So when I launched the Art of Manly store over a decade ago, I had no idea what I was doing. I was a writer, that's what I did. I had no experience with e-commerce. It was a lot to handle, so having the right tools made all the difference. That's why I've used Shopify for our store at store.artofmanliness.com from day one. It was easy to set up and it's made managing orders and inventory a breeze ever since.
Shopify powers millions of businesses around the world. It's about 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. uses Shopify, from big names like Gymshark and Mattel to small shops just getting started. It comes with hundreds of design templates to make your stores look sharp, plus AI tools to help write product descriptions and headlines and even improve product photos.
And when it's time to spread the word, Shopify's marketing tools let you create email and social campaigns that actually reach your audience, no team required. Whether you're selling t-shirts, tools, or beard oil, Shopify has your back with expert tools for inventory, shipping, returns, and more. If you want to try out Shopify, sign up for a $1 per month trial at shopify.com slash manliness. That's shopify.com slash manliness for a $1 per month trial. Shopify.com slash manliness.
Hey, this is Brett. I've been hosting the AWIN podcast now for 16 years. A thousand episodes in the archives. We've got a lot of stuff that you can listen to. If you want to hear our most popular episodes that have ever been published in the Art of Manliness, I created a playlist with our top episodes. If you want to check out that playlist and listen to them, head over to aom.is slash popular. That's aom.is slash popular to see a playlist of our most popular episodes.
Check it out, aom.is slash popular. Hope you enjoy it. Hey, this is Brett. We're taking a break for new episodes this week, so we're going to rebroadcast episode number 955. the power of NEAT. Move a little to lose a lot. This is with Dr. James Levine. It's all about non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Hope you enjoy it. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
Do you have a goal to lose weight? If so you're probably thinking about how you need to exercise And that can certainly help. But what about the 23 hours a day you're not at the gym? How much you move during those hours from walking to the mailbox to fidgeting at your desk can be just as important Here to explain the importance of what's called non-exercise activity thermogenesis or NEAT is Dr. James Levine.
the co-director of the Mayo Clinic's Obesity Solutions Initiative, the inventor of the treadmill desk and the author of while your chair is killing you and what you can do about it. James explains how much more sedentary we are than we What happens to your body when you spend half of your day sitting?
shares how doing the lightest kinds of physical activity, even standing more, can help you lose a significant amount of weight and improve other aspects of your health from your sleep to your mood. And we talk about how you can easily incorporate more NEAT into After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash neat. All right. James Levine, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me, Brett. So you have spent your career researching obesity, particularly how our physical activity levels can contribute to how trim we are or how fat we are. When it comes to the way our body burns or uses calories, you've broken down in your work and there's three, basically three ways our bodies burn calories. What are those three ways our body uses calories?
Yeah, the three basic ways we burn calories are there is the basal metabolism. Basal metabolism accounts for about 60% of the total. The bigger you are, the bigger your basal metabolism, or more specifically, the greater your lean body mass, the greater your basal metabolism. Now, what's important is, yes, it's actually the majority burn, but you can't change it. So moving on, the next one is the thermic effect of food. It counts for about 11% of the total. Now, those are the calories.
you expend when you convert your meal into intermediary metabolites like glycogen and glucose. So if you have three meals a day, you're going to have three thermic effects of food. It accounts for about 11% of the total. Guess what? You can't really change it. Now the remaining component... Right, we've done 60, we've done 10, so the remaining component is about 30% on average of the calorie burn is through activity.
is either non-exercise activity or putting on your lycra spandex shorts. I know, Brett, I think you adore those. And going off for a run, right? We all know what exercise is. But most people around the world actually don't take purposeful exercise at all. So all of their calorie burn through activity is through non-exercise activity. And in terms of calories, we call that non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
and Brett as a micro sidebar if I may even if you do go and do Pilates three times a week or whatever that may be when you actually work out how many calories you burn doing those three classes which are 30 minutes or and you've done the three times a week you've driven there and so on and so forth that only averages out
to about 100 calories a day. And that's if you're having a proper workout. And so really for nearly everybody listening to the podcast, Your non-exercise activity thermogenesis are the calories you burn through daily energy activity. So non-exercise activity thermogenesis, shorthand, it's NEAT. It's called NEAT. NEAT. So basically, it's just anytime you move during the day, like I'm standing up while doing this interview, talking to you, I'm gesticulating, that is NEAT, correct?
Neat are the calories you burn throughout the day that is exactly correct and it's and I'm also standing upright there we go twin standards But yeah, it's all those calories you burn throughout the day. And it's the calories you burn as you get out of bed and go make coffee and go and collect the mail from the mailbox. It's the mooching around you do during your day. It's even sort of the tapping on the table as you're waiting for the website to upload.
