Do you exercise? "Yes, I walk the dog." That's N.E.A.T.!

N.E.A.T. stands for Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis and comprises all the activities you perform during that day that are not sitting or sleeping.  These activities include:  walking the dog, going to the grocery store, doing yard work, etc...  We often talking about being "active" during the day and at work, and many patients who work in construction, or on their feet every day tell me that they don't exercise because they're so "busy at work."

Sadly, that kind of activity is not a replacement for exercise, BUT it is still very important to our overall fitness and health!   This is taken from Vanessa Bennington's online article and is so well written, I will just include it here:

Your basal metabolic rate (BMR), plus the thermic effect of the foods you eat, added to something often referred to as Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) or Non-Exercise Physical Activity (NEPA) makes up your energy requirements for each day. NEAT or NEPA is a huge part of that equation and I’ll explain how. 

BMR + thermic effect of food + NEAT/NEPA = daily energy requirement

BMR, or Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), is the energy requirement of your body either without any activity or while lying motionless. BMR/RMR accounts for about 60% of your total daily energy requirements. The thermic effect of food (the amount of calories needed to digest food) accounts for about 10-15% of your energy requirements. The rest of your energy requirements are dependent on how active you are in both intentional exercise and NEAT/NEPA activities (normal life activities like cleaning, shopping, walking, etc.).

NEAT/NEPA can account for as little as 15% of energy expenditure in the very sedentary and up to 50% in very active individuals. If a woman has a BMR of around 1,000 calories (we’ll use that nice even number for simplicity’s sake), she’ll burn about 150 calories digesting the food she eats each day. She may also burn anywhere from 150 to 500 calories more per day depending on whether she has a day full of walking around, shopping, and cleaning or if she spends the day sitting and working on the computer.

We’re also going to say our person didn’t engage in any intentional exercise on this particular day. So, on the low end of things, she is going to burn 1,300 calories. If her NEAT activities are on the higher end, she’s going to burn 1,650. That’s a 350-calorie per day difference between those activity levels. Now, I don’t know many people who eat only 1,300 calories per day, but I know plenty of people who have office jobs and don’t workout. Couple a sedentary lifestyle with a daily surplus of calories beyond your basic energy requirements and over time you have weight gain.

So, made simple, the little activities that we can fit in during the day really do matter.  Walking the dog, taking a walk around the office, or maybe doing a couple of laps in the office parking lot at lunch time will make a difference in how active you are OVERALL and if you can add that to a regular exercise routine, you're on the way to a faster metabolism and being in better shape!