Lose Weight by Breathing: Your Ultimate Guide

Did you know that you can lose weight by breathing?

Did you also know that children who have poor breathing mechanics are more likely to develop crooked teeth and a longer, narrower face that permanently affects their appearance?

Better breathing is the gateway to a whole new level of health and wellness, and with better breathing comes improved oxygenation of the heart, brain, and other working muscles of the body. Let me explain.

If your body is working more efficiently, you are sleeping better, and you’re generally under less stress, you’re helping to create and set up the right conditions for successful fat loss.

Yes, that’s right. Prior to dieting and exercise, if you want to succeed at losing weight or body fat, you have to make sure the body is in balance. If not, results will be slow and take a lot longer to achieve. That’s why breathing can make you look hot AF.

You may be thinking, Shut up, James. I breathe every day. I know what I’m doing. Don’t be so stupid. Well, sadly, that may not be the case, and I’m sorry if I’m about to steal your candy.

Most people in Western society are terrible breathers. They are what we call mouth breathers. Mouth breathing is bad. Very bad. Never be a mouth breather.

Mouth breathing can actually reduce the amount of oxygen that reaches vital organs and muscles, thus decreasing your standard of living, quality of life, and your ability to perform physically and lose body fat. In today’s article, I want to share with you the cool science about being a “nose breather.”

I want you to take a simple test to see how well you can actually breathe. And I’ll give you some simple drills to help improve your breathing ability and take you from mouth breather to nose breather in no time at all.

So let’s dive in.

Lose Weight by Breathing: The Science Bit

Your respiratory system is responsible for delivering oxygen from the atmosphere to your cells and tissues, and to transport the carbon dioxide that is produced in your tissues back into the atmosphere. Oxygen is the fuel that muscles need to work efficiently.

However, a misconception that many have is that taking in large gasps of air increases the oxygenation of the blood. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The blood is almost always fully saturated with oxygen. It is physiologically impossible.

Think of a glass of water that is already full, and you start to pour more water on top of it. For years, we have been made to believe those big deep breaths are good for us. It feels good, but it doesn’t necessarily help provide more oxygen to the working muscles or vital organs.

This next concept is something I first learned from Patrick McKeown and his wonderful book The Oxygen Advantage.

It’s not oxygen that exerts the primary influence on your breathing efficiency. It’s carbon dioxide. Yes, that’s right, carbon dioxide. Good old CO2. Carbon dioxide is an end product of the natural process of breaking down the fats and carbohydrates we eat. It is returned from the cells to the lungs and the excess is exhaled when we breathe.

However, the body needs to RETAIN some CO2 when you exhale. Correct breathing relies on and results in the right amount of carbon dioxide being retained in the lungs. Why is this important? Here’s how Patrick McKeown refers to the need for CO2.

Think of it this way: CO2 is the doorway that lets oxygen reach our muscles. If the door is only partially open, only some of the oxygen at our disposal passes through, and we find ourselves gasping during exercises, often with our limbs cramping. If, on the other hand, the door is wide open, oxygen flows through the doorway and we can sustain physical activity longer and at a higher intensity.

Mouth breathing leads to over-breathing, which means we are breathing a volume of air greater than that which the body requires. When we breathe in, in excess, we then breathe out too much carbon dioxide that is removed from the blood. This is like having a partly closed doorway, restricting the amount of oxygen that can reach our cells

Carbon dioxide performs a number of vital functions in the body. The key ones are:

• The offloading of oxygen from the blood to the cells
• The dilation of the smooth muscle in the wall of the airways and blood vessels
• The regulation of pH

Here’s the crucial point I want you to take away from this section:

Haemoglobin, a protein in our blood, is responsible for carrying oxygen from the lungs to the tissues and cells. It can only release oxygen when in the presence of carbon dioxide. If there isn’t adequate CO2 in the blood, this results in reduced oxygen delivery.

With less oxygen delivered to the muscles, reduced performance is a result. The better we can fuel our muscles, the longer and harder and more mentally acute we can remain. In simpler terms, the more efficient our body is (which needs oxygen), the hotter we will look.

It’s science.

If you want to learn more about the science directly, I highly recommend watching this video by the man himself, Patrick McKeown.

Am I a Mouth Breather?

Now that you understand a bit about the science of breathing, let’s find out if you really are a mouth breather. And remember, mouth breathing is bad. Very bad.

Before we test, I’d like you to answer the following questions with a simple yes/no:

• Do you wake up with a dry mouth in the morning?
• Do you snore?
• Do you regularly sigh throughout the day?
• Do you experience symptoms resulting from habitual over-breathing such as nasal congestions, tightening of the airways, fatigue, dizziness, or light headiness?

