I'll keep names to myself, but certain moronic fitness "professionals" are misunderstanding the meaning of a lot of words lately. I may have issues with grammar and my southern pronunciation of words, but at least I know what they mean.

In the Fat Loss Troubleshoot, I talk about non-exercise activity thermogenesis, NEAT. James A. Levine of the Mayo Clinic coined the term and headed up research on the subject. I still find his explanation of NEAT to be simply poetic.

"Looking out over this crowded coffee bar, I see a 40-year old man reading a newspaper. He's stationary. He sits next to a 30-year old woman. She can barely sit still. She gets up and curves between the tightly squeezed tables, just to get a napkin, and then gesticulates wildly as she talks on her cell phone. He has still not moved.

"He thinks now of his three-year old daughter at home; 'she just never stops' he thinks. He smiles to himself and scratches his nose. She gesticulates further as she tells a friend of a rat she saw scuttling rapidly on the subway rails.

"A taxi drives by. The driver immigrated from an agricultural community in the Ivory Coast. Birds soar high overhead. All these living beings exhibit spontaneous physical activity or non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)."

Technically, NEAT isn't something we control. It's a pre-determined movement set point. There are also so many factors involved, that trying to determine one's NEAT level is a tricky, if not impossible, task.

It's easy to put "fat" and "skinny" on the ends of the scale, but NEAT just isn't that simple. However, since how much you move determines how many calories you burn, NEAT affects how much you can eat.

Hope she saves energy for a walk around the track afterwards.

The Effects of Dieting Down with NEAT

NEAT covers everything from impatiently tapping your foot while some lady finds her grocery coupons, to walking back to your car to grab your gym bag. Non-exercise physical activity (NEPA) such as walking to and from work each day is also included in NEAT.

What I'm about to lay out is an example of how dieting down, or being in a deficit, can lower your overall caloric burn. Note that the following charts don't include calories burned during sleep.

Calories Burned Before Starting Exercise

This first chart is the caloric burn level of a client on a normal day before they started their diet program. Their day revolves around getting up, walking the dog, going to work in an office environment, running some errands, and going home.

As you can see, for the most part, this client has a very low level of overall caloric burn. There are some random spikes that show where the client tried to take the stairs, walked around the stores a little more, or took the dog for their nightly walk.

Overall, their lifestyle moves along at a pretty low level of intensity. There's nothing too aggressive, and their caloric burn peaks at 3.5 calories.

Calories Burned After Starting Exercise

This second chart shows the caloric burn level of the same client after they started going to the gym five days a week, doing weight training and an aerobic training program. Their days involved all the same activities as before, but now they're adding about an hour's exercise. They've also decreased their caloric intake, bringing them to an overall deficit of 35%.

You can see that there is a consistent increase throughout the day, compared to before exercise, giving them a much higher overall caloric burn. They now peak at almost 11 calories, three times higher than the peak before training.

Four Weeks Into Training

Here's the same client four weeks into the training program. You can see a small drop in caloric expenditure during the workouts, but there are also some drops to their movement during daily activity.

Their gym spikes get lower, reaching just 8-8.5, but also notice the lower spikes overall. In the previous chart, their average activity hit a 3.5 spike, but now, around 2.5 is the highest level. They're basically slowing down at the gym and moving less during the day, which means fewer calories are being burned.

This is really where NEAT comes into play. You have to wonder what's happening. Is this the result of a drop in the metabolism? Yes it is, but not in the way you're thinking. Because the client started using their stored bodyfat as energy, their body forced them to slow down in exerting that energy.

Less food leads to less bouts of movement. Those nightly dog walks got shorter and the grocery store trips were in and out instead of wandering around. The office lunch hour was spent at their desk and not walking in the fresh air. Their training at the gym didn't get any less aggressive, but they were more worn out and lazy when they got home.

Those are the effects of dieting down: Small, subtle changes in behavior that result in a stall in the fat loss pattern. There are also some technical internal processes that start to slow down, but we're not addressing those right now.

Now With Added NEAT

This last chart is after making the client aware of how much their general activity influences their calories burned. You can see a massive jump, higher than even when they first started exercising. In the end, their fat loss results soar.

When Knowing Too Much is a Bad Thing

You obviously need to be aware of everything you do, and just training in the gym isn't the only thing of importance here. However, there are two problems that can come about from being more aware of your caloric burn through activity.

Problem One: NEAT to the Extreme

The first and most common problem is simply overdoing it and turning NEAT movement into full-blown exercise. NEAT is supposed to be non-exercise activity thermogenesis. If you think that I'm giving you a free pass to train hardcore four or five times a day, I'm not!

That's just going to buy you a one-way ticket into overtraining-ville, population: one fat you. It's also going to lead to excess stress hormones and muscle loss. So don't automatically take "more activity" to mean "more exercise."

Technically, NEAT is a subconscious effect, but that doesn't mean you can't manipulate your low level activity and make certain changes to speed up your fat loss. Burning an extra 300 calories a day is really easy to do if you make some small changes. It might not seem like much, but it can be the difference between seeing results or saying goodbye to them.

Problem Two: You're Active, You're Hungry, You're Eating

Moving more during the day will likely cause you to be hungrier, and therefore, could lead to compromised willpower in the kitchen, diner, or supermarket. Keep an eye out for this, and be aware of the fact that movement does cause a more noticeable energy deficit.

That energy deficit will take longer to suppress Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, and this can be a real challenge for your will. As long as you remember that your hunger is due to an increase in your low level activity, you'll be fine.

Plan your nutrition ahead of time and remember that you're in a fat loss plan, so you're going to be hungry sometimes. Results are worth it.

Training isn't always fun, it isn't always easy, but it's always worth it.

Three Things for 30 Days

For the next 30 days, do three things from the following list everyday and you'll get roughly 300 calories added to your daily deficit.

Some of these tasks are exercise movements, but breaking them up through the day will lower the stress response in the body. You can only choose one bodyweight exercise per day.

• Cooking 40 minutes
• Static stretching, light 35 minutes
• Walking for pleasure 30 minutes
• Window shopping 30 minutes
• Trying new hair looks 30 minutes
• Trying on clothes 25 minutes
• Pacing while on the phone 25minutes
• Walking the dog 25 minutes
• Wii Sports baseball 25 minutes
• Scrubbing Floors/washing windows20 minutes
• Gardening 20 minutes
• Dance Dance Revolution, light 20 minutes
• Guitar Hero while standing 20 minutes
• Wii Sports boxing 20minutes
• Office Nerf basketball 20 minutes
• Stand up and sit down, lightly20 minutes
• Treading water, light effort 20 minutes
• Using treadmill orbike while talking 20 minutes
• Foam rolling, intense 20 minutes
• Pushing a lawn mower 15 minutes
• Jumping jacks, intense 100x10
• Burpees, intense 12x10
• Clap push-ups 25x10

Remember just because you leave the gym, doesn't mean you have to leave the burn behind.

About the Author

Leigh Peele is high-level composition trainer. Her clients range from college athletes and professional fighters to housewives and tv actors. Find out more about Leigh's work at www.fatlosstroubleshoot.com and www.avidityfitness.net.