Are You Moving Enough During The Day?

People think of their calorie expenditure as being made up of their base metabolic rate (the amount of calories they use daily to just remain alive) plus the energy they expend during focussed training. People see someone else who is a similar size and trains in a similar way but can maintain a lean figure on way more calories – and they think this means that person must have a ‘fast metabolism’ and that they themselves must be suffering from a ‘slow metabolism’.

Truth is, NON-EXERCISE activity accounts for a huge portion of the daily calories used by people who seem ‘naturally lean’ or find it easy to maintain lower body fat levels. We’re talking about walking around, cleaning, going to the shops, all the daily moving that you don’t really think about as exercise.

We know this non-exercise activity can account for up to 2,000 cals difference in similarly sized individuals. That’s massive. We also know its accounting for about 6-10% of the calories burned by sedentary people – but up to 50% of the calories burned by ‘more active’ people. This means the reason some people can eat way more calories than you and stay lean is probably because they’re burning HEAPS during the day OUTSIDE of the gym.

So what if you have an office job / aren’t really that active? Just knowing the MASSIVE difference it can make to just be moving through the day is often enough to get you doing something, but this is where step trackers can be mega handy. I promise – you are underestimating the difference it will make to just track your steps and hit 10,000 each day on top of your normal training – your ability to churn through food and fat will go through the roof.

It’s an easy change to make and it makes a huge difference.