Importance
NEAT stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis. This is all the calories you burn as you go about your day, outside of your formal exercise sessions.
These are seemingly insignificant movements such as nodding, fidgeting, and doing mundane chores, but they add up to play a huge part in the calories we burn each day as well as our ability to burn fat.
“Those low-level movements, they trigger epinephrine release from these neurons, and they stimulate the mobilization of fat. And then that fat is oxidized at higher rates.” — Dr. Andrew Huberman
As a society, we sit way too much. Think about it - we wake up and sit down to have a cup of coffee and breakfast, then we sit in the car or on the bus on the way to work, to then sit in an office, and go home to sit on the couch.
While we can’t do a whole lot about all of this sitting, as we live in a sedentary society, we can take some small steps to mitigate the harmful impact of this.
In active individuals, NEAT accounts for 50% of the total calories they burn. In more sedentary individuals, it only accounts for about 15% of what they burn.
This is something that can easily be changed.
Making small and easy changes in your day can have a huge impact on your calories burned, and therefore on your weight loss and body composition.
Implementation
We simply need to move more.
This isn’t “exercise”. Just moving and fidgeting. Nodding, standing up and then sitting down, all of these little movements will add up.
Here are some other examples:
Walking — if you can walk somewhere rather than drive, do so. Park further away from the grocery store entrance. Walk down all the aisles at the grocery store.
Take the stairs — instead of the escalator or elevator.
Chores — do some vacuuming, mopping, sweeping, dusting.
Standing — get a standing desk if possible. Stand instead of sit when you are in a waiting room. Stand during the commercial breaks while you watch TV.
Any way you can incorporate more movement into your day is going to have incredible benefits.
“People that nod a lot, people that stand up and sit down a lot throughout the day, and people that pace burn anywhere from 800 to 2500 calories more than the control group in the experiments that they looked at. And indeed there’s been a modern look into all this and these numbers check out that simply moving around a lot, even if those are subtle movements greatly increases the amount of energy that you burn.” — Dr. Andrew Huberman
Before You Go
The Momentum Membership launched on New Year’s Day.
If you haven’t had a chance to have a look at it, you can find all the details here:
We’re doing a 20% discount for the week of the launch which will end on January 7th, so get in before the price goes back up.
This membership will support you to make a meaningful change in your life by helping you to improve your health, one habit at a time.
Here are the respective discount codes:
Level 1 Monthly subscription discount
Level 1 Annual subscription discount
Level 2 Monthly subscription discount
Level 2 Annual subscription discount
Level 3 Monthly subscription discount
Level 3 Annual subscription discount