Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)

NEAT - Non-Exercise Thermogenesis can make up over 10% of the shredded and weight loss journey. 

Tune into today to listen to Blake share about how the science works with getting more movement in your day and practical ways to make it easy. 

Science Based 

Practical application 

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Welcome to the finish site podcast. I'm your host Blake shite. And this week we're going to be wrapping up our four part series on the four pillars of health and fitness. We started out week one with resistance training. Then we went into food prep and sleep hygiene. And this week we're going to cap it off with what we call neat non-exercise activity. Thermogenesis. But before we get started, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by Blake shites coaching. If you're interested in out-of-state or not currently in the Lakeland, Florida area and looking for a coach to help you get through the gym, get some awesome ideas and awesome workouts and have them very tailored and geared towards you specifically then head on over to my website, Blake shite.com, S C H E I D T. And there you can learn how to sign up, inquire a 15 minute discovery call with me and we can get started on seeing if I'm a great fit for you as a coach. This is all tailored towards individual coaching. So it's very specific towards each person. It concludes nutritional guidance and program design through the app. True coach. So that being said, head on over there. And we're going to get started. So as we wrap up this series, I wanted to think through a couple things. we talk about eating and quality foods and having to plan for it. That was a great podcast. And we were really diving into how that's important. We've talked about sleep hygiene and how important sleep is to just recovery. It is the most important probably, uh, recovery piece that we have. And then resistance training, which was where we started just exercising with weight training, or some sort of resistance is excellent for the body. It's, it's so helpful in multiple ways. And these things make up the entire health and fitness continuum. And so if I were going to kind of rank them, right, I would say, exercise three times a week, resistance training at least. Probably makes up about 20% of the fat burning weight loss, muscle gaining kind of journey. And then I'd say the other 20% is going to be food. So the thermal effect of your food, and then 10% I would say is what we're going to focus on today, which is your non-exercise activity. And this is kind of an abstract, various. objective kind of analysis, but I've gotten this from a lot of coaches and, and I've, I've seen this as something that's very true in my own experience of coaching that, 10% of this would be of your weight, loss journey and health and burning fat and staying fit really has to do with how active you are now. That might not sound like a lot. Uh, but if you lost 10% of your income, that would be. If you lost 10% of your business and your business owner, that would be a lot. So we, we want to make sure that there's no, stone that hasn't been turned over when we're thinking about trying to help people in their fitness and health. Now I know what you're thinking. I've only made up 50% of the puzzle. So the other 50%, which we'll say for another podcast would be, your resting metabolic rate. Or in other words, how fast is your metabolism working? And that's a whole nother podcast, but for today, we're going to focus on the 10% of neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Now, you know, most movement in humans has been done. Since the beginning of time, right? We, we walk places. We have, been outside, working on farms. We didn't have plumbing all the time. So we used to have to go grab bucket of water and head down to the nearest body of water. And that's where we got the source for our water, baths or whatever else we needed. But now we live in a modern world where we have plumbing and thankful to technology and the advancements that we have in the Western world. It's easy, to kind of live more sedentary. And, I was reading this, this Mayo clinic research, recently, and it said the majority of Americans walk around three to 4,000 steps a day. So that's roughly one mile. To two miles a day. And that's not very much, right. That's the average too. So some of us aren't even at average, so we're probably less than that. But we want to try to offset this sedentary life by, by exercise and we should, but the problem is that most people only exercise for an hour a day and that's, if they even go to the gym every day, say you go three days. You there's 168 hours in the week, right? So if you go to exercise for three hours out of that week, that's not enough to make up enough movement for you to lose weight that week. It's just not, unless you're really, really in a large caloric deficit, which is not very enjoyable. So what we, what we tend to say is what are you doing? You know, with the. A hundred and sixty five hundred and sixty three hours, depending on how many days a week you work out to get enough movement and stay in a caloric deficit. So I'm about two years ago, I started to go through a bulk season where I wanted to put lean muscle mass on without putting too much extra fat. This is really, really hard to do for a lot of reasons, but, but one of them is making sure. You're getting enough movement in that you don't store fat, but rather your body uses the extra fuel to create muscle. Right? So my coach suggested that I walked 10,000 steps a day. On top of my workouts for the week. Right? So three months later, my weight went up, but I loved the way I looked. Not only did I feel great, but my InBody scan showed that I actually gained more muscle and just a little bit of fat. It was a great trade off. It was something along the lines of, I gained around five pounds of muscle in three months, which is, which is a lot for me. And I think I only gained maybe one and a half, maybe two pounds of fat now being in a caloric deficit I'm sorry, a caloric surplus. That's actually a really good trade off. Most people would say, now you can go a little slower. Right. But to gain that much in three months, right. It takes quite a bit of eating and eating of the right things. On the walking really helped mitigate the damage of extra calories that would have been wasted. So had I not had that extra movement, I probably would have gained more fat and not as much lean muscle mass. So that's a great example in my own personal life. How walking can be helpful, but for a lot of us, we're not really trying to gain a lot of extra muscle mass. What we're trying to gain is just a leaner frame. We're trying to be a leaner 150 pounds or a leaner. 