Answering yes to any of the above questions tends to lean towards the fact that you are a mouth breather. However, let’s test further to really find out. We need to test your tolerance levels to carbon dioxide and how your body handles it.

Here’s the test:

1. Find an open space where you can walk in a straight line, the longer the better.
2. Take a small, silent breath in through your nose and a small silent breath out through your nose.
3. Pinch your nose with your fingers, close your mouth, and hold your breath.
4. Walk as many paces as possible with your breath held.
5. Count the number of paces you can walk before having to stop.

How did you do? How many paces did you get? If you got anything less than eighty paces, I’m afraid you’re a mouth breather. I’ll repeat, anything LESS than 80 paces is a mouth breather. I’m sorry to break it to you. But have no fear, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. I’ll explain how to fix it shortly.

Why Nasal Breathing Will Help You Lose Weight

Here are the key reasons WHY you should be nasal breathing at all times:

1. Nose breathing imposes approximately 50% more resistance to the airstream than mouth breathing. This results in 10%–20% more oxygen uptake.
2. Nasal breathing removes more germs and bacteria from the air you breathe.
3. The nose is a reservoir for nitric oxide, an essential gas for the maintenance of good health. (Nitric oxide plays a central role in dilating the smooth muscle layer embedded in the airways to allow the greater transfer of oxygen to and from the lungs during exercise.)
4. It will improve your sleep and energy levels.
5. It will make it easier to breathe during exercise, thus allowing you to work out longer.
6. It will improve the oxygenation of working muscles and organs to allow you to perform better.

Fat loss really does start with nasal breathing. Good health starts with nasal breathing. Better performance starts with nasal breathing. The fact is … don’t be a mouth breather.

How to Become an Efficient Nasal Breather

The good news is that it’s not difficult to transition to becoming a nasal breather. It just takes time and effort on your part. Here are our top three ways for you to transition to nasal breathing immediately so that you can improve your oxygen uptake and start to look hot AF.

Step 1: Breathe through your nose as often as possible during the day.

Make a conscious effort throughout your day to keep your mouth closed and focus on breathing through your nose only. While sitting down, while standing up, while walking to work. Everywhere you go, start thinking about just keeping your mouth closed and taking small, calm breaths in through your nose and small, calm exhales out through your nose. Don’t over-breathe. Make sure everything is calm and relaxed. This is the first step.

Step 2: Tape your mouth closed when you go to sleep.

Something that is very often overlooked is the simple ability to keep your mouth closed at night while sleeping. Not only will this improve your ability to sleep better, but it will also improve your ability to nasal breath.

Now, this comes with a warning. If you’re a really bad mouth breather, this might freak you out – a lot. Trust me, I know from experience. (I’m a mouth breather, too!) So practice this until you feel comfortable doing this overnight. You might start out by walking and going about your daily activities until you build up enough confidence to do it at night.

All you have to do is simply tape your mouth closed. You can use the standard 3M micropore tape. Or, as in my case, I have an abundance of Rocktape, use Rocktape. The purpose of this method is to simply ensure the benefits of good breathing during sleep.

Step 3: Practice fully holding your breath while walking for short periods of time.

This is a great drill to improve the body’s tolerance of carbon dioxide in the body. We need to create a tolerable need for, or hunger for, air in the body so that the brain can learn to tolerate a higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the body.

Similar to the mouth breather test, here’s what you need to do:

1. Go for a walk, the longer the better.
2. Take a small, silent breath in through your nose and a small silent breath out through your nose.
3. Pinch your nose with your fingers, close your mouth, and hold your breath.
4. Walk 5 paces with your breath held.
5. Keeping your mouth closed, breathe normally through your nose.
6. Every minute or so, repeat the process.
7. Repeat for 10 – 15 minutes.
8. As you gain more confidence, increase the paces by 5 each time. So 5 would become 10, and 10 would become 15 as you get more confident with the breath holds.
   

Final Thoughts

Learning to nasal breathe will be a hard transition to make in some cases. It may freak you out a bit in the process. However, if your goal is to lose weight or improve athletic performance, this is a great starting point as it will improve your oxygen intake and efficiency greatly.

I would even go as far as to say that being able to go from 10 steps to 80+ steps has completely changed my life. I sleep better, I perform better, my nose is way less congested, and I have less of a reaction to hay fever than I have had in the past 15 years.

That’s a personal experience, so I can’t say that will happen for everyone. But it’s worked for me, and I know it has worked for a lot of our clients.

There are many great resources about breathing available to you; however, if you would like to learn more about his method, I highly recommend reading the book The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown.

Breathing is very often disregarded in the pursuit of health, wellness, and fat loss. However, I can’t emphasize enough that along with our WWS system of Walk, Water, Sleep, it’s where we like to start before we even discuss workouts or nutrition. Give the test a go, and if you feel brave enough, let us know your results in the comments below.

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