The NEAT way to burn fat
Fat is stored in the body in the form of triglycerides, in both adipose tissue and muscle fibers. For fat to be burned for energy, it needs to be mobilized from one to the other. What that means is that it needs to be literally highjacked from adipose tissue, which is our fat cell storage, and escorted into the muscles, where it can be oxidized (burned) as fuel through little mighty fuel labs called mitochondria. A few chemical and physiological changes in the body orchestrate that abduction and relocation of fat molecules, and while we cannot control each biological process in our bodies, the good news is there are lots of little - well, neat things we can do to crank up the action.
NEAT stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and it is defined as the energy expended for anything we do that is not sleeping, eating or sports-like exercise. Walking to work, going up the stairs in your building, weeding your garden, cleaning the house, playing with your kids – are all examples of NEAT. When you do neat things, you use energy from carbohydrates and protein, but science has shown you also increase fat burning. Yay to science.
To fully grasp how much NEAT things contribute to fat loss, we need to first give the concept of stress new dignity by appreciating what stress really is in biological terms. The word itself has come to evoke feelings of agitation, anger, sadness, fatigue, malaise and an entire cascade of related disorders. We typically associate stress with an evolution mandated fight-or-flight response that increases breathing and heart rate, raises blood pressure, intensifies sweating and makes your blood prone to clotting so you don’t bleed in excess in case you get mauled by a tiger. Chronic stress is indeed a forerunner to most modern ills, but we’ll save that topic for later. Stress per se is a much needed adaptation process, it is a functional and necessary adjustment to changes in both our internal and external environments: this type of functional stress is defined as eustress. In fact, the human body incessantly strives to go back to a state of equilibrium of all functions and systems called homeostasis. Seen by that stance, burning food for energy is a stress (or adaptation, if you will) response, by which your body is trying to maintain all the biological functions indispensable to stay alive, through situations that may require conscious physical action on your part.
So now back to cleaning, shopping, playing and – ok, I’ll throw that in, sex.
Let’s get technical here (not too much, I’ll leave the complicated stuff to scientists): whenever your body needs to adapt to some kind of new internal or external change, it ramps up the production of adrenaline (also called epinephrine), along with other chemical messengers like cortisol, norepinephrine and glucagon. When these chemicals are released into circulation, an enzyme called Hormone Sensitive Lipase (HSL) is produced that goes around scavenging fat molecules from their fat jail cells and breaking them down like Lego pieces, so they are free to move around the blood, searching for the exit sign. The fate of these fats depends on another enzyme called Lipoprotein Lipase (LPL), which has a doorman job on both fat tissue cells and muscle tissue cells, weeding out unneeded guests. Whether the fatty Lego pieces will end up back into fat cell jail or move into free muscle cell country, it is up to LPL, the guard at the door. In an inactive person, LPL opens the fat jail doors and manages to lure most fats back into storage (you’re not moving so let’s save them for later, in case you need the extra energy). Conversely, in a body that moves, whether or not it’s through targeted exercise, LPL will let lots of free fat molecules into muscle tissue, where they can easily access the furnace room, the mitochondria, and be burned off. Sounds like LPL is on to you, doesn’t it?
So go ahead and reorganize that closet, walk your dog a little more often, clean your car, take the stairs….you get the picture.
My usual caveat: insulin inhibits the production of HSL, so to make your NEAT truly worth your while, be sure to lower your dietary intake of sugars and refined carbohydrates.
Bonus info: about 50,000 to 60,000 kcal of energy are stored as triglycerides in the entire mass of adipocytes (fat cells) throughout the body, which means you have enough stored energy in the form of fat to walk 500 to 600+ miles (your average calorie expenditure when walking is 100 kcal per mile).
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