Habits outside the gym: Keeping Active
Success in your health and fitness endeavours can be broken into two overriding areas: what you do inside your workouts, and what you do outside of them.
A lot of people assume the former takes priority and as long as you get a bloody good sweat on, the latter takes care of itself.
However, if you were to workout for a not-so-modest hour every day of the week, come Sunday night you’d have only spent 4% of your time exercising.
It's clear then, even if you exercise a lot, you still have a lot more time to undo your hard work outside the gym.
Fortunately, with a bit of conscious effort we can ensure your time outside the gym not only doesn’t compromise your progress - but actually enhances it.
NEAT
Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis is one of the ways our body burns energy. It’s basically the energy expended for everything we do that isn't sleeping, eating or structured exercise.
Every time you get up for a wee? That’s NEAT. Raise your hand to scratch your head? Yep, that’s NEAT too.
It’s imperative you have an awareness of NEAT because it’s been shown to cause significant differences in energy expenditure and consequently weight gain.
Why does energy expenditure matter? Maintaining a healthy body composition is governed by energy balance, and if energy expenditure is persistently low - you're likely making it increasingly difficult for yourself.
At a time when lots of us are home-bound and spending more time seated than ever before, seemingly small actions compound to make noticeable differences to your weight over time.
As can be seen above, merely sitting fidgeting could burn a sizable number of calories more than just sitting.
Practical Implications
Don’t take this to undermine the importance of exercise. Be proud and confident in what your body can do, but remember none of us can get away with high levels of inactivity day-day and not experience any consequence.
Here are a few of my favourite methods to increase your NEAT, that work surprisingly well:
1. Always be late for your train.
- Sure to get you pacing out your morning walk.
2. Put stuff down in places you’re likely to forget.
- Frantically searching for the car keys is a winner for ramping up energy expenditure.
3. Play ‘The floor is lava’.
- Did you know if you stay still on the floor, you’ll melt?
4. Take up fidgeting.
- Finger tapping Vivaldi’s four seasons should keep you going.
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