Published May 15. 2020 11:28PM
At a social gathering months before the stay-at-home order, a woman who had been dieting asked me what she could do to lose those last five “stubborn” pounds. But before I could respond, her body tensed and in an accusatory tone she asked something else.
“What in the world do you find so funny?”
Now honesty’s the best policy, especially when it explains the offending smirk on your face. “The song,” I said, looking toward the host’s house, the source of the soft music.
Her stare softened. Her body relaxed. “Oh, I get it,” she said. “‘Already Gone.’”
But it was not the title of the Eagles’ song that caused my sardonic smile. It was two lines from the third stanza: “So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains / And we never even know we have the key.”
That’s a rather astute assessment on the human condition, one that’s especially true, I feel, for most frustrated dieters.
James A. Levine, MD, PhD, and researcher at the Mayo Clinic, probably feels that way, too. At least his comments in a 2007 article published in Endocrinology Update, would suggest so.
In it, he declares the way to lose weight is by forsaking the “chair-living [that] has proven so enticing” and by finding ways “to get back onto [your] legs.”
Levine then shares a NEAT way to do so. That acronym, which he coined as a result of his research, stands for nonexercise activity thermogenesis, the energy you expend throughout the day as the result of body movements not part of a planned workout.
It’s a combination of the cals burned during the workday as well as the ones used when you’re out and about or puttering around the house. And the combined total can really add up.
In fact, Levine’s research has shown the difference possible between two adults of similar size can be as great as 2,000 calories per day, which regardless of your size you probably find hard to believe. After all, that’s also the total used on food labels to determine your daily minimum requirements of vitamins and minerals - and does not include any calories burned as a result of intentional exercise.
But Levine claims the cals burned through most exercise to be a moot point in weight maintenance or loss since “even for the minority of people who do exercise, for most of them, exercise accounts for an energy expenditure of 100 calories per day. Thus, NEAT explains why an active person can expend 2,000 calories per day more than an inactive person of the same size.”
A 2015 article the Mayo Clinic published in support of Levine’s theory cited prior research that determined the average American exercises 18 minutes during the 15.5 hours per day he or she is awake, that “more than half of all leisure time is spent watching TV and engaging in other sedentary activities,” and that efforts to increase nationwide exercise time have repeatedly failed. The conclusion states: “By avoiding sitting, promoting motion, and engaging in simple, repetitive, and creative activities, a significant amount of extra calories may be expended that can reduce weight and perhaps prevent the cardiovascular and metabolic complications associated with obesity.”
The evidence offered in earlier sections of the paper, however, makes me wonder why the author used “can” instead of “will.”
A 12-plus year study of nearly 4000 men and women in Sweden and published in 2014, for instance, showed those “with higher levels of NEAT, regardless of regular moderate-intensity exercise physical activity, reduced the risk of cardiovascular disease events by 27 percent and all-cause mortality by 30 percent.” Another study found type 2 diabetics had greater insulin sensitivity and lower high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and blood pressure levels as a result of increasing their cal burn through NEAT.
Moreover, healthy individuals who want to increase cal burn through NEAT seem to be more likely to do so than those who try by exercise. A study that followed more than 30,000 Chinese adolescents and was published in 2011 in Circulation found once incorporated as an action plan, “NEAT remained high over time,” creating more caloric burn than exercise regardless of age or sex.
So whether you want to drop weight or keep from gaining it, the strategy is simple: Think about what you need to do this week and find ways “to get back onto [your] legs.
Keep in mind that sedentary seated activities burn no more than 50 calories per hour. Seemingly effortless jobs like cooking and ironing, however, double the caloric burn simply because you do them upright.
And when you’re upright and putting effort into the task, cal burn skyrockets. In Levine’s book, Move a Little, Lose a Lot: New NEAT Science Reveals How to Be Thinner, Happier, and Smarter (Crown Publishers, 2009), he reveals that an hour of yard work burns at least 10 times the calories of an hour of television watching.
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May 16, 2020 at 10:32AM
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