Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) is the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating or sports-like exercise. NEAT includes activities of daily living such as household chores and yard work, as well as, walking, playing actively with the kiddos, etc. It has even been suggested that fidgeting, gesturing and laughing are NEAT.
It is recommended by many that you should get in 10,000 steps a day, which is roughly the equivalent of walking 5 miles. You can buy and wear a pedometer for under $5 (or even download a tracking app to your smart phone) to get an idea of how active or sedentary you really are, which will capture all of your NEAT movement and answer the question of whether you are NEAT enough!
If the answer is that you are more sedentary than active in your daily routine, there are a lot of ways to get up and get moving throughout your day that you might not have considered such as marching in place while you are at the copier or cooking at the stove.
From the July/August 2012 issue of Fitness magazine:
"Sitting around can make you flabby. No surprise there, but despite what you may think, the culprit is not just a lack of exercise. In fact, the physical act of sitting or lying down may actually speed up your body's production of fat. When we lounge on a sofa or in a chair, we exert forces on our cells that cause them to become stretched out and to generate flab, researchers say."
CHALLENGE ALERT: Got a good one for getting NEAT.....For Two Weeks every time you are watching TV, Reading (book or device), Playing/Looking at device or social media, or Talking on the phone....don't sit or just stand....instead, every time you are sedentarily engaged in one of these "activities" actually make it an opportunity to be active and NEAT.....March in place, jog in place, squat in place, lunge in place, ride a stationary bike, whatever it is....MOVE!
