hi all, doing good here. this week i plan to had another walk. i walk my dog a short one. this will be longer and for me. i use to exercise so much got away from it. so now a new year and time to get with it again. eatiing is going real good. scales are looking good to. so that is what counts. feeling good and going down on them. i wish everyone a good year and a losing one. together friends we can do it and make it fun. i am ready to goooooo. ha LaDean

From the Mayo website.

NON-EXERCISE ACTIVITY THERMOGENESIS
Introduction
Looking out over this crowded coffee bar, I see a 40-year-old man reading a newspaper. He is 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 over-head. All these living beings exhibit spontaneous physical activity or, Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT).


Human Energy Expenditure (and semantics)
Even lean individuals store at least two to three months of their energy needs in adipose tissue whereas obese persons can carry a year's worth of their energy needs. It is the cumulative impact of energy imbalance over months and years that results in the development of obesity or undernutrition.

There are three principal components of human energy expenditure (EE), basal metabolic rate (BMR), thermic effect of food (TEF) and activity thermogenesis. There are also other small components of EE that may contribute to the whole, such as the energetic costs of medications and emotion.

BMR is the energy expended when an individual is laying at complete rest, in the morning, after sleep, in the postabsorptive state. In individuals with sedentary occupations BMR accounts for approximately 60 percent of total daily EE. Three-quarter's of the variability in BMR is predicted by lean body mass within and across species. TEF is the increase in EE associated with the digestion, absorption, and storage of food and accounts for approximately 10-15 percent of total daily EE.

Activity Thermogenesis has two constituents, exercise-related activity thermogenesis and Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT). For the vast majority of dwellers in the U.S., exercise activity thermogenesis is negligible. NEAT, even in avid exercisers, is the predominant constituent of activity thermogenesis and is the EE associated with all the activities we undertake as vibrant, independent beings. NEAT has an enormous variety of constituents including occupation, leisure and fidgeting. Because of this, NEAT is challenging to study and its role in human energy balance has been difficult to define.


Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
NEAT is likely to contribute substantially to the inter- and intra-personal variability in EE. Argue thus; if three-quarters of the variance of BMR is accounted for by variance in lean body mass and, TEF represents 10-15 percent of total EE, then the majority of the variance in total EE that occurs independent of body weight must be accounted for by NEAT. Evidence supports this. NEAT is highly variable and ranges from ~ 15 percent of total daily EE in very sedentary individuals to >50 percent in highly active persons . Even minor changes in physical activity throughout the day can increase daily EE by 20 percent. NEAT is impacted by environment, but is also under biological control .


NEAT and environment
There are many environmental cues that impact NEAT. Broadly, they can be divided into occupational and non-occupational components.

NEAT and occupation
Matched individuals with highly active ambulatory jobs can have NEAT values of 1000 kcal/day greater than sedentary peers. In areas of nutritional need, this has implications for starvation-threatened individuals. In affluent countries, industrialized can convert high-NEAT jobs to lower-NEAT jobs and this has been associated with increased obesity rates.

Non-occupation NEAT

Dish washers
Cars
Remotes
Lawnmowers
Drive-through
Game-boy
Elevators
Snow blowers
Leisure-time sedentariness has resulted from the availability and volitional use of pervasive mechanization. When the energetic cost of non-work mechanization is estimated experimentally it approximates to, 100-200 kcal/day; a caloric deficit that potentially could account for the entire obesity epidemic.


NEAT and physiology
With experimental overfeeding in humans, NEAT increases. Those who increased their NEAT the most with overfeeding gained the least fat. This suggests that along with self-evident societal slothfulness, NEAT is biologically modulated. Animal data support this. There appear to be central mediators of NEAT. For example, microinjections of orexins into hypothalamic nuclei increase NEAT whereas antagonists decrease it. There may be humoral mediators as experimental hyperthyroidism is associated with increased NEAT. There also be genetic mechanism at play; during overfeeding twinness in part predicts fat gain. Also NEAT is specific for different genetic strains of mice.



Where to from here?

Mechanism: by understanding the neuromodulators and non-central mediators of NEAT; its biological function will become clear.

Physiology: What are the key components of NEAT? What is the role of NEAT in aging, children, gender, and race? How does positive and negative affect NEAT and its components?

Pathology: What is the role of NEAT in obesity and eating disorders?

Intervention: Targeted, evaluated interventions from person to population.

Having read this abstract, please get up and take and short walk down the corridor (or similar). Repeat for each abstract you read. Please let me know how it went.

Carol, this post may be intended to be serious but I am laughing because I once had the goofy idea about weight loss through exaggerated gestures! I mean, nothing I was going to take seriously but I did have some fun with some friends trying to demonstrate the idea. Like when you say "I'm going to go now," you must wind your arm around and around for a little bit like the "windmill" move on a guitar, before pointing to youself on the work "I." Then the same kind of thing, at the same time as moving your legs around and around in one place like those old Hanna Barbara cartoon characthers used to do before they actually ran, and and point very agressively towards the door when you say the word, "go." It got to be really goofy.
The people who gesticulate a lot and fidget and hum and tap on thier desks etc, for real - annoy me a LOT!

