Would you believe you can burn a couple of hundred additional calories per day without starting an official exercise program?
I know--such a claim sounds too good to be true. But trust me, and keep reading.
It's all about NEAT, which stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
NEAT comprises all your daily activity other than sleeping, eating, and designated exercise. It turns out that one huge difference between overweight and normal-weight people is that the latter spend significantly more time standing, pacing, fidgeting, and just walking around--to the tune of anywhere from 100 to 800 calories a day, says Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., USA.
The bottom line, Dr. Levine says, is that sedentary obese people tend to be seated for 2.5 hours more each day than sedentary lean people. Note that we're not talking about athletes but ordinary non-exercisers.
In 2006 he wrote that "if obese individuals were to adopt the lean 'NEAT-o-type,' they could potentially expend an additional 350 kcal per day."
Let's aim even lower.
If you expend only an additional 200 calories a day--presuming you don't eat more in response---you would burn off or not gain 1.7 pounds of fat per month, or nearly 21 pounds a year.
Weight control isn't the only benefit of NEAT. "Sitting disease," as Dr. Levine describes sedentary living, greatly increases our risk of early death.
How can you NEAT-en your life? Here are 15 ways:
- Stand while talking on the phone.
- Don't use the TV remote: walk to the set to change the channel or the volume.
- Don't shout down the hall to family members. Walk over to them to have a conversation.
- Walk to a colleague's office to ask a question rather than send an e-mail or call her.
- Stand up to talk when someone comes to your office.
- Take the steps, not the elevator.
- When you get on an escalator, walk up or down rather than just stand there.
- If you use a laptop, place it on a countertop and work while standing at least part of the day--for example, when checking e-mail or surfing the web.
- In the airport, avoid the moving sidewalk.
- Set a timer to go off once every 30 minutes. Have you stood, walked, or fidgeted since it last dinged?
- Place your mobile phone on the other side of the room so when it rings, you have to walk over to it.
- If you supervise staff, schedule walking meetings. You'll all burn calories, your creativity will be stimulated, and you'll probably get done a lot faster.
- Take a standing, walking, or stretching break from the computer or other seated activity every hour.
- Get off the bus or the subway one stop earlier and walk the rest of the way.
- Wear a pedometer and gradually increase your daily steps to 10,000. Simply wearing the device will encourage you to walk more.
So what's stopping you? Put the power of NEAT to work for you and burn more calories all day long.
Mary C. Weaver, CSCS, is a body-transformation coach for women over 40 and an NSCA Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist.
Her specialty is helping women lose weight, rev up their metabolism, and take years off their body.
Register today for her FREE teleseminar "The 7 Weight-Loss Secrets Women Over 40 Must Know"
It's set for 7 p.m. EDT Tuesday, July 10, and it will be recorded--so sign up even if you can't make the live call.
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