And it's sort of chopping up vegetables in the evening as you're making your dinner. It's wandering around the supermarket. It's all those things you do that aren't sleeping and eating. And how many calories, I mean, you've figured this out, like how many calories do we burn in a typical neat activity? So if we're just walking from the couch to the kitchen or we're doing laundry, like what do we, like how much does it actually burn?
So let's think about that. First of all, as you know, what's your need for the day? And then how do you actually get to that number? So as we sort of agreed, it's about 30% of your calories throughout the day. So that's going to be about, for an average person, about 700 calories. Now, what's really, really interesting about Nietzsche is if you sort of look at this,
If you compare hundreds of people, the data set is 576 people living in high income countries. What you can see is actually an astonishing variation.
Some people will burn 2000 calories a day more neat than other people Example, if you happen to be a mail person delivering mail on foot throughout your day or you work in agriculture, You can actually be burning 2000 calories a day more through your NEAT than if you're actually sitting behind your desk all day long and then sitting in the evening in your sort of rather comfy armchair. Now how does that actually compute? Now what's most important about all of this is that
The biggest way of burning calories through your meat is to get off your bottom and walk. And I don't necessarily mean striding around. I mean mooching around. So if you get up and just walk at one mile an hour, which we call shopping speed, that's sort of the speed when you're going through TJ Maxx looking for the best deal, you're walking on average about one mile an hour. You double.
your energy expenditure you're burning an extra hundred calories an hour so you can immediately appreciate if you spend two hours online doing your shopping sitting on your bottom versus mooching around at the mall for a couple of hours there's 200 calories right there Now, if you walk a little bit faster at two miles an hour, you're at 150 calories an hour.
Brett, you and I are both upstanding as we're doing this podcast. We could either sort of sit down absolutely statically still, right, and burn almost nothing above basil. Or we could sort of stroll at about two miles an hour, which is the speed of a walk and talk meeting, and burn 150 calories each. And so when you actually compare people with very high neat to people with very low neat,
People who are very lonely to sitting on their bottoms all day. People who are the highest neat are up, mooching around, doing stuff on their feet, whether that's at work or at play. And today, what's the typical amount of meat that most Americans get? I think you said 700 calories. Yeah, that would be a reasonable number right there. But again, as you're listening to this, remember the key thing, Brett, is that this is highly variable. So as you're listening to this podcast,
And you're somebody sort of a bit like my job, right? Which is 100% behind a computer screen every single day of the week.
then you know intuitively that that's too much sitting and I don't know if you're aware of this now if you look at job postings they will even put as a warning on the job posting this job requires excessive sedentary time right it's actually extraordinary the other hand if you happen to have a job whether that's working in a warehouse whether that's working in a bakery whether that's working in fields whether that's
sort of something much more ambulatory that could even sort of be a a greeter at walmart if you like where you're also mooching around you can imagine having a neat five six seven hundred calories a day more than the person confined to a sedentary job.
So there's been a lot of talk about rising obesity rates in the United States. And there's been different arguments put forth about what the cause is. It's people are eating more. People are eating more sugary foods. People are eating more fatty foods. And you highlight research, but oftentimes it gets overlooked is that people are just moving less. Like how much do we, do we know like how much less we are experiencing neat in America today? Yeah.
If you go back 200 years to the Industrial Revolution, People move from agricultural environments into the cities, you know And then what happened, of course, is there were production lines in the big factories. And then what happened was in the 1950s or thereabouts. people started sitting down working behind desks and in fact Office desks were actually designed. including the chair with the wheels
to stop people getting up and moving because the ergonomists back then believed that if you could stop people getting up and walking, they would actually be more productive if they sat behind their desk all day long. They were wrong. That is exactly sort of how things have evolved to push us down in our chairs and are we sitting too long? Oh my goodness, yes we are. How do I know that?
Is it just because of the rising obesity rates that you talk of and there are really good data to the effect that we have sat progressively more and more and more over the last 200 years but in fact Our calorie intake has not increased substantially. The only data showing that it has are actually from Australia. So yeah, our calorie intake has been constant, but it's too much. for the degree of inactivity we have and it's not just about obesity
There are 27 other chronic diseases and conditions associated with setting too much. And that means things like diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, even some types of cancer, and of course, musculoskeletal problems. And so... You know, yes, on the other hand, you may be listening to this podcast and smiling. It's quite interesting, but it's bigger than that. It's really serious stuff.
and it's not just our bodies we're hurting we've set up a society whereby our kids are going to ultimately receive the world we've created for them Yeah, I think it's interesting you point out this lack of activity.
physical activity on a daily basis is probably driving the obesity, a big factor in driving the obesity. Because you even talk about, if you even look at office work, you talk about this in one of your books, if you look at office work 50 years ago compared today, you did a lot more moving in the office than today. You had to move even if you were just doing a desk job.
