NEAT Up! Who says spending longer in the gym will help shift those last pounds?
The Science
Even while resting, your body is expending energy through your bodily systems. This is known as your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) or REE (Resting Energy Expenditure). It’s the energy requirement of your body without any activity. In other words, the calories you burn in bed, doing nothing (which explains the weight loss you experience when you are ill). BMR can make up to 70% of your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). Within your TDEE you also have three other components that impact your daily calorie expenditure. These components fall under your NREE (Non-Resting Energy Expenditure) – basically everything you do outside of rest:
The first component, TEF (Thermic Effect of Food) refers to the calories burned through chewing, digestion and absorption of food, which represents 10% of TDEE.
Now, stick with all the acronyms - here comes the interesting and often overlooked part!
The last two components of your NREE; EAT (Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), the calories you burn going to the gym or exercising and NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) the energy expended when you are not sleeping or exercising, through daily activities such as taking the stairs, cleaning, cooking, standing etc. Despite the perception of your requirement to hit the gym every day to lose weight, EAT makes up only a small component of the total calories that you burn – in most cases only 5%. NEAT however, represents the rest – a whopping 15% of your TDEE.
Say that again?
Typically we spend 3-5 hours a week expending energy through our EAT, leaving around 163hrs in the week for NEAT and BMR. You can burn between 100 to 1,000 calories during a 60-minute EAT workout. Amazing - great work! Now you have more time for the rest of the day to curl up on the sofa and watch Netflix or eat that doughnut you deserve, right? Wrong!
The more you concentrate on your EAT, (which remember represents 5% of your TDEE), you are actually reducing time on your NEAT.
NEAT is seen as the most overlooked factor in losing weight.
Studies have found, those who ‘work out’ more, make unconscious decisions by eating more or moving less, increasing their sedentary time. This is not ideal for weight loss but nor is simply increasing your NEAT activities as a replacement for exercising. In order to maintain your ideal weight you need to ensure that you combine all three areas – healthy calorie controlled diet, structured workouts AND increase NEAT behaviour.
According to Dr James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic who first described the phenomenon of NEAT, small tasks vary from 50 to 200 calories per hour. All of these small movements could burn up to 2,000 calories a day, without even trying. Making small changes daily adds up helping to achieve weight loss goals quicker. Moreover, increasing your NEAT will ultimately create positive behavioural changes and in the long term, lead to successfully reaching and maintaining your health & fitness goals.
To Summarise
Replace your sedentary time with NEAT-type activities; avoid the lifts, use the stairs; park further away from the shops, play with your children rather than sitting and watching them, take the dog for a longer walk, stand, don’t sit while waiting. And take time to cook to make better food choices. It all adds up. Neat, right?