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Belly Dance for Weight Loss: Myth or Reality?

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zahida

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Belly Dance for Weight Loss: Myth or Reality?

So you have been trying to lose weight like forever, you are doing your best to control what you eat (whatever that means), to increase exercise, manage your period symptoms and the menopause changes. 


You might be eating a bit -or a lot- more than usual and feel demotivated to exercise.. All you need is to stay active and consistent, right? but how?

Keep yourself active bellydancing

We could argue whether bellydance will help you to stay in shape or not but what is true is that we need to keep our bodies active and our spirits happy.

With this article I’d like to help you with both.  And by the end of this article you will be belly dancing and training your body with love and care. Deal?

This is what you’ll find in this article.

How can bellydance help you during your hormonal fluctuations (menstrual changes, peri-menopause and menopause)

We have all seen loads of offers for us to learn every-single-thing during these digital times.

I believe that as an artist and -so called- content creator myself, I have something valuable to share with the internet – aka fellow humans!

After all, we humans need some food for our souls, a scape valve for our emotions in every possible way and some entertainment while we wait for who-knows-what.

And this is precisely the alchemy dance can offer:

  • Beauty
  • Stories
  • Connection (in person!)
  • Music
  • Movement
  • Free expression
  • The joy of movement
  • Wellbeing
  • You name it!

Arabic dance is can be a really effective way to keep you fit, healthy and strong at every level.

Loads of people have their life routines upside down, on hold or they are carrying on as best as they can.

An if you are one of those ones, you are not alone!. I part of that mass of people doing what they can when they can, and I would love to dane everything away with you in any of my bellydance classes.

But I wouldn’t like for you to have an overload of information. This is why I have divided this article in little sections, so you can always come back to it whenever you want and take it were you left it. Save this article now in your browser, you don’t want to forget where you found it!

Arabic dance is not a magic wand but if you allow it, it has got a great potential to help you out.

If you want to:

  • Connect with your joy
  • Keep your body weight stable
  • Express sadness or anguish
  • Raise your mood
  • Learn something new and different
  • Start one of those instagram challenges
  • o simply keep yourself sane

then go on, keep on reading!

Before I continue, I’d like to clarify something. I wrote this article because it’s a very common thing amongst women to search for ways to “improve” this or that part of our bodies.

It’s very likely that you are here because you’d like to lose some weight or get fit.

Well, I’d like to tell you that you are perfect as you are. Right. Now.

In my opinion, all marketing around dance or fitness classes -being those: kizomba, aerobic, Belly Dance, bollywood or anything else- should always be focusing on just a couple of things:

The joy of dance

The greatness of movement

I regularly teach bellydance through a mix of face to face lessons and online programmes. You can always learn with us regardless of what your location is.

How many calories does belly dance burn?

I will give you the number because I know that’s what you are here for, but please, bear in mind that there’s more to get from belly dance than calorie burn.

In one hour of belly dancing you could burn up to 300 calories.

And now what? What’s the meaning of that? What value does that number have next to the trillion other benefits of belly dancing?

As you will figure out as soon as you start dancing, there are more important things than calories burnt. Getting obsessed with calorie counting could mean that you are missing the rest best.

Belly Dance and body shape: can bellydance shape my body?

Belly dance has got the potential to change your body inside out, regardless of your goals.

Belly Dancing you will engage muscles that you don’t usually move, and this movement has an effect on how your body looks on the outside and how your body feels on the inside.

Combined with a healthy lifestyle (balanced diet + regular exercise), you can expect your waist to get thinner, your thighs to be stronger, your abs to be more visible and some generalised weight loss.

But all the above does not necessarily have to happen to you.

The truth is that there is one guaranteed result: bellydancing will bring you all the joy.

And there are also some more nice side effects of bellydancing, just to mention two:

  • Increasing your good mood -serotonin and endorphins included.
  • New friends that will be with you for life.

TOne your waist with the maya

When it comes to target your waist muscles, Maya is the movement that comes to my mind. So if working on your obliques is your objective, here you have my video tutorial.

WARNING: This movement is for intermediate dancers. If you wish to start from the beginning, I recommend you to join my regular face to face classes or my online programme Bellydance With The Moon.

2 movements for your Abs: Camel and Belly Roll

The camel and the belly roll movements require a high level of coordination, apart from the use of your abdominal muscles.

The belly roll is focused only on your abs, while the camel also works on your spine muscles.

Here you have the video tutorials:

WARNING: These two movements are for intermediate dancers. If you wish to start from the beginning, I recommend you to join my regular face to face classes or my online programme Bellydance With The Moon.

Shape your butt with the arabesque and hip drop

Are you following the last trend or pursuing a -artificial- Kim Kardashian’s butt? Forget about it, because you can only have your own unique and beautiful shape!

And you know what? Your backside has got the same use and is as good anyone else’s! I’m not here to encourage anyone to follow any trend.

Jokes aside, what you CAN actually do is to work on your glutes, so they are stronger, toner and as a consequence, healthier.

Just a quick note: I explain the following in the video anyway, but it’s worth insisting: to get a very effective arabesque, you need to generate the movement from your glutes and not from your lower back. If I were to use more technical language I’d encourage you to work on the turn out.

Since it’s always better done than perfect and the internet has got its limitations, here you have the two movements to work out your glutes.

With the Hip Drop, you will work a bit more on the gluteus minimus and medius, on the sides of your hips.

Tone your arms and back bellydancing

We usually underestimate the power of a correct posture, and sometimes good posture is the best way to keep your muscles active and toned.

I would like to challenge you to learn the basic posture for arms and hands, and hold it for a while. Done properly, this posture will remind you how humble you can get to be, hehe

And if that is not enough and you would like to get some more artistry, here you have one of the best tricks to move your hands as a pro.

