I read a lot, especially on anything fitness, nutrition or health related. I’ve read hundreds of books and articles on all these subjects and it ALL still fascinates me so much. I was listening to a podcast lately with Dr. Mike Molloy who is a Sports Nutritionist who works with some of the best CrossFitters in the world.
He was talking about NEAT. NEAT is non-exercise activity thermogenesis which is the energy expended (calories) for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating or sports-like exercise and workouts. It ranges from the energy expended walking to work, typing, performing yard work, undertaking agricultural tasks and fidgeting.
I’ve read on this topic quite a bit years ago and didn’t think too much of it as my NEAT is very high, but in this podcast he talked about how they’re finding more and more that people who are and stay the leanest for long or their lifetime are the people who have a high NEAT.
Let me tell you a little bit about my NEAT when I was 19 years old. I was out of high school and didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life besides fight(boxing, muay thai etc.) for fun. SO I worked for my dad who owns a logistics company and he had a contract with the city of Toronto replacing all their fridges and stoves with more energy efficient units and I was the head of one of these teams. A basic day for me looked like this, wake up and do a hour of conditioning and head to the warehouse to pickup the straight truck up and load it by dolley with new units for that days job, we would drive to the building and another 48 foot trailer of fridges and stoves would be dropped at sight. We would then proceed to go into every unit of the apartment building and hand carry out every single fridge and stove of that building, we would offload the new units and load the old units onto the trailer and stack them up, we would then go and carry all the new units and hook them up into each and every unit. After all the new ones were installed and the old ones were loaded up into the trailer we would take the trailer to a warehouse where we would off load the old ones so the fridges could be decommissioned and the stoves wires could be cut off and elements taken out to be sold at seprate scrap yards for more money, we would then go and load up the trailer with a load of decomissioned fridges and stoves and bring it to a scrap yard and hand bomb off load the trailer for it’s money in weight. I would go home shower and go to Kombat Arts for an evening training session , go to sleep and repeat. I did that for 2 years NO vacations except normal holidays. I had a 8 pack and not a ounce of fat. My NEAT was ridiculously high.
Now that’s an extreme version of NEAT but an experience I’ll always remember. I got so good at hand loading trailers by myself that I could load fridges on to the trailer with 2 deadlifts and stoves with 1 power clean like motion for 100’s of reps a day, who needs a gym right?
Now a days my NEAT stays super high because I walk around all day training people, moving their weight around and on top of that I calculated my kilometers on the assault bike last week and I do over 110 kilometers (110 000 meters) a week on that alone between warm-ups, cool-downs, active recovery and workouts. I’m burning calories ALL day. It’s a big factor in me staying under 10% body-fat all year around.
SO I know your not in a gym all day and I know most of you aren’t moving non stop all day working construction or landscaping jobs although some of you do, like Santo working as a mover loading and offloading all day then coming to Radix for more punishment afterwards, Santo also worked with me those 2 years delivering fridges and stoves, it’s why he’s an animal like me lol but for the rest of you what can you do?
1st off every break during the day you have go for a walk and if you can find some stairs even better. 2nd park at the back of every parking lot you park in, those steps add up. 3rd make family walks a priority in your daily and weekly life, it’s so good for the whole family. Rach and I do it at least 3 times a week. Lastly find active hobbies you love like hiking or skiing. I know people are busy but you have to choose your priorities so you need to move more often on a daily basis and you’ll start to notice a difference in your metabolism and how lean you are.