How To Burn Calories And Still Shed Fat With Minimal Effort
How would you like to burn calories and shed fat throughout your day, with minimal effort required? Silly question right? Who wouldn’t love that!
By incorporating the N.E.A.T. principles into your day-to-day living, you’ll be able to do just that, and start dropping pounds in no time!
What is N.E.A.T.?
N.E.A.T stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (what a mouthful! So we’ll just stick with N.E.A.T.!). Thermogenesis is the physiological process that produces heat, or the energy you expend. It’s the calories you burn outside of sleeping, eating, or planned exercise. So basically when you stand, walk, do household chores, even fidget, that’s thermogenesis!
Every person burns N.E.A.T calories, but the numbers can really vary from person to person since we all have different activity levels. If you are seated all day long, or are a devout couch potato, then your N.E.A.T. burn is going to be very low compared to someone that is consistently standing and moving around.
The calories burned by highly active people can be up to 2000 calories more per day than extremely sedentary people! That’s huge!
Understandably, you may not be one of these people that seems to incinerate calories just by their daily lifestyle. In fact, most of us aren’t, but we definitely can improve! With a few simple changes, we can burn an extra 350 calories a day!
That could be an extra 30 lbs. shed in a year just from making a few simple changes! Wouldn’t that be awesome?!
How To Become a N.E.A.T. Machine and Burn More Calories!
- Get up from your desk or couch and walk more. Even if it’s only for 10 minutes a few times a day, every little bit helps. Walk during your lunch hour, or after dinner. Get up at each TV commercial break. Just get moving!
- Buy a pedometer or fitness tracker and track your movement. These can be a great reminder and motivator to get moving, and keep increasing your steps daily! Work up to 10,000 steps daily and you’ll be in a great place. There are a ton of great fitness trackers you can use to help you accomplish this, so make sure you do your homework and find the one that’s right for you!
- Take the stairs whenever you can. Again, every chance you get to get in motion, do it!
- Park a little farther away and walk. Or, if you take public transit, get off a stop before and walk the rest of the way. Something so simple that never occurs to most people, and can make a big difference in your daily activity levels!
- When doing your household chores or running errands, pick up the pace and walk faster. Turn on some upbeat music to get you motivated, and forget that you’re actually burning calories!.
- Try standing at work. If you are stuck sitting in front of a computer all day, look in to an adjustable standing desk set up. Or if you work from home, consider a desktop configuration for your treadmill. Just the act of standing more instead of sitting or lying down will increase your N.E.A.T burn.
- Suggest walking meetings at work. You may be surprised at how responsive your coworkers might be to the idea!
- Some other N.E.A.T boosting ideas: walking the dog, playing with your kids, oh yeah… shopping at the mall 😉
If you’re a self-confessed couch potato or desk zombie, incorporate at least 2-3 of these tips to start getting more movement into your day. Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself, and you’ll be well on your way to shedding more fat in no time!