Do you want to learn something NEAT??

Trent Taylor

What’s up everyone! I wanted to talk more about this thing called NEAT. NEAT is an acronym for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Good thing there’s a shorter term, that’s a lot of words. But what exactly does NEAT mean?

The Science

You very well have heard about metabolism and how it can be tough to alter or adjust. Metabolism is ALL the chemical processes, reactions, mechanisms, etc. that take place in a living organism in order to maintain life. This includes things that are broken down, built up, transitioned to something else. All of this is what is considered your metabolism.

Your metabolism is a fiscal creature. Its MAIN is to keep the body alive. It doesn’t care about composition goals. Your body aims to maintain. This is one of the reasons it can be challenging to hit desired fitness goals, whether that’s lean muscle gain, body fat loss, or even a performance-based goal like a triathlon/marathon. Anything that can’t be used, is simply stored as fat. When the body needs more energy than can be provided on call, it will pull from fat stores.

Our bodies are constantly turning over energy for usage and storage. This can be manipulated by what we’re doing for movement, food, and what our hormones are doing:)

Areas of Impact

Let’s start with the obvious…Exercise!

Exercise burns calories. It places a demand on the body to utilize energy stores in order to perform a desired program or task. The more you do, the more you’ll burn! That’s easier said than done though. In many of our lives today, we take on so much that it leaves little time to commit hours and hours per week to exercise. Maybe you max out at 2 days per week. That is still great! You’re retaining many benefits that you get from exercise that aren’t directly related to weight change such as cardiovascular improvement, increase in strength, flexibility, mobility, etc. Still a lot! :)

So if we can’t exercise 24/7 lets look at another area…Food!

The Thermic effect of feeding (TEF) is the energy that is utilized to break down the food you eat. This includes digestion, absorption and disposal of all the ingested nutrients in your diet.

This can be affected by many things including the type of exercise, size of the meal, timing of eating, and what the meal is made of in terms of proteins, carbs, and fats.

The energy required to break down your meals will vary based on the quantity of the macros listed above. We know that Fats are around 9 calories per gram and Carbs and Proteins are 4 calories per gram. What’s more interesting is that Protein will yield a higher percentage of TEF than the other two, around 20-30%. This means, that having a balanced diet with an appropriate amount of protein will require more energy from your body to break down!:)

Research as shown that in most people, TEF can last up to 6 hours after a meal is ingested! That’s a long time, well into the next main meal if you’re following a standard window of eating. Now I’d like to point out that this caloric breakdown is only a mere percentage of your total energy expenditure (TEE). This is not a suggestion to spread out your meals even further or that eating in a certain window is better for. You made have heard that eating 6 small meals per day rather than the typical 3 will boost your metabolism to a greater degree. This doesn’t appear true according to the research. More importantly, if that lifestyle fits yours and is comfortable and maintainable, then it’s probably okay to follow:).

If you want to know more about that check out this link! (https://examine.com/nutrition/do-i-need-to-eat-six-times-a-day-to-keep-my-metabolism-high/)

Although food digestion plays a role in your TEE for the day, it’s not everything. As noted above there are a lot of factors that influence how much you use so it’s not something you want to overly focus or rely on for your composition goals.

The last area that we can look at is really NEAT!...

Bad pun but I couldn’t resist.

Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis is that last piece of the puzzle. This has a HUGE range between people. Most of the research has shown that in it will account for about 4% of their total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) for sedentary individuals and up to 17% in highly active individuals. That’s a big difference. What makes this different from exercise is that it is not prescribed. This is ANY physical activity that you do in your daily life from walking, gardening, cleaning the house, playing with your kids, and even just fidgeting.

Research has even shown that people who are sitting at work and fidget, can burn up to +/- 30 calories per hour, which at the end of the day can be around 200-300 calories added into your TDEE. That’s JUST fidgeting in your chair. Those numbers were higher for people who are standing more frequently through the day and moving even more! This may not seem like all that much in the long run, but consider this;

If someone is trying to lose weight but can only exercise 2 times per week due to family schedules and kids sports, they may only be expending around 200-400 (really rough estimate) calories in their exercise, depending on the mode and intensity of it. Let’s say they’re able to consistently stay at around 1700 calories per day, putting them in a 300-calorie deficit 2100 for the week). This puts them at a little over ½ lb. per week. Assuming they’re not moving much outside of their exercise, this isn’t all that much that they’re able to expend on a weekly basis. The rate of change might be too slow but they’re not able to exercise any more nor are they willing to reduce calories at this time. Here’s where NEAT can play a big role…

NEAT is often free, can be done anywhere, and can yield a big benefit to the individual. I just told you that by simply fidgeting in your chair, you can expend up to an additional 200 calories per day and up to 1400 per week! This change has the potential to bump them up to 3500 per week, which is a pound. They didn’t have to change their eating all that much, nor did they have to commit to more exercise. That can be a big help to a lot of people with the restrictions I noted above:)

The Endgame

Whether you believe we are a divine creation or the product of evolution, I think we can all agree that we were meant to move! Look at ways you can maximize your movement through the day. Park further away from your work building, take the stairs when you can, go to the further bathroom, take 5 min walking breaks every hour or so. There are literally endless ways you can maximize your movement, you just have to be willing:) 

Mike Stack

Thanks @Trent Taylor! Good info, it turns out we burn so many more calories than what we realize just moving around during our day. It is a very powerful in terms of health, fitness, and weight management to maximize NEAT. Nice work here!

Emma Sheffert

Awesome post!! Sharing it with my clients now :)