N.E.A.T.
The secret sauce for weight loss
What is it?
NEAT stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis. It's the amount of energy your body uses for day to day activities outside of basic bodily functioning, planned exercise and food digestion.
Why is it important?
If you look at planned exercise, an average person will burn around 350 cal/hour/100 lbs body weight for moderate intensity exercise. So a 150 lb person exercising for 20 minutes will burn approximately 180 cals. It's easy to eat that back, that's basically the equivalent of 1 oz of nuts.
The other issue is when you go into caloric restriction, your body begins to compensate. It senses the reduction in food and begins to lower your BMR. That means that you will have to further restrict calories to lose weight at the same rate.
NEAT on the other hand can have a much bigger impact. For people with strenuous jobs, the daily NEAT can be upwards of 3000 cals/day. Unfortunately for most of us our jobs are a lot more sedentary. By increasing our NEAT we can increase our weight loss with minimal effort.
Also by increasing NEAT you can minimize caloric restriction to a moderate deficit from your BMR and maintain weight loss. Your body won't notice the reduction in food and your BMR will stay steady.
Ways to increase NEAT.
I for one have a sedentary job. I'm a programmer and have my butt planted in a chair for work. So I have a few tricks to increase my NEAT. You may have heard some of these before.
Fidget in your seat. This can include doing wrist exercises.stretches, squeezing a stress ball, swinging your arms. They also have a suggestion to put a balance disc on your chair to make it less stable so you have to engage your core muscles.
Stand up at least every half hour. This is a relative easy one. You don't have to leave your work area just get up. You can also include pacing, knee bends, swinging arms or any other activity.
Walk during your breaks. Rather than just going to get a drink or cup of coffee combine it with a short walk either inside or outside. I'm fortunate that I work for an employer that values wellness and they have an atrium and rooftop track where we can walk. The atrium is 11-1/4 laps/mile.
Use a standing desk if possible. Even if it's only intermittently it will provide some extra effort in your day. Again I'm fortunate to work for a company that provides us with sit-stand desks.
Park away from entrances. When going to the store or parking for work, pick a spot that's away from the entrance and enjoy the walk in. I park in the garage that's a block away from the building in which I work rather than the closest garage. It's minor but it adds up.
I'm parked at the red arrow
Use a push mower rather than a riding mower. Non self propelled is even better. A reel mower is the best for exercise. I use a non self propelled to mow my half acre lot. It takes longer but I can enjoy the fresh air and exercise.
Those are a few ideas of what I use. You can burn a lot more calories through NEAT than by formal exercise. And it's not really hard to incorporate some extra activities in your daily routine. It will take a while for these to become automatic but it's well worth it for your weight loss journey. Also by incorporating a few of these ideas it will make it easier to maintain your lower body weight without crashing your metabolism.
Have fun and be creative in ways to increase your NEAT!