NEAT Improvement Strategies to Improve Weight Loss
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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!"
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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
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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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.
In your opinion do you think the devise underestimates then?
I still don't eat all the adjustment back even though I've been in maintenance for a few months. I've lost a few more pounds too during this period. Starting to think now that I should probably eat all the adjustment back to stop losing. Just so frightened of gaining.3 -
Enthusiast84 wrote: »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.
In your opinion do you think the devise underestimates then?
I still don't eat all the adjustment back even though I've been in maintenance for a few months. I've lost a few more pounds too during this period. Starting to think now that I should probably eat all the adjustment back to stop losing. Just so frightened of gaining.
Those two statements are a contradiction. If you're eating less than your device tells you to eat through MFP, then it is likely not underestimating anything. I think method three in this thread would help you determine the accuracy of your device:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10638211/how-to-find-your-maintenance-calorie-level/p12 -
Enthusiast84 wrote: »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.
In your opinion do you think the devise underestimates then?
I think the devices estimate calories, they don't measure them. Heck, I don't just think that, it's objectively true.
As a generality, they could over-estimate or under-estimate, or they could be spot on. For most people, I think a well-designed, well-programmed device will be pretty close, because most people are close to the averages on which the estimates are based: That's the very definition of "average".
The devices will over or underestimate for some people (people further from average, not necessarily for obvious reasons), and be quite far off for a very few. This is just how statistics work.
The devices measure certain things; different devices vary in what they measure. What is measured can include arm movements (wrist based device, using accelerometer); speed/pace/distance (using gps, or motion-based step estimates); heart rate (wrist or chest belt); and elevation change (through altimeter). (Some of those values are measured more accurately, or less accurately, under certain conditions, or by certain devices.)
Some of those measurements correlate somewhat with calorie burn, but even taken in context with perfectly accurate user settings (height, weight, VO2max, maximum heart rate, age, stride length, etc.), they don't perfectly predict calorie burn. They're estimating calorie burn.
I'll give you a couple of examples where these sometimes go wrong, under and over:
Once in a while on here, we see someone report that their fitness tracker thinks they're walking, when in actually they're doing something like playing the piano. The arm movements have been interpreted by the device as walking movements. It's likely that calories will be over-estimated, in that scenario.
We also occasionally see someone say that their fitness tracker thinks they're not walking when they're pushing a grocery cart through a store, because they're not making the arm movements that are typical of walking. It's likely that calories will be under-estimated, in that scenario.
When I made the statement you quoted: " . . . 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", I meant to be suggesting that there are things a person can do that are small calorie burners, compared to sitting still, that their fitness tracker won't register.
Any movement burns calories, even if your tracker-wearing arm doesn't move, your body doesn't move through space, your heart rate doesn't go up much, you don't change altitude, etc. If I sat here in my chair all day long, slowly waving my left arm over my head (a dumb thing to do, but just an example), I'd probably burn a few dozen calories in 8 hours. The fitness tracker on my right wrist wouldn't notice.
There's been research suggesting that persistent fidgeting can burn as many as low-hundreds of calories per day. How much of that do you think your fitness tracker would catch?
You go on to write:I still don't eat all the adjustment back even though I've been in maintenance for a few months. I've lost a few more pounds too during this period. Starting to think now that I should probably eat all the adjustment back to stop losing. Just so frightened of gaining.
Take the number of pounds you've lost in that period, multiply that by 3500. Compare that to the total number of calories from your tracker that you didn't eat back, over the same time period. If the numbers are close, you can eat all of the adjustment. If there's a gap, divide by the number of days to get a rough estimate of how many calories lower or higher than the adjustment you'd have to eat to maintain.
Bonus fact: Some people find that when they go up to actual maintenance calories, they get an energy bump from doing it. After a couple of months, maybe sooner, they start losing slowly again, even at what was previously their actual maintenance calories. So: Go to maintenance calories, as best you can estimate them. If you want, add 50 daily calories once a week or so, and watch what happens, to find your stability point. You don't have to add all of the adjustment at once. Maybe you'll get a bonus TDEE increase; never know until you try.