Hi Jo, I'm a fidgeter and I don't think it has ever done me any good as far as losing weight. ha! I always feel sorry for little kids that can't sit still when they are supposed to. I know how they feel.

I think I've come up with a definition for IE at least for me. It is eating like you normally would (not someone else's idea of what you should eat) in such amounts that you can lose weight and keep it off. I mean, I like fruits and veggies just fine but if I try to go by what someone says I should eat I can't stick to it. I like variety, too.

Hi carol, i do the same thing. i check out different diet plans and make my own. right now i am just having what i want and portions. and keep things low. trying to add my exercise again. I hope you have a good week. LaDean

What exercise do you do LaDean? We have an eliptical which I like but today I have the flu.....stomach ache and other body aches. At least it's better than yesterday. And I can't eat much. ha!

Hi Carol & LaDean, I decided to do the same thing with IE. I got messed up again trying to follow a diet plan or even mix some ideas. That "Diet thinking" is so hard to shake isn't it? It just doesn't work for me any more. I too love fruits and veggies. In fact, I really enjoy a really good salad with protein, but when you say I have to leave certain foods out... I am in big trouble. So I'm back on IE. I am also trying to learn to know the difference in real hunger and taste hunger. So many times, I am hungry for something just because I want to taste it not really hungry. I have also been experiencing something I did as a teenager. I get hungry, but I don't know what I want, and I go look in the fridge and there isn't one thing there (plenty of food in there) that I want to eat. I wonder does anyone else do that? I think I am triggered by when I was a teen. Mama never kept anything ready to eat in the fridge or cabinet. I think she did it to keep from eating. I think she was fighting weight gain that way. I remember in the summertime that I would stand at the fridge starving and wonder why Mama didn't fix us girls lunch. There was food in the freezer but nothing you could just fix real quick. She only cooked in the evening when Daddy came home from work. Breakfast was sweet rolls. So now I wonder, am I really hungry in those moments or not? I have to assume that if I don't want what is there since I always have food I could eat that I am not really hungry.

I am up to 1/2 mile on the stationary bike and drinking loads of water each day. So I guess I am making some progress. Have good week end.

Carol - I pray you get to feeling better soon.

Oh yes! I do this all the time. Nothing sounds good but I am really hungry. I always have plenty in my fridge, though. I've been trying to remember the things I used to eat when I was young that I really like but stopped making because my kids didn't like it.......tomato soup, meatloaf, asparagus, etc.

Hi, carol i ride my exercise bike and i walk. i also have a thing i do pullups on . so its just getting with it. i plan this week to take a 2nd walk. get my petometer ready so can do steps. alot do that. eating is going good. i have always been a exercise person. but fell down 13 flights of stairs at sons christmas so been sore and all. so giving it time to heal. a lucky girl. God was with me for sure that day.. well i wish all of you a good week. your both doing good keep it up. GET WELL CAROL. LaDean

This is from the Kathy Smith website.

Be Consistent
What's the secret to health and fitness success? That's the question I'm asked far more than any other.

The answer: Be consistent. Be consistent. Be consistent.

For more than twenty years, I've exercised every day. Now, does that mean a full, hour-long workout? No. Some days, in fact, I only have time for ten minutes; other days, only thirty; still others, a strenuous, two-hour hike. There are periods when I'm traveling for a week or so and only able to get in a few minutes of exercise between meetings. But whether it's ten minutes, thirty, or a long sixty, I make sure I work up as much of a sweat as possible. Not only because I'm trying to burn off last night's dinner or because I think it'll improve my cardiovascular capacity, but because I don't want to fall out of practice. That's what I mean by consistency - if you fall out of the habit, get right back on track.

Often when I talk to people who aren't exercising on a consistent basis, I get the feeling that they have the best intentions, but allow one excuse after the next to interfere with their workouts. Then, they lose momentum. "I was exercising and then all of a sudden I just stopped," is a common lament. "I don't know what happened; I just sort of quit. I haven't really done it for six months, but I plan on starting again right after my birthday."

But exercise and self-care is not an on-and-off proposition. It's a daily one. If you don't have time to do your regular workout in its entirety you don't abandon the whole thing. That's not the way to approach exercise.

Try thinking of it this way. You have a goal - an ideal, if you will. The ideal is to work out five times a week for at least thirty minutes. But if you can't get in all thirty, then you take what you can. That's the way life works. Just because you fall short of an ideal doesn't mean that you abandon its pursuit. Telling a single lie wouldn't compel you to give up honesty as an ideal any more than accidentally running a red light causes you to break every other rule of the road.

The hardest aspect of exercise is starting again after not doing it for a while. That's why I try not to lose my momentum - so I don't have to start all over again.

Just accept that you'll devote at least ten minutes a day to exercising, the same as you accept that you're going to have to eat, bathe, and dress. Now, those ten minutes may not necessarily be at the gym or on the track. They may be that walk you take by parking a little father away from the office. Or those stairs you climb instead of pushing the elevator buttons.

