FITNESS - J UNE
FITNESS - JUNE By Mark Broadbent The power of NEAT People tend to think of their workouts as the time they’ll be “burning fat”, but the reality is, no matter how hard you work (or think you work) in the gym, you can only burn so many calories in an hour. If you’re really pushing yourself, you might be able to burn 600-700 in the hour, but realistically, for most people and an average workout, it’s probably half that. The vast majority of your calories are burned outside of your workouts. In the other 23 hours of the day. This is NEAT – Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis Basically, NEAT is the amount of energy you burn outside of your workouts and it greatly outperforms your workouts for burning calories. So, logic dictates that if you can’t substantially increase the number of calories you burn during your workouts, and you burn more outside of them anyway, then perhaps the best way to increase energy expenditure is to find ways to increase NEAT (i.e. find ways to burn more calories the rest of the time). This is actually really simple and is the basis of the “10,000 steps a day” rule. If you’re not regularly averaging 10,000 steps a day or doing something else active to compensate for this, you should start here. You can add in extra steps by walking part of your way to/ from work, walking up/down escalators, taking the stairs instead of the lift, walking on your lunch breaks, take phone calls walking, take regular breaks from sitting and go for a quick walk around the office/building, go for a walk before/ after dinner, take the dog for a walk, make your social gatherings more active (do something active instead of sitting in a pub/coffee shop). I realise some of these aren’t so relevant right now, but the principal is the same – if you’re not currently going to work, go for walks in the time you’d normally commute etc. Actively trying to increase your daily activity will have a huge impact on your efforts to drop body fat. If you find you struggle (even with the above recommendations) to hit 10,000 steps a day, then go for a longer walk on days off – as long as you average 10,000 steps a day (70,000 steps a week), then the end result is the same. So, make up for low days with higher step days.
Even little things like standing desks or sitting on a swiss ball instead of your office chair can make a difference… Imagine that sitting in a chair burned 1 calorie a minute (***these numbers are completely made up by the way – don’t quote me on this, it’s just to give you an example of how it works!), and that sitting on a gym ball or standing burned 2 calories a minute… Over the course of an 8-hour day (480 minutes), you’d have burned an extra 480 calories! Just from swapping your chair over! 480 calories, 5 days a week is 2,400 calories a week which would, in theory, equate to nearly 1lb of weight loss – without changing your diet or even setting foot in a gym! This is the power of NEAT. So, alongside your workouts and making small, easy changes to improve your diet, aim to hit your 10,000 steps a day average to really ramp up the fat burning. If you regularly do hit 10,000 steps a day already, aim to maintain this, or if you can, increase it to 11 or 12,000. If you currently average nowhere near 10,000 steps a day, start with a smaller goal. 7,000 or 8,000, and then gradually build it up to the 10,000. Not all steps are equal… Another easy way to increase NEAT would be to wear/ carry something heavy – stick a small weight/sandbag in a backpack and you’ve just increased the effectiveness of your 10,000 steps (think of the chair > gym ball example). 10,000 steps is great; 10,000 steps carrying some extra weight will be even better! I must stress though, that this is OUTSIDE of your workouts. NEVER skip a workout in favour of getting more steps in. The workout will always be more beneficial than walking. So, if you’re in the position that you’re due to do a workout but you haven’t hit your steps yet, DO THE WORKOUT! If you need help figuring this out, download the free 5-day Kickstart plan from www.MBonlinePT.co.uk and follow me on Facebook and Instagram @markbroadbentpt
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