Are You NEAT Enough?
Don’t worry I’m not talking about tidiness. I’m talking bout Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.
That’s just a fancy name for the everyday motions of our body, the kinds of things we don’t even think about. Getting out of bed is one. Most of us do that every day. Filling the kettle with water is another. Opening the door is yet another. These everyday motions add up and it’s amazing how many calories they can burn up in the course of a day.
Here are a few more:
- Putting away groceries
- Emptying the dishwasher
- Brushing your teeth
- Tying your shoelaces
- Tapping your foot
- Fidgeting
The calories you burn during “exercise” is relatively small compared to the calorie you lose by NEAT. But here’s the catch. When you’re losing weight, and taking in fewer calories, your unconscious mind plays a trick on you. It wants you to stay the same weight, so you tend to move less. This is one of the barriers to weight loss that we encounter over and over.
According to “set point theory” our bodies try to maintain a certain constant weight. We know that our natural weight range is determined by genes, diet, exercise, hormones, and a few other factors. If we can change the factors under our control, like our food intake and exercise, we can change that “set point” through lifestyle changes. As most of us have experienced though, it’s not an easy thing to break through this plateau. So remember to take those extra steps, take the long way around instead of taking a shortcut, mix your cake by hand instead of with the mixer, chop the carrots by hand instead of using the food processer, carry firewood in your arms instead of in the wheelbarrow, just as long as you can do these things without hurting yourself, and if possible, work them into your daily routines so they become habits. And fidget a lot.
We’d love to see you at TOPS meetings. We meet every Wednesday morning at the Community Centre, from 9:00 to 10:00. We meet indoors, social distancing, sanitizing whatever we touch, and most of us wear masks throughout the meeting. We’re a low-cost, enjoyable, international self-help program that happily welcomes everyone. (Your first visit is free.) If you want to Take Off Pounds Sensibly with us, please call .
Submitted by Amber Harvey