Have you ever thought about burning calories during the day without exercise? 

This is actually not magic, not a secret and not just something that only some of you can do. Does counting calories, trying to remember your last meal or thinking twice about your order at the restaurant sound familiar? If you’re on the process of losing weight, you’ve probably started exercising, maybe you’re trying a new diet, even dietary products. You know you are consistent but your scale is stuck… You may think you’re doing everything right, but you haven’t seen any results. 

The NEAT way to burn calories

NEAT stands for “Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis”. This is an abbreviation used to quickly explain the calories you burn by moving throughout the day, when you’re not at the gym. You can think of NEAT as the calories expended apart from exercise, eating and sleeping. It includes all the movements – big and small – that you do throughout the day. 

NEAT accounts for the energy expenditure of every physical activity that we do in our daily life besides exercise that will help us increase our energy expenditure. NEAT encompasses the expenditure of energy that is secondary to movement beyond purposeful exercise and resistance training activities. It is simple…walk more, use the stairs, ride your bike instead of going by car, stand more, do daily chores, play with your kids, etc. 

As Alvin Netto, one of the most popular personal trainers from Malaysia suggests: “If your goal is weight loss or you simply want to improve your overall fitness, you should be informed about NEAT, pointing out the need for Fitness professionals to educate their trainees about its importance.

How can NEAT help you to stay active 

Change your lifestyle! You might need to increase your steps, your daily activity. For every 1000 steps, you burn about an average of 70 to 80 calories depending on your body weight. So if someone walks 10,000 compared to 5000, that’s easily 300 to 400 calories/days just by walking”. This is one of the key factors in helping clients to achieve a healthier lifestyle just by implementing or increasing their physical activity they need in the everyday life & finally increase their Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE).   Alvin highlights that we need to focus more on that and create structured workout programs, and strategies to decrease sedentary behaviors to increase NEAT, instead of what the clients sometimes are looking at… the fast way, the shortcut to achieve weight loss. So, we as fitness professionals can or should understand NEAT, use NEAT, educate our clients with NEAT and find ways to help our clients adopt a NEAT behavior in their everyday life which is actually just increasing their daily activities, which is move more actually. 

3 ways to increase NEAT:

  1. Modify seated behaviors so that the tasks can be performed while standing. standing can burn 2.9 kcal per minute while sitting can burn 1.7 kcal 
  2. Standing is not an option? Then, simply fidget more while sitting: 
  • When sitting PLUS fidgeting, 54% more calories are burned than the control. 
  • When standing PLUS fidgeting, 94% more calories are burned than the control. 

      3. Invest in a step tracker. It can give you feedback you need to know and help ensure that you move around sufficiently and consistently. 

Increased level of movement throughout the day for weeks and months can literally be your best friend in the journey of maintaining your NEAT levels high, promoting an effective and sustainable fat loss strategy. Research highlights that more active individuals are more likely to achieve or maintain weight-loss goals when compared to individuals leading a sedentary routine during the day and vigorously move through 1 exercise session.

Obesity is linked to cardiovascular disease. The global increase in sedentary lifestyle is an important factor contributing to the rising prevalence of the obesity epidemic. The benefits of NEAT include not only the extra calories expended but also the reduced occurrence of the metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular issues and all-cause mortality.

Increased physical activity can also help you to meet your training goals. You have probably heard that sitting is the new smoking. Research reveals how continuous sitting habits negatively affect the body. You might want to stand up for this and maybe start to remember that, fundamentally, we are born to move. Follow the NEAT way…

References 

  1. https://parkjason.wordpress.com/articles/ 

  2. Villablanca, Pedro & Alegria, Jorge & Mookadam, Farouk & Holmes, David & Wright, R & Levine, James. (2015). Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis in Obesity Management. Mayo Clinic proceedings. 90. 509-519. 10.1016/j.mayocp.2015.02.001. www.mayoclinicproceedings.org 

  3. https://alvinnetto.com/5-ways-you-can-burn-calories-without-exercising/