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NEAT Improvement Strategies to Improve Weight Loss
Replies
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@AnnPT77 that’s how I handle it also, I consider any added NEAT activity to be a part of my activity level.
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Totally agree with the above. ^^^
I upped my neat initially because I am a petite, old, sloth at heart and my weight loss, then sedentary maintenance calories, was set at 1200 cals. Completely reasonable for my stats.
Increasing my NEAT activity initially meant I could reach my goal weight without too much stress.
I wasn't willing to do more than an average of 1hr purposeful exercise a day, or drop my cals below a base of 1200. (I did drop my exercise from 200 to 150per hr for the last 5 or so lbs).
More exercise, or less calories, for me, would have meant lethargy, that would have dropped my NEAT.
The best thing I could do was make small permanent changes to increase my daily activity. MFP expects ~3500 steps at maintenance, I was probably under 1000- though my arms and body were moving a lot.
As far as those occasional heavy duty jobs go. I would give myself an extra 200 cals that day. Mainly because that would be my daily exercise burn, and if the job was so exhausting I was going to miss my class that day, I knew I had burned that. I also knew my next day/following hours would probably be 'Mrs Sloth reads a book for recovery' time, so a lower than average NEAT.
Also the heavy job, (or painting/sewing-I don't play an instrument) usually meant that what I would regularly be doing in 'daily activity' was put aside for that time.
Cheers, h.4 -
I bought a BOSU and I stand on it while watching TV. As an added bonus, my dog uses it for his agility training.4
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Maybe it's time for a little self-promotion . . . .
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I pace when I'm on the phone.
I used to try to be efficient and get up once to do 10 things in one trip, now I will get up and do one thing every commercial break. If I have nothing to do, I'll do some jumping jacks
I park on the perimeter.
I have a Fitbit Aria that vibrates at 10 to the hour if I haven't taken 250 steps yet in the hour. This has been a godsend because I am a pretty focused person and used to get engrossed in a book only to realize I had been reading for 3 hours and hardly moved a muscle other than turning the page.
I will be reading further comments, because I need to get my NEAT up more!
My Fitbit logged 1.39 minutes of sleep yesterday when I was lying on the couch, half watching TV and using my phone as a coloring book. I was way too still!7 -
successgal1 wrote: »I pace when I'm on the phone.
I used to try to be efficient and get up once to do 10 things in one trip, now I will get up and do one thing every commercial break. If I have nothing to do, I'll do some jumping jacks
I park on the perimeter.
I have a Fitbit Aria that vibrates at 10 to the hour if I haven't taken 250 steps yet in the hour. This has been a godsend because I am a pretty focused person and used to get engrossed in a book only to realize I had been reading for 3 hours and hardly moved a muscle other than turning the page.
I will be reading further comments, because I need to get my NEAT up more!
My Fitbit logged 1.39 minutes of sleep yesterday when I was lying on the couch, half watching TV and using my phone as a coloring book. I was way too still!
My Garmin Vivoactive 3 frequently logs reading, texting, etc. as sleep. In one case, texting was somehow REM sleep. I have timestamps to prove it wasn't.
Just to put this slightly on topic for the thread: It seems to me that my VA3 (and possibly other fitness/activity trackers?) fails to notice NEAT stuff that actually does have a bit of impact . . . but perhaps that's partly down to my nearly-unresonsive heart rate response. Don't care; gonna keep wigglin'-jigglin'-dancin'. 3 -
This may be a really stupid question, but is it possible to substantially increase your BMR?0
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This may be a really stupid question, but is it possible to substantially increase your BMR?
Sure. Gain 50 pounds or so.
Okay, joking, kinda. I don't know. I believe muscle mass increase is BMR increase, but that's not a "substantial" increase, over any reasonably short time horizon.
