Move with NEAT for better digestion and a healthier shape.
Exercise should be secondary to movement.
For most people today, exercise is something that has to actively happen outside of the home and ‘regular life’. We often equate it with going to the gym or a studio to get some cardio, build muscle, burn calories and gain fitness, endurance and confidence. Self worth and body image have a long history together. Gyms go back over 2000 years, and the early gyms of Greece were largely open spaces where men practiced combat and military training, as well as aesthetics training - or body sculpting towards the idealised male physique. A Frenchman named Hippolyte Triad, who was a gymnast and vaudeville-strongman, was credited for opening the first commercial gyms in the late 1840s. These were vast glass and iron rooms where men were trained in callisthenics movements with a variety of tools to give them the “shape of ancient athletes”.
Fun fact: the word gymnasium means a place to exercise naked.
The modern gym is quite a different place, often filled with a variety of equipment and wall-to-wall mirrors, with men and women of all ages running, skiing or cycling in place, while screens and music compete for our attention. For the focused and avid gym-goer, it certainly serves its purpose. But for a large proportion of people, pulling on lycra, driving to a gym to sweat and puff in a room full of people, and trying to manoeuvre heavy weights, complex equipment and fancy exercise moves, it can be intimidating, if not downright off-putting. Although there is a deep desire for enjoying the benefits of exercise - physically, mentally and emotionally, the challenges can weigh heavily and the gym pass is eventually hidden in an unused drawer to avoid guilt. “I’ll keep the membership going so I can use it when I get the chance”.
The good news? There is no one specific and rigid path to get to your health and exercise goals; and this is the both a challenge and an opportunity. Being proactive about your health is really about being honest and creative about your priorities - and having a clear implementation plan you can stick to. Remember the previous article on Actionable Affirmations?
NEAT is any kind of natural movement performed during the day.
Regardless of whether or not you are going to the gym or any classes, enjoying the natural movements you body is designed to do every day is a wonderful way to get some generalised activity. The term that has been coined is Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT), which is just a fancy way of describing how we evolved to live (and did live for millennia). Unlike formal exercise or training such as running, swimming or cycling, you can enjoy the benefits of NEAT just by moving around in your day - walking the dog, working in the yard, cooking, cleaning and getting up from your desk regularly. Here’s the sinker: NEAT makes a larger contribution to weight loss compared to formal exercise!
Why is this? How we move each day in terms of regularity and range, contributes to more energy usage because it provides your mitochondria (the energy factory in your cells) with a sustainable outlet for all the energy we consume through our food. All animals have a natural instinct to be more active when there is more energy (ie food), and move less to store energy when there is a scarcity. Quite sensible given that food security was less stable than it is today (for some of us) throughout most of our evolution. The limitation of formal exercise is that it only occurs once a day for most people (and often less), so it doesn’t require the body to be actively expending energy through the day. This is where things start to build up. Adding to this, being sedentary for more than 30 minutes or so such as sitting at the desk, on the couch, in the car, etc, is quite unnatural from an evolutionary perspective, and can show up in the mind as well by increasing stress, anxiety and fatigue.
Ayurveda is an ancient science that came about before the development of gyms, which is why it does not prescribe formal exercise routines. It also comes from a time where obesity and constipation were almost unheard of, which speaks to the fact that despite not having formal outlets for exercise, people were able to care for their health within their everyday lives. This is the magic formula for health - a balanced combination of diet, lifestyle, routine and sleep that allow the body and mind to function as they are designed to, effortlessly. So here are some ways to incorporate NEAT into your daily routine that will allow you to enjoy its benefits, but also fit NEATly into some other everyday tasks that boost your mental and physical wellbeing:
Allow 30-40 minutes every morning to prep or cook meals for the day, and make it a point to move around the kitchen and enjoy the space, sights and smells.
Take 100-1000 steps after your meals, either tidying up, walking the dog, catching the train to work, dancing to music or getting some sunlight outdoors. Enjoy some deep and nourishing breaths as you go.
Create an evening routine to limit screen time to less than 1 hour, and use this time to prep your meals, iron your clothes or do some light tidying up or laundry. You could even try an online yin or restorative yoga class, or go for a light walk with a partner.
We can move in a way that is organic, natural and productive, and enjoy all the benefits of regular exercise. This is the lifelong movements that touches all parts of our health. In this way, purposeful and formal exercise can be the cherry on top, rather than the whole cake!
“Your body is a temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside within it”
— B.K.S. Iyengar
