NEAT

NEAT is our non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and it is responsible for burning around 15% of our energy on a daily basis.

Your NEAT is simply your general movements. Brushing your teeth, tapping your feet, cleaning, walking up the stairs, round the house, taking the dog out. Just any bits of activity we do during our day to day lives.

So why is this important?

Well firstly again – this is 15% of your daily energy expenditure. That’s a good percentage. It's more than your actual training which we will get onto later.

It is something you can easily influence, irrelevant of fitness levels and your access to gym/equipment. Just being more active, going for a walk, taking the stairs is enough to help increase your daily energy expenditure, and help create a calorie deficit, and lose weight. Which is why things like step targets are a great tool to use.

It is often easier to hit a step target every day and find time to be a little bit more active, than it is to motivate yourself to go do a workout or go to the gym every day.

When it becomes a habit, you become more generally active throughout a day, again it becomes easier to sustain your results long term because you are burning more energy on a daily basis, so your maintenance calories are higher, and you can eat more without gaining weight.