(Note that you could see a small pseudo-gain on the scale from water balance, if you add an increment of calories, that is bigger than that calorie increase could cause as fat gain. Don't let that water weight adjustment make you think you're gaining fat.)
What's the worst that could happen? If you eat 100 calories more than your actual maintenance calories for a whole month, you will gain less than one pound. You know how to lose a pound.
Best wishes!11 -
This thread is great...reminding me that I have to move more...I admit that I tend to think nothing about sitting all day at a desk because I exercise 30 to 60 minutes at the gym.4
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Take the number of pounds you've lost in that period, multiply that by 3500. Compare that to the total number of calories from your tracker that you didn't eat back, over the same time period. If the numbers are close, you can eat all of the adjustment. If there's a gap, divide by the number of days to get a rough estimate of how many calories lower or higher than the adjustment you'd have to eat to maintain.
Thank you for taking the time to provide such a informative response. I really appreciate it.
I did what you suggested and I'm left with 5715 calories. What does this mean? I should eat all of them back or just some. Sorry if it's obvious! FYI it was 14000 minus 8285.
Really don't want to lose any more weight. Keep getting grief from my parents about needing to stop. That aside I'm also content with where I am. Also you are totally right if I gain a little bit it's not a big deal... I can lose again as I've done it before.0 -
Enthusiast84 wrote: »Take the number of pounds you've lost in that period, multiply that by 3500. Compare that to the total number of calories from your tracker that you didn't eat back, over the same time period. If the numbers are close, you can eat all of the adjustment. If there's a gap, divide by the number of days to get a rough estimate of how many calories lower or higher than the adjustment you'd have to eat to maintain.
Thank you for taking the time to provide such a informative response. I really appreciate it.
I did what you suggested and I'm left with 5715 calories. What does this mean? I should eat all of them back or just some. Sorry if it's obvious! FYI it was 14000 minus 8285.
Really don't want to lose any more weight. Keep getting grief from my parents about needing to stop. That aside I'm also content with where I am. Also you are totally right if I gain a little bit it's not a big deal... I can lose again as I've done it before.
You have to divide by the number of days in the time period to get a daily average gap, i.e., divide the 5175 by the number of days to know (roughly) how far off your tracker is vs. your typical average TDEE over the time period.
Without knowing how many days those numbers represent, it's hard for me to know whether 5715 is a big gap, or not. If we're talking about 90 days, then your tracker is within about 64 calories per day of your typical average TDEE (5175 divided by 90). If we're talking about 30 days, it would be 191 per day (5175 divided by 30). If it's longer than 90 days, the number would be smaller than 64 per day.
I'm not sure which number is which - Is 14000 the number of calories that represents the pounds you lost (pounds x 3500), or is it the number of calories your tracker gave you that you didn't eat? That's what would tell us if your tracker is high, or low, when compared to your typical TDEE.
I'm trying here, but it's kind of hard to do other people's math!
If this all seems too complicated for you to do, then I'd suggest considering adding 50-100 calories a day, weighing daily & putting it into a weight trending app (like Happy Scale or Libra among others), then waiting until you see a clear trend (up, level, down). If you're then still losing, add another few calories, and monitor again. Keep going until you stabilize (ideally), or see an up-trend (in which case back off part/all of the last increment).
For more info, there's a stickied post in "Goal: Maintaining Weight" that you can take a look at:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10638211/how-to-find-your-maintenance-calorie-level
That would be a good place to ask questions, too, as there have been other contributors to that thread who're already in maintenance and might have suggestions. This current thread (about NEAT) isn't as directly realated to the subject.
Best wishes!1 -
Thank you so much. And it was actually a 90 day period... what were the odds of that so I guess 64 calories isn't far off. And yes 14000 did represent the pounds lost in calories.
I'm actually quire relieved knowing that the tracker is pretty close and now I also know why I have continued to lose weight and will continue to lose if I don't start eating back some of those calories! !!
Thanks again for all your help.5 -
Have kids. You’ll never sit down again15
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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
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
Thought I was the only one who did that.1 -
psychod787 wrote: »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
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
Thought I was the only one who did that.
I just did this the other night for the first time, trying to please my Apple Watch on a quiet day. I need 30 calories but I'm ready for bed... time to eke out this laundry putting away!2
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