Once you choose to make exercise a daily part of your life, you start to see opportunities for it where before you saw only barriers. That viewpoint begins to create lifestyle changes, and produces a healthier attitude toward life in general.

Consistency also applies to eating - which is another question I'm often asked: How do you have the willpower to be good all the time?

Answer: I don't think in terms of "good" or "bad." Rather, I focus on eating in a way that serves me, my health, and my body. And that includes eating all kinds of foods, some of which many people may consider "bad."

If I had to explain it in terms of "good" and "bad," I'd say that you only have to be "good" 80 percent of the time. That allows you, pretty much, to do whatever you want with the other twenty and still not upset the equation. You can splurge on a Nestle's Crunch bar. Indulge your craving for Ben & Jerry's. Give in to the tempting smell of apple pie. Just be consistently on track the other 80 percent of the time.

By the same token, the 80-20 rule frees you from the trap of thinking that just because you ate four potato chips, you might as well eat the whole bag.

For instance, when I was pregnant with my first daughter, Katie, I developed the strongest craving for bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. While this might not seem strange to you, I'd not eaten a piece of bacon for fifteen years. And yet, I could sit down and eat not one but two BLTs at a single meal. Concerned, I checked with my doctor, who assured me that the craving was normal, and perhaps I needed a little more salt in my diet.

After Katie was born, I fortunately lost my craving for bacon. Unfortunately, I've never lost my craving for chocolate. This is an ongoing issue for me. In fact, I'm learning to control my relationship with chocolate. I allow myself to eat it once a week - no guilt, no shame, no worry. The other days, I nibble on fresh fruit, or homemade rice pudding, or suck on a piece of hard candy to satisfy my sweet tooth. I've also learned not to keep large quantities of chocolate around the house. If there were, I'd be tempted to nibble on it every day. I know myself. Giving myself permission to indulge has taken chocolate out of the "bad" food category - and it's no longer an obsession.

I feel a sense of calm about my eating habits. I never feel deprived, and I don't like to listen to someone talk about calories or carbohydrates when I'm eating. My attitude is, when you're eating, enjoy. And when you're satisfied, stop.

That's what I tell people when they ask for my health and fitness secrets. I tell them, the secret is consistency. The three-month, give-it-all mentality is only good for players in the Super Bowl. But when it comes to developing a healthy lifestyle, it's a day in, day out, week in, week out, year in, year out game plan that leads to success.


I've always been impressed with her workout videos and her WOE wounds like IE.

Hello,
We're moving this week-end. I've been having major blood sugar fluctuations. We went out for a steak dinner last night, and I ate my fill. Woke up this morning and felt okay (no morning sickness), and ate 2 bowls of cereal.
Then in the middle of church, I got STARVING all of a sudden, and hardly made it to lunch. When I get this way, I have to stop myself and make myself eat slower because my metabolism is so out of whack right now!
Then I have to stop because if I eat even ONE bite too much I get nauseated again. SIGH!

Haven't gained any weight though. Just listening to my body.

I'm always starving after church. Why is that? Maybe it's because you really can't get to food and you just think you're starving. ha! Lately I've found that more fiber helps with the hungries.

Bob Greene gives an interesting thought on appetite.

One of the toughest obstacles people face when trying to lose weight is learning how to control their appetite. The great thing about the Best Life Diet is that many of the healthy habits you'll adopt on the plan offer the extra benefit of helping to keep a lid on hunger. Check out the appetite-quelling effects of these moves:

Getting moving. Activity, like eating, helps produce pleasure-inducing brain chemicals called endorphins. So, you can get the same mood-lifting effect from exercise as you would from eating.

Avoiding junk food. Some experts suspect that foods packed with sugar or fat can disrupt the signals that help regulate your appetite. Loading up on fruit, veggies, whole grains and lean protein sources instead will help balance your body's hunger-satiety network.

Filling up on fiber. Fiber can't be digested by the body, so it stays with you longer, helping you feel full. Research also shows that fiber helps slow digestion so your blood sugar level stays elevated. This may help delay the release of some of the hormones that tell your body to eat again. Women should be aiming for 25 grams of fiber per day; men should consume 38 grams.

Getting enough water. Eating water-rich foods, such as veggies and broth-based soups, can help you feel fuller on fewer calories, according to research from Pennsylvania State University in University Park. In fact, studies suggest that water drinkers consume 200 fewer calories per day than those who skip sipping.

Eating regularly. Having three meals and a snack or two each day prevents drops in blood sugar, which can lead to you feeling overly hungry and making poor food decisions. Skimping on meals--or skipping them altogether--does nothing to help your appetite.

Dealing with emotional issues. If you address the emotional issues that can trigger eating (like stress or loneliness), you'll find that you just don't have the need to turn to food anymore.

Logging enough shut-eye. Several studies have revealed a link between sleep and obesity. Experts say getting enough sleep can help prevent any disruption...