play catch in the back yard with one of your children. Just spend a minimum of 30 minutes (more is better) doing it.

Type of Bellydancing Class and Practice

In some bellydancing classes, you start moving the instant you get in the door and don't stop until the end of the hour. In others, you spend a lot of time standing still while you learn finger cymbal rhythms, wait for the teacher to correct other students, listen to explanations, drill abdominal isolations, or do stretches at the end of class.

If weight loss is a priority for you, choose a bellydancing teacher or class format that keeps you moving continuously throughout the class time. The class will be especially valuable if it involves traveling steps, because moving the large leg muscles burns more calories than moving other, smaller muscles such as those used in head slides. The time you spend in class or practicing at home doesn't count for weight loss if you're standing still a large part of it.

When practicing at home, you'll get maximum weight loss benefit by using either drum solos, medium-speed, or fast music and incorporating a large number of moves that engage your legs and hips. You'll get less weight loss benefit from practicing rib cage isolations to slow, undulating music, but it's still definitely better than getting no exercise at all. Standing still practicing your finger cymbals or sitting at your sewing machine making costumes won't give you any weight loss benefit at all!

Don't eliminate slow music and finger cymbal practice from your practice time--they're good skills to have, and they'll make you a better dancer. But if you're serious about weight loss, make sure you devote enough time to the more aerobic fast music movement when you practice. My advice: spend at least 30 minutes on vigorous dancing to drum solos and fast music, then take however much additional time you wish for slow music and finger cymbal practice.

What Goes In Your Mouth

It matters what you eat and drink. Although getting your 30 minutes per day of exercise will improve your body's ability to burn fat, you also need to look at your eating habits. You are what you eat. There are a couple of bad habits that bellydancers can get into. Break these, and your weight loss efforts will be more successful:

• Snacking After Class. Do you fill up on snacks when you get home from class? Take a bottle of water (at least one quart or one liter) with you to class. Drink several swallows before class starts. At the end of class, before you get in your car or on the bus to go home, drink the equivalent of 2-3 glasses more. When you arrive home, before going into the house, drink another couple of swallows. This will help prevent you from snacking when you finally get in the house and settle in for the evening.
• Sipping Wine After A Performance. Do you sip a glass of wine at the end of a performance at the restaurant or nightclub where you work? Stop! Alcohol is very high in calories! Take a bottle of water to work with you. Drink several swallows before you start your show. When it's over, drink the equivalent of 2-3 glasses of additional water as soon as you walk into the dressing room. Then change your clothes. By the time you emerge, you should feel less craving for that wine. If you find yourself still wanting to sit at the bar and drink something, try substituting sparkling water instead of wine.

Look at your overall food and drink intake - you may need to change it. If necessary, get help from either your doctor or a commercial weight loss program to learn how to adapt your eating habits for healthier living. But don't just pay your money into the program and assume that will magically help you lose weight - follow their instructions!

I accomplished my 55-pound weight loss in 1999 through one of the commercial programs, but most of the others who joined at the same time as me didn't lose much. What made the difference? I kept the daily food diary they recommended, and every day I carefully added up the point values for the foods I was eating. The food diary taught me which of my typical foods were more fattening than others, so I could make knowledgeable choices about whether to eat them. It also taught me how I could still enjoy foods I liked by reducing portion sizes. It helped me identify bad habits that I could then work on breaking, such as cleaning my plate. I made a point of exceeding the program's exercise recommendations. The other people who did not faithfully keep their journals or increase their activity levels found themselves unable to lose weight.

Weight loss programs don't work if you simply pay money and attend meetings. Your wallet gets lighter, but your body doesn't. You need to follow their instructions regarding food intake and exercise.

Do You Really Need to Lose Weight?

The entertainment industry in the U.S. has been promoting a look that's very, very thin. It's no surprise -- television stations and magazines benefit from selling advertising space to companies who peddle weight loss products and cosmetics. Although this thinness comes naturally to a few people with high metabolisms and petite bone structures, it's not realistic for the vast majority of us. Remember, only about a dozen women in the world look like supermodels. Three billion of us don't. Some ballerinas have publicly revealed that they relied on heroin to maintain their thin figures - that's a measure that most of us are not willing to take, and rightfully so.