Anybody?3 -
Saw that coming!! My (bless his heart) husband burns 2100 per day, sitting drinking beer. I walk a gazillion miles, fidget and hardly sit still and only get 1500. Not fair. (as tracked by Apple Health).11
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Bumping this helpful thread 5
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Well, a common sign of dieting too hard/too big of a deficit definitely correlates to a decline in NEAT from data I've gathered over several years piecing together activity trends, TDEE, & periods of kcal surplus vs. kcal deficit. It can be a rather fine line of only a few hundred kcals from diet cut that can dramatically cut down NEAT kcals even when keeping exercise kcals burnt fairly controlled.
Definitely more inclined to stay in place more often when dieting too hard...generally a good sign to increase kcals slowly & slightly even when attempting to lose weight (extra NEAT will often offset or even overcome the increase in dietary kcals).9 -
Keto_Vampire wrote: »Well, a common sign of dieting too hard/too big of a deficit definitely correlates to a decline in NEAT from data I've gathered over several years piecing together activity trends, TDEE, & periods of kcal surplus vs. kcal deficit. It can be a rather fine line of only a few hundred kcals from diet cut that can dramatically cut down NEAT kcals even when keeping exercise kcals burnt fairly controlled.
Definitely more inclined to stay in place more often when dieting too hard...generally a good sign to increase kcals slowly & slightly even when attempting to lose weight (extra NEAT will often offset or even overcome the increase in dietary kcals).
A useful insight: Personally, I think too few people understand this, and too many "woo" it (and reasonable variations of it) on threads. Fatigue has caloric impact, and excessive calorie-cutting causes fatigue. Thanks for bringing that to this thread.16 -
I agree, so when it's raining or cold outside, I go to Sam's Club and walk on the left side of the store only (the non-food section).
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Bumping to add cross-link to thread with other good ideas:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10707575/not-quite-exercise-what-active-lifestyle-activities-do-you-enjoy-throughout-the-day5 -
A bump for this thread for all those starting their weight loss journey this year.5
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This thread has inspired me! I finally pulled the trigger and bought a brand new fancy Fitbit (I've had the zip for a long time, now I have the new Charge 3) I hope to up my NEAT significantly. Lately I've been spending most of my days in bed with nothing to do (between college graduation and starting work). Now I have a new reason to get out of bed!3
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emmylootwo wrote: »This thread has inspired me! I finally pulled the trigger and bought a brand new fancy Fitbit (I've had the zip for a long time, now I have the new Charge 3) I hope to up my NEAT significantly. Lately I've been spending most of my days in bed with nothing to do (between college graduation and starting work). Now I have a new reason to get out of bed!
My Christmas present was a Charge 3! It does occasionally tell me to get my butt moving though.
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When it comes to devices, they can be a great inspiration/incentive, with step counts, move reminders, and the like . . . but do keep in mind that there are movements that they don't recognize, but that still burn a couple of calories. The devices count a lot of things. Your body counts every little thing.8
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When it comes to devices, they can be a great inspiration/incentive, with step counts, move reminders, and the like . . . but do keep in mind that there are movements that they don't recognize, but that still burn a couple of calories. The devices count a lot of things. Your body counts every little thing.
Oh, so true @AnnPT77, so true.
I am not a device person because the one time I borrowed a Fitbit for a couple of months my focus was so on getting a certain number of steps, that my actual daily activity suffered and my NEAT dropped.
There was so much movement that I did in normal life, (and I think I’d myself as a sloth) gardening, working at an easel, painting walls and slip covering furniture,that wasn’t accounted for in those 2 or so month I decided device’s were not a good fit for me.
That being said, if you are encouraged to move more by using one, do so.
Cheers, h.4 -
I just tracked down this thread to say thank you for starting it, and it's helped me notice what I'm up to in a day, how my diet is affecting my energy levels and the resulting change in movement. Also keeping in mind that I need to make an effort to be mindful of my idle activity.
I've recently started transitioning back to low carb because it suits me very well, and I always forget about how much more energy I have and the NEAT increase.
Jiggly legs/hands, bouncing slightly if I'm standing around waiting, wandering more, walking faster, feeling up to spontaneous exercise, etc. It's so weird to read a thread like this and a couple of days later have this little lightbulb go on. "Ohhhhh I get it now!"