What type of exercise is belly dance?

Like swimming, walking or aqua aerobics, belly dance can be a mild aerobic exercise (endurance).

This means: belly dancing increases your heart rate, activates your blood circulation and speeds up your breath, but there is no need for sudden movements or jumps.

Mild cardio training is one of the most recommended by specialists, and it has got a minimal risk of injury.

Arabic dance is gentle with your joints and adapts to your fitness level, so, you can dance as a way to start getting fit and you can also dance if you are a complete athlete, because you will always find a challenge for you.

But don’t get me wrong, belly dancing will make you sweat. I end up most of my classes all sweaty, so my students do!. And you can sweat with us in our face to face lessons!

There is no magic wand for weight loss, but belly dance can help

I absolutely refuse to sell you the idea of losing weight just by practising belly dance.

If you are here looking for the magic wand, I am sorry, I don’t have it.

But what you will find in belly dance is even better.

Weight loss is the consequence of a very deep and wide internal process. In this process, dance can play a role – an important role, in fact, but it’s only one of the factors.

As my friend and nutricionist Maricarmen Grisolía from minuevadieta.com says:

“In order to lose weight, what you eat is the main thing, responsible for more than 70% of the result in your process. But our relationship with food and with ourselves it’s at the end of the day what determines what we eat. This is why dancing, apart from being a physical activity -which is important- can also contribute to your weight loss, helping you feel better in your body and improving your mood, which will reduce your tendency to eat due to anxiety and stress.”

Your motivation, self-esteem and well being are part of any weight loss attempt, and bellydance definitely helps with motivation and self esteem! If you don’t believe me, have a look at what my students have to say about my classes over this website’s testimonial section.

Or even better, you us in our regular face to face lessons or our online Bellydance With The Moon programme.

Why dancing to lose weight is the worst you can do: my story

Life is not a before and after picture.

My life story is the story of a war against my body. A story that has fed my anxiety, toxic thoughts and low self-esteem. It’s a story of self hate and I’m going to condense it in a few lines for you.

I was severely bullied at school between my 7th and my 14th years. I grew up without friends thanks to my physical appearance, just because someone decided that my aspect was not appropriate for that group. I’ve been called cow, pig, whale, walrus, elephant, and fat as well! -all of them amazing and beautiful animals, what a lovely coincidence! Every single time my abusers made sure to spell all the hate towards me.

Rolls of fat, big tummy, cellulite, double chin. Everything in my body was disgusting to the people who were supposed to love me. I had it all. My existence was wrong, and I didn’t choose any of it!

Mix all the above with an abusive environment at home -that’s a whole different story for a different day- and you’ll have as a result a quite traumatised and dis-functional human being.

How the hell could I learn to love myself if I didn’t even know what love was?

Sadly, love and social inclusion are conditional for many. Sadly, one of those conditions for many is how you look.

Belly dance came to my life to take me out this living nightmare when I was 18. I started dancing in a way that felt very natural, it was all easy. I connected with my body on a way that I could have never imagined.

How does it feel when you dance? became much more important that How do you look when you dance?

And shortly after I started being praised for my dancing. And just like that I started learning to praise and give value to myself for my dancing.

And I am still on my way to love myself just because I exist, and the more I work on it, the more I understand this is a lifetime learning process. All I can do is to have fun as I go!

Me and my body are worthy for so many other things: my strength, my coordination, my intelligence, my good vibes. Living in between different clothing sizes is not as important anymore.

Your value is not determined by a number on a scale!

Belly dance gives me a way to express everything I have inside which is a lot. A lot.I have been told many times that I am a source of inspiration. As I also have heard “I don’t have a dancer’s body“.

Not that bad afterall!

Our humanity is beyond a number on a scale

Bellydance has provided me with much more than a beautiful and desirable body

Bellydance has given me self esteem, confidence, friends, creativity, freedom, health and joy.

A lot of joy.

And that is what I like to share most: The joy of  belly dancing.

Why did I name my project Dance Pandemic?

Just to give you some context: DancePandemic.com is my original and main project. This very website and project, Hipsinc.com, was created long ago and kindly gifted to me by the amazing Charlotte Deshorger, who is now a retired dancer and focused on her next project: ignite.

When I moved to the UK from Spain in 2014 I leaft behind a promising career as a belly dance teacher, my identity as a bellydance teacher, producer and artistic director vanished in a couple of months. No one knew me or my work in the UK…

In 2016, in the middle of a big immigrant grief wave -if you are one, you know what’t I’m talking about- I took the firm decision of getting my identity as bellydance teacher back, but to do so I had to take many marketing strategies.

My mission has always been to spread the joy of bellydance as fast and wide as I could, so DancePandemic sounded like a perfect name for my project -I am talking about 2016!. The brand DancePandemic had the sarcasm and the meaning I wanted to give it all, and pandemic was not a very well known word in the English speaking world.

Then in 2020, the real pandemic hit the World, and the name of my project sounded like the joke I didn’t want it to be.

Life is a joke and that’s how we have no take it, isn’t it?

It’s now become more important that ever to spread to DANCEpandemic, to encourage people to connect with each other face to face, to move, to create, to exist away from the screens and the internet.

Access to your first belly dance class FOR FREE

If you have enjoyed this article and you have enjoyed following me in the videos, I’m sure you will be interested in the free full belly dance class I’ve prepared for you.

To get into the class, all you have to do is to fill out any of the forms over dancepandemic.com and confirm your subscription in the email that you will get.

In a few minutes you will get the link to the class. Straight to you inbox.

If you have found this article interesting, I’d like to ask you a favour:

Thank you very much for visiting Hipsinc.com. I hope to see you soon again!

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