200 pounds, depending on what your goal is. So how do we implement this into our lives practically, where that kind of still benefits us? What movement obviously benefits us because all movement is burning calories. And what you want to do is you want to up your exercise movement and you want to up your, your movement throughout the day. So what are some really practical ways we can put this in, become more. That'd be number one, become more aware. Most people don't know how little they move throughout the day. They might get along hour of exercise or even a long walk, but they remain sedentary the rest of the day. And one of the things I did was get a watch that was so helpful for me was my Fitbit. Now you don't have to do this one. You can actually get cheaper watches than this, uh, or you can even get the apple watch or I believe even the whoop calculates it. I'm not sure on that one, but something that calculates your steps so that you can just become aware of how much. Most people when I talk to them in consults and they don't have data on this, they usually shoot higher than they actually do move. So people become very sober to the reality that they're, they're very sedentary solution to. So number one become more aware. Number two, I would say. Plan movement in your day. If you don't plan it and you you're in the office job, you're probably going to let the day get away from you and not move very much. So every day when I get home, one of the things I would do is I go outside and play with my two oldest sons for 30 minutes. Right. So it was, it was just, I turned off my work. I put my phone down and I went outside now. I live in the state of Florida. So it is nicer most of the time of the year for me to actually go out and do that. I get that that's not feasible for everyone, but you could maybe go into a certain room in the house. And and if you have children play with them in there, right. If that's not feasible for you, right. You don't have kids. and that the accountability of that, maybe you have a. You can take your dog for a 20 minute walk when you get home. Either way, like if you don't want to buy a watch and become more aware, then I would highly suggest that you set a timeframe that you have to walk for a certain period of time. So this week I'm going to walk. I have to do a 15 minute walk every day and every five minutes, I'm going to walk a little bit faster. And then I'm going to do the next week. I'm going to do 20 minutes. And then the next week I'm going to do 25, right? Or you just keep it the same and, and you just do it more frequently. You try to do it every single day. Those are ways I would plan movement. And, one of the things I used to do also outside of that was, you know, I personally have a dog, so I used to walk my dog a lot and it used to help me with my mental health. So I would come home from work very strict. And I found that actually taking my dog for a quick walk outside. I had been stuck inside a lot throughout the day. And, and just getting that sunlight and letting my head clear was just such a great, way for me to kind of relax and get out of it. So that was, that was a really helpful one for me. I also think, uh, another one that you could plan is if you're not able to do that, because life is just so busy, really investing in a standup desk at work is probably worth it. There's some really inexpensive ways to do this, where you can get kind of the half standing desk that can raise on top of your desk. I used to have one of these, I believe they're like a hundred dollars on Amazon. And then you could fully invest in one of those really cool ones that actually you can crank them up or the remote ones go up and down so you can adjust it from a seating desk to a standing desk. Those seem to be the people I know that have them really enjoy them and use them quite a bit. But, but another article that I pulled for that, just to show how helpful it can be is, the Nazism, who I have one of my certifications from national academy of sports medicine. They said a 145 pound person burns approximately 102 calories an hour while performing their office job in a seated position. But they burn 174 calories an hour and performing those same office duties while steam. So while the 174 calories may not seem like much, it translates to 18,000 calories or a little over five pounds over 50 weeks a work year. So you could literally do nothing different in your diet or anything, and just stand at work and lose five pounds that year, from just standing. So. Or really just 250 days of work. Right. Cause if you take the weekends out, so it's, it's, it is very helpful. It's the little things we're talking about, the nitty gritty 10%, but this is where you make your wins. Right? So I would, I would highly suggest in. finding ways to get more walking in, and make it consistent or invest in a standup desk if that's not feasible. And the number three, I would say, know your calories, you know, at the end of the day, we are trying to figure out the right number of calories in and the right number of calories out, right. The law of thermodynamics doesn't change., so if you don't know roughly how many calories are coming in, the projection of burning enough, calories is a guessing game. And that's just the truth. So we can really do a lot of movement, but if you're eating a lot or