Learn How to Get the Benefits of Working Out When You’re Not Working Out

Whether you go hard on the gym floor, sweat it out in the studio or pound the pavement, there’s no doubt movement is a good thing. “But it’s no good powering through an early-morning workout if all you’re going to do is sit on your butt for the rest of the day,” says Bryce Hastings, Les Mills’ head of research. “We know that even the most well-intentioned exercisers run the risk of negating their efforts by being less physically active than normal for the rest of the day. Or, in some cases, they eat more and consequently overcompensate for the calorie burn.”

It’s no surprise you can easily undo the positive effects of working out. What’s remarkable is how easily you can amplify the benefits of movement when you’re not working out.

It all comes down to the science of non-exercise activity thermogenesis, otherwise known as NEAT.

NEAT is the energy expenditure that we don’t typically take into account. It might be energy expended as we work, stand, walk, talk, tidy the house or even just fidget. These somewhat trivial-sounding physical activities can actually have a remarkable impact on our metabolic rate and, as a result, stimulate greater energy expenditure over time. The scale of this effect depends on the amount and type of physical activity we engage in and, most important, its thermogenic cost—which means how much the activity drives energy expenditure above our resting metabolic rate.

Do we all benefit from NEAT in the same way?

Not all NEAT is equal. Our individual biological factors—such as weight, gender and body composition— can create significant variances. Essentially, the larger your body is, the more energy it takes to move it—although overweight people often don’t see the benefits because of a tendency to sit more than lean people. Studies show that lean men and women stand, walk and fidget significantly more during the day, which results in an additional 350 calories expended above their obese counterparts.

Environmental factors such as culture, wealth and work setting also can have a big impact. Those engaged in manual labor tend to have a high NEAT, while levels of wealth and industrialization appear to decrease NEAT.

According to researcher Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic, who has studied the NEAT effect, it can vary between two people of similar size by up to 2,000 calories a day. A typically healthy individual can burn about 330 calories a day, but it is possible for NEAT to burn between 700 to 1,000 calories per day.

Is NEAT something you should measure?

In the past, obtaining a good gauge on NEAT relied on the development of sensitive physical activity monitoring devices (called inclinometers and triaxial accelerometers) that were attached to the hips and legs. Combined with other energy expenditure measurements, these provided data on body position across all planes of movement 120 times a minute to calculate NEAT.

These days, modern fitness trackers provide useful data on the effects of intentional and non-intentional movement. Using these personal devices to monitor your activity levels can be interesting, but as Hastings points out, you’re better off simply focusing on making your lifestyle as active as possible.

“For some, tracking your steps and monitoring periods of inactivity can be great motivation,” he says, “but it’s important that you don’t overcomplicate things—after all, you don’t want to be sitting on your butt checking your activity stats when simply getting up and going for a walk on a regular basis is all it takes.”

How to maximize the power of NEAT

This post originally appeared on lesmills.com.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Les Mills