Get your what up? NEAT: Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis is part of our ‘energy out’. This contributes hugely to your overall energy balance, more so for most people than their exercise expenditure.
If you are trying to lose weight increasing your NEAT is a great option to keep your energy output higher, which will help your progress. While NEAT includes all non-exercise; so shopping, gardening, cleaning as well as fidgeting and facial tone, it’s daily steps which are easy to monitor and use as a marker. It’s easy to track on your phone/watch too.
As you lose more weight over the course of a diet your body starts to try to slow your progress down to conserve fat stores (thank evolution for this, from times when food was scarce, unlike our current environment). So you unconsciously fidget less and move less, reducing your energy expenditure. In contrast when you eat in a surplus the opposite can happen and your NEAT goes up. This is why some people struggle to put weight on.
A lighter body is more efficient and requires fewer calories as well. That’s something people don’t always realise when they wonder why their weight plateaus.
With the lockdown in the UK, as well as not being able to work out currently (I am only 2 weeks into my post-op recovery restrictions – 4 weeks to go!), but I’m still getting out for my daily steps every day. Luckily where I live the countryside is right on the doorstep. A bit grey and drizzly today – but in this part of the world we’re well used to it!
Need help working out how to calculate your estimated daily expenditure? Just shoot me a email.
(Reposted from Instagram)