This subject could fill an entire article by itself. Rather than explore the issue in depth, suffice it to say that some people are obese and need to lose weight, while others are depriving their bodies of the nutrition needed to survive trying to be thinner than their bodies are intended to be.

One simple measurement that will give you some indication of whether you are at a healthy weight for your particular body size is the Body Mass Index. This tool offers the most value to people who don't exercise very much and therefore don't have much muscle mass.

If your BMI ratio is 20 or less, then you may be malnourishing yourself in your attempt to lose weight. If it's over 25, then you may be putting yourself at health risk from excessive weight.

Remember that BMI by itself doesn't tell the whole story. For example, people who do extensive weight training will register a high BMI even if they have low body fat. See a health care professional to help you evaluate what kind of weight range is optimal for your particular situation.

So, How Did I Lose 55 Pounds?

So, you're probably thinking the above theory is fine and well, but what, exactly, did I do to achieve that 55-pound weight loss? Here goes:

First, my doctor told me to lose weight. In other words, I was not one of those women who was conned by the media into thinking I was overweight. I actually was overweight and needed to take it off for health reasons.

Food

• I joined a commercial weight-loss program. I won't tell you which one, except to say it was not one of those that requires you to eat their food. The one I joined lets you choose what to eat, and provides you with guidelines on how to balance it, how much is allowed each day, etc.
• Each and every day, I carefully recorded everything that I put into my mouth. Everything! Every tiny piece of candy or bite of cake. Each evening, I totaled up the food intake, item by item. This is how I learned which foods were fattening versus which weren't. This is also how I learned about portion sizes.
• I had been eating some foods such as white rice just because the cafeteria at work included them on my plate along with what I'd ordered. I didn't particularly crave them; I just ate them because they were handed to me. When I discovered that these foods were fattening, I simply quit eating them. Why eat something you don't find particularly interesting when avoiding it will help with that weight loss goal?
• My daily food diary demonstrated that I was not getting enough fruits and vegetables in my diet. My program identified certain vegetables as being ones I could eat a lot of without weight gain -- carrots, celery, jicama, spaghetti squash, zucchini, lettuce, tomatoes, and bell peppers, to name a few. I started using these foods as evening snacks. I found that carrot and celery sticks taste great dipped in salsa, which is also non-fattening.

Exercise

Before my weight loss program, I averaged about 3 hours of exercise per week, which really isn't much at all. Through the following activities, I raised it to about 9-10 hours per week:

• I started taking 20-minute walks at lunch time. I set a general goal of doing this every day, but realistically I did it about 3 days a week.
• I attended an hour-long troupe rehearsal one night a week, and taught my own students for 2 hours one night a week. About half the weekends, I also had a Saturday troupe rehearsal. I made a point to keep moving myself in these classes.
• About 2 or 3 days a week, my husband and I would go to the gym together to work out. I'd use the treadmill at running speed for 20 minutes to boost my metabolism, then do other exercises the rest of the time.
• About 3-4 evenings per week, my husband and I would go for a walk to either eat supper at a neighborhood restaurant or even just to get a cup of hot chocolate. These walks were typically no less than 20 minutes each direction (40 minutes per evening total).

As the above points show, bellydancing played a role as one of the forms of exercise that I used in my weight loss efforts, but I also made changes to my eating habits and added other forms of exercise to my lifestyle.

In Conclusion

Belly dancing is a form of exercise, which burns 250-300 calories per hour, according to Dr. Carolle Jean-Murat's web site. In contrast, watching television burns 100 calories per hour. When you practice vigorous dance moves to drum solos or fast music continuously for 30 minutes or more at a time every day, this dance form can offer the same health benefits as other types of aerobic exercise. It can strengthen your cardiovascular system, ward off osteoporosis, and improve your stamina. If you combine it with a sensible diet, it can play a valuable role in weight loss. But remember, if your sole exercise entails attending a single one-hour belly dance class per week, that alone won't lead to weight loss. You need to do some kind of activity every day, and you need to think about your eating habits.