overeating, that can be a problem. And maybe, maybe you're not just aware of how many calories are in certain foods. And a lot of times when we calculate them, we don't calculate them with all of the things they were cooked in. Right. So, you know, olive oil has a lot of calories in it. Butter has a lot of calories in it. These, these are good things. I cook with these things, but you want to be thoughtful on calculating and knowing how much is actually going in. So I suggest most. You know, figured out what their maintenance calories are. And what I mean by maintenance is really just figuring out what is it that you should be eating, that you don't gain weight or lose weight. And the only way to really do this is just to kind of create a food diary. So either you write it down or you go onto one of these apps, my fitness power, or chronometer, and. Record as best you can and get it as close as you can to it. And you kind of get an average over a week and, and if you don't gain or lose any weight with them, Then, you know that that's your maintenance calories. And if it's too low, you usually want to eat more and build up before you do a cut. And if it's too high, then you obviously are in a position where you can start cutting calories from there. But there are a couple of things that I would talk to you about as a coach before we even considered that. But that's what I'm trying to say here. the other thing is just making sure you're getting a bunch of whole foods in so that the nutrition in your body is quality. It creates a, an energy in you because you're getting enough minerals and vitamins and, your mood is boosted that you actually want to move. Right when we eat very high processed foods and we can tend to feel more lethargic. We don't want to move as much. When we're in a high sugar diet, we typically feel that because of just the, the imbalance in our hormones and insulin. And so those things are also applicable to helping us get more movement. So it's, it's a full circle at the end of the day, really with a lot of this stuff. And I don't say that to overwhelm you so to make it more practical. As we kind of wrap things up here, I would say become more aware, get something that says. Either. I'm going to time myself every day, or I have a watch that helps me keep track. you also can do it on your phone. Number two, I would say plan the movement. So make sure you have a plan, whether it's going to be, I'm going to do a standup desk. I'm gonna make sure I, I walk to the, around the building at work three times a day. It can be anything. I'm going to have a walk. My animal when I get home or just myself or I'm gonna play with my children wherever you're at. And then have, have a knowledge of the calories in, right. It's a really defeating purpose if you're burning all these calories, but you're not burning enough. So action steps use your phone or your watch to track your steps. Number two, plan a time when you can consistently get more movement in your day and number three, track your food or stick to a whole foods diet. If you can't track it per se, you know, just stick to anything that grew up with tree. Or was it living organism like an animal? So a couple of things I want to kind of follow up behind because I have the coach in me, wants to make sure I answer these correctly. And I'm kind of anticipating questions, having a model on COVID conversation here. Number one, if you're thinking about a cut and you want to lose weight, consider these things first, have you been eating at maintenance for three to six months? At least. So meaning like, Hey, I went through a season where I ate what my body actually required and I didn't starve it at all and it's comfortable and it's healed and my metabolism is good. How do I know those things? Okay. I know, my body fat percentage and weight and gender, I should be eating roughly around these calories because I've gone and done a basic TDE calculator and it tells me I'm should be roughly in this area and I'm close to it. I haven't been trying to do any kind of weird cuts or diets in the meantime and, stressing my body out in those ways. All right. That'd be. Then number two, I would, ask, have I have, I then upped my movement and the quality of my food in those three to six months so that I could try to see if I just lose fat and maintain that weight in a healthier weight. So it's a healthier 200 pounds versus a unhealthier to 200. Then once you've done that and you've consistently getting enough sleep, you're consistently hitting your protein and you're consistently working out and getting your steps in and enough water. And then you're ready for a cut You're ready to go into, you've kind of earned the right to lose. The extra pounds that you want to get off and it will be effective and it will be something that will stay off. And it's something that you will heal from, because what can happen is if you go into too deep of a cut for too long, right, you really, your body wants to survive and you can damage that metabolism that we talked about in the very beginning. And so we really want to make sure that that is. Um, shot. We want to make sure that we're doing our due diligence to, to take care of that. And that's where usually doing that alone. It can be a problem. And a and a coach is very helpful with those things. So I hope you found this podcast helpful today. I hope that this series was a, was a blessing to you that you you've learned more about food prep and how to get steps in and movement outside of the gym. How to focus on some quality sleep and the importance of why resistance training. Good for everyone. Um, and then everyone can do it to a certain degree and how that it gets incorporated is just super important. If you wouldn't mind giving us a review at finish, I podcast one app. Uh, Spotify we're on apple podcasts, Google. So all of those places be great places. I think apple is the main one that most people leave reviews at. So if you could please do that, we want to earn all the stars we can. So if you would please subscribe and share. Thank you.