INCREASE YOUR DAILY MOVEMENT
Every person is unique in the amount of calories they will burn during the day. Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is how many calories we burn in a day, and there are multiple factors in this equation. We all have a (different) amount of calories our body would burn even if we didn’t get out of bed, called Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). We also burn calories through eating and digesting food, called Thermic Effect of Food (TEF). Our planned exercise counts towards our energy expenditure through Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT). In this post, we will examine a component of TDEE that we can heavily control and will play a larger role in our energy expenditure than most realize, called NEAT.
NEAT stands for Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis and consists of our energy expenditure that is not through sleeping, eating or planned exercise. Movement through fidgeting, daily tasks like house cleaning or laundry, walking around grocery shopping, etc. all make up the calories expended through NEAT.
While NEAT is comprised of activities that are NOT planned exercise (your daily gym session, soccer game, Orange Theory class, etc. do not count as NEAT), there is no harm in planning to have more daily movement in your life. We can make the conscious decision to get more movement by choosing to walk to the grocery store instead of drive, getting off the bus a stop early, or taking walks throughout our day (just a few examples). Simply walking is a grossly underestimated form of exercise not only for physical health, but for our mental health as well.
Most of us have heard that we want to aspire to get 10,000 steps a day. If you have a sedentary job, this can be very difficult to achieve, but having this as a goal number can help you realize how much you actually should be aiming to move throughout the day. The average person can walk about 1,000 steps in 10 minutes. Breaking your movement down into small chunks throughout the day can help you adhere to this goal.
A 100 pound person walking slow (2.5 MPH) for 100 minutes burns around 238 calories. A two hundred pound person walking normal (3.0 MPH) for 100 minutes burns around 556 calories. A three hundred pound person walking fast (3.5 MPH) for 100 minutes can burn 853 calories. Whether or not you walk for 100 minutes on average a day or walk at different speeds, it is easy to see how much this simple act we often overlook can impact your daily energy expenditure.
When the weather is warm and inviting, it is much more enticing to be active and it is easier to spend more time moving around. As the weather turns and it becomes colder, rainier, snowy, and it feels like the middle of the night by 4:30 pm, we tend to move a lot less. For a lot of us, there is a substantial reduction in the amount of daily movement, paired with holiday gatherings and endless treats. With less movement and consuming more calories comes fat gain.
There are very few things I dislike more than being cold, so I definitely find it more difficult to be outside moving around as much this time of year. It is important to be mindful that you may actually need to seek out additional daily movement in other ways and put extra effort into keeping your activity level where it is at for the rest of the year if this is important to you.
Below is a list of ideas to help keep your activity levels up throughout the cold season:
Park further away while holiday shopping and grocery shopping
Choose to take the stairs instead of elevators and escalators
Take your coffee date catch up to go, and head out for a walk with your brew
Try new exercise classes that have a holiday deal
Bundle up and walk to look at Christmas lights
Participate in winter activities (snowboard, ski, snowshoe)
Remember your kids need movement too. Take them to enjoy indoor activities such as rollerskating, iceskating or jungle gyms and participate too.
Stand or pace while taking phone calls
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References:
Bret "Glute Guy" Contreras PhD “Step It Up!” Instagram, July 19, 2019 (https://www.instagram.com/p/B0Gz2NqgOz8/)