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I just tracked down this thread to say thank you for starting it, and it's helped me notice what I'm up to in a day, how my diet is affecting my energy levels and the resulting change in movement. Also keeping in mind that I need to make an effort to be mindful of my idle activity.
I've recently started transitioning back to low carb because it suits me very well, and I always forget about how much more energy I have and the NEAT increase.
Jiggly legs/hands, bouncing slightly if I'm standing around waiting, wandering more, walking faster, feeling up to spontaneous exercise, etc. It's so weird to read a thread like this and a couple of days later have this little lightbulb go on. "Ohhhhh I get it now!"
I'm glad the thread helped you connect some dots!
I think the part I bolded in your comment is a particularly useful aspect of developing more day-to-day awareness of one's NEAT. That awareness can be an early warning system to let us know when something's gone awry: A subtle slowdown may be not enough calorie or nutritional intake, not enough sleep, overdoing exercise intensity, etc; a subtle speed-up may be a good thing, as you're seeing with your change to low carb . . . or it can be a hint that our dropping weight is starting to shrink our deficit, or something of that nature.
We even see the occasional post here sometimes where someone can't understand why they've stopped losing weight, and it turns out they've gone from school to a sit-down job, or moved to a new area with different transportation, or the like. Sometimes, I think people get hyper-focused on eating, exercise, or changing their relatively unchangeable "metabolism" (I guess they mean RMR/BMR?) and overlook the significance of daily life activity. 11 -
So, January is over, new folks on the path of success are still around, maybe I'll bump this in hope it can be food for February thought. . . . 9
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I had been incorporating many of these strategies but have now decided to give up on the ineffective housework one. My preference is to get that boring crap out of the way quickly so I have time for a brief 5 minute walk around the block instead!10
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I never thought of it in terms of increasing NEAT, but I just get busier the healthier I get. Long walks in the parking lot, always taking the stairs, which is a big one for me as I work a lot of construction sites, 10 story buildings with no elevators operating yet, none stop play with the dog and grandkids, getting chased by the wife because I stole her last Milano cookie ... 12
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I love this thread! Pretty much everything I do has been said but I just wanted to add that I do many of the same things.
It is how I discovered I could maintain on more years ago by inadvertently increasing my NEAT when I increased calories. More energy to do little things like this that overall have an impact on my daily calorie burn.8 -
Lillymoo01 wrote: »I had been incorporating many of these strategies but have now decided to give up on the ineffective housework one. My preference is to get that boring crap out of the way quickly so I have time for a brief 5 minute walk around the block instead!
I absolutely blitz through housework too, anyone in my way is getting mowed down or the mop will appear in their unsuspecting hands. I have animals too and do a concerted clean up once a week before our green cans get picked up, and that I will log as a workout (raking and shoveling) but I can work up a little pottering and doing outside quite nicely, any day. Pull a weed, put things back where they're suppose to be, trim a rose, wind the hoses.5 -
I think my posts earlier in this thread were about my normal than predicted TDEE and maintenance cals range because I intentionally tried to keep my NEAT high.
Fast forward to a time now where my work schedule is much busier, with conference calls and meetings all day from 6 am to 6 pm - Im getting far less steps, sitting a lot more, and as a result my FitBit has noticed the decline and my adjustments are small or non existent.
I’ve also had a hard time adjusting my CI to a lower level to match the fact that I’m burning 200-400 cals less per day than when I was more active. So my weight had crept up and I’m over my maintenance range (partly due to lackadaisical attitude over the holidays and several business trips with lots of food and drink).
So again people - keep that NEAT up it really does make a difference in how many cals you burn and can subsequently intake - makes it so much easier to keep the weight off when the activity and maintenance cals are high.
Signed -
Guess I’m Going Back On Deficit19 -
One of the most common things I do is how I put away laundry. I fold each one individually and walk and put it away, then the next one so on and so on. Takes longer, but the extra steps I take help.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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