Pretty NEAT

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/happy-woman-with-rolling-pin-cooking-at-home-3769999/

If you don’t what NEAT is, it is an acronym for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, which is a big fancy term for calorie burning from physical activities that aren’t usually thought of as structured exercise. This could be almost any activity that requires even minimal amounts of muscular effort – walking across the room, cooking dinner, gardening, doing laundry, even just “fidgeting.”

There are four main categories of things that cause your body to burn energy (and thereby help you control your weight and influence how much body fat you accumulate):

1. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) - the energy you expend just being alive and having functioning organs that require energy to keep working.

2. Thermogenic effects of certain foods – some foods require more work by the body to digest, absorb, and utilize than others, and some trigger hormonal responses that lead to more caloric expenditure.

3. NEAT

4. Exercise – any activity that is done at least in part for the purpose of improving physical health.

You might think that exercise is the biggest calorie burner of the four, but it’s actually the smallest – by far, except in elite athletes training intensely for hours per day, and even then, it’s usually the least significant.

This brings me back to NEAT. Yes, those daily activities you are probably taking for granted are probably doing more to keep you from gaining excessive weight and accumulating body fat than whatever exercise regimen you might be engaged in!

Unfortunately, the trend for those of us who live in developed nations are increasingly getting less and less NEAT – and I’m not talking about letting the laundry pile up (although doing laundry is a form of NEAT).

Among the anti-NEAT habits that are increasingly common are:

• Sitting at computers for hours on end without moving much besides our fingers (when in the past, for example, we might have to get up periodically to get a file, or actually pick up and hold a phone instead of using a bluetooth, speaker, or headset).

• Getting food and groceries delivered rather than going to the store to shop.

• Using electronic “personal assistants” such as Alexa to change the channel, tell you the weather forecast, etc., rather than even the minimal work involved of reaching for a remote or checking your phone or computer.

• Hiring others to do things like clean your house or mow your lawn.

Some of these things might seem like they would provide very little change in calorie burning, but when you add them up over a long period of time, they can make a big difference in how well you can manage your weight.

Going back to exercise, even if you exercise pretty intensely every day, it’s still probably not burning as many calories as what you could with NEAT activities that you might not even think about. This is not to say that exercise isn’t important – it is, especially when you look at other aspects of health besides weight control, but if you don’t move your body much besides when you’re intentionally exercising, you’re kind of fighting a losing battle.

It’s often said that you can’t exercise your way past a bad diet. The same is true with activity – you can’t exercise your way past an overall mostly sedentary lifestyle.

So, how do you get more NEAT in your life? The simple answer is just to move, or at least engage your muscles as much as possible throughout the day. This can be done in many ways.

Standing provides more NEAT than sitting. Sitting more than lying down.

Walking around is always a good option. If you can’t walk around, walking in-place, or just “bouncing” your legs a bit while sitting provides some extra caloric expenditure.

As mentioned earlier, even just fidgeting (moving your fingers, playing with your pen, using a “fidget spinner,” etc. expends some energy.

The basic idea is whenever you can throughout your day, move some part of your body in some way.

Even small movements count, especially when done consistently over time. By increasing your NEAT, you’ll at the very least enhance the effects of any diet and exercise program you might be using, and I think you’ll agree, that’s pretty neat!

Until next time…

George F. Best, D.C.