The Power of NEAT
NEAT aka Non-Exercise Activity Thermogensis is a fancy way of describing how much we move throughout the day. Discounting your Resting Metabolic Rate and the Thermic Effect of Food (check out my calories blog to understand these terms), your NEAT or daily movement will account for around 80-90% of your total calorie burn across the day for a normal person. That is essentially the vast majority of your calorie burn, barring the the bouts of formal exercise you do (which for most normal people might be 2-5 hours across the 168 available in the week).
Going from sitting to standing could increase your calorie burn by as much as 92% and going from sitting to walking is another massive jump, most people will be burning be burning energy 250-300x faster than whilst sitting.
In terms of weight loss, the potential impact is massive. Going from 3000 steps a day to 10000 steps a day could be the difference between losing an extra pound (~0.4kg) of fat per week or losing absolutely no weight at all.
Using a Personal Trainer as an example, at work they might average around 20,000 steps per day. In contrast, take someone desk bound that only does 3000-5000 steps per day. Despite having done absolutely no formal, organised exercise, the PT will have burned something in the region of 750-1000 calories more than someone sat down. That’s 2 moderately sized meals a day.
One of the main benefits of burning calories in this manner is it doesn’t impact hunger as drastically as intense exercise, and additionally it doesn’t result in a reduction of movement later in the day. Formal bouts of higher intensity exercise cause more fatigue, and make you more likely to want to rest during other parts of the day. This is why exercise alone is often really poor for creating a calorie deficit and exercising purely with the goal of burning a lot of calories is counter intuitive.
Exercise has a whole host of benefits on your physical and mental wellbeing, but using it purely as calorie burning tool for weight loss, probably won’t work.