I mean, this is, you know, this is 100% correct. I mean, I think back to sort of when I started in the day, I mean, I'll give you a fantastic example. My very first job... was working for a really famous professor called Professor Davies who is a osteoporosis professor. Of course, as you may be aware, osteoporosis is growing quicker and quicker partly due to the lack of activity.
And she asked me to gather papers about a certain document she was writing for the World Health Organization. I said, I'd love to. Now those papers were scientific articles and in order to gather them, I kid you not, I literally had to get on my bicycle and cycle across London to probably one of 15 different libraries to gather all the articles she needed. Yes, it took a lot of time, but my goodness I'd come into her office sweat pouring down my back today click click click click click
It's done. And just taking that simple example. All of us listening who are of a certain age remember how difficult things used to be where we used to have to go and get resources. We used to even have to sort of walk to the printer, which was actually in the printing room. Now we barely we can actually spend our entire day when you think about it in the office at work And if I need my lunch click click click door dash right to my desk
and get home, drive through, click, click, click, pizza at my door and on we go. And if you sort of step back and actually think about how much time I spend sitting every day. If you think about it, what's really interesting is you can't really imagine a world where you don't spend it sitting because it's sort of a sort of a subsidiary symptom of how we actually live.
and so you don't sort of analyze oh i'm sitting a lot at the moment you just live your life you see and so this is what's happened it sort of crept up on us and all of a sudden we've all become you know these terribly sedentary and rather unwell and sort of slightly blue sedentary office workers both in the office and at home. When most people notice that I'm gaining some weight
I notice that I don't move around all that much because I have an office job that doesn't allow me to move around all that much. They think, well, I can take care of this with just diet and exercise. But you argue that. Diet and exercise will never be enough to compensate for the lack of NEAT. The problem with dieting, just reducing calories, is that You can't do that forever, right? So let's say you reduce your calories and you do lose weight.
because you've reduced the amount of calories you're consuming. But then in order to continue the weight loss with calorie reduction, You have to decrease the calories even more because you've likely decreased your overall metabolic rate, resting metabolic rate because you're smaller. So your body requires fewer calories. And so it gets to a point where it becomes unsustainable. Let me jump in there, if I may, please, because you've touched on a really interesting point.
Not only is everything you just said correct, but it's even sort of more subtle than that, if I may please. When somebody loses weight through caloric restriction, through cutting their calories down, body fat is disseminated. Somebody can also lose some lean body mass and body weight declines on a lower calorie intake. The trouble with this is the body is not a static system. The body, brilliant in its design, adjusts
and actually becomes more efficient. So in fact once you're at that lower caloric intake the body is working more efficiently making it actually more difficult to lose more weight. So you're not even dealing with a sort of a simple mathematic is I've decreased my calories in.
I'm now going to be able to maintain a lower body weight easier. That actually isn't true because the body will sort of counter-regulate to make it more difficult to maintain your body weight. And then also exercise, you know, just...
relying on focused exercise activities to offset the amount of being sedentary. I just said earlier, It's not going to do much in the long run, because you might just burn 100, 200, 300 calories, and that can't make up for being sedentary every other hour you're awake. I mean purposeful exercise for the sake of improving your health like going to the gym or something like that.
is fantastic if you like to do it let's let's be clear about that if you like to go to the gym keep doing it please it's really good for you it's really good for your health But very interestingly, again, for even people who go to the gym, the harm associated with sedentary nurse As you say, all the other time that you're not at the gym, which is basically 95% of your week. the harm of setting tarryness is still not eliminated.
So if you go to the gym, great. But if you're sedentary, you're sedentary. And if you're sedentary, it's causing you harm.
I feel like in the last decade or so, people, whether you're talking about dedicated exercise or just physical activity in general, People have been kind of down on physical activity as a method of weight management you know there's this idea out there that you can't exercise your way or burn your way to weight loss you know diet is what really matters you know if you move more at sometimes you're just going to slow down at other times you know your body's going to find ways to just
compensate for that extra activity somehow. But you did a study that proved, yes, activity can keep the pounds off. It was this really complex study. You basically got a bunch of people, including yourself. And then you overfed them a thousand calories a day. And then you just watched what happened. You know, who gained weight and who lost weight.
So walk us through that study and what did you learn from this study? Yeah, Brett, it was extraordinary. It was called the Great Overfeeding Experiment. And that is exactly what we did. But I have to tell you this wasn't done, you know, using a computer watch.
or guessing I mean this was done meticulously in metabolic laboratories at Mayo Clinic it was it was a big big deal every single food item was weighed and measured chemically every single movement was captured every calorie burned Was analyzed and even how people change their body fat was measured using precise precise technology down to a few hundred grams I mean it was extraordinary work a huge team of people helped do it and what we found were two things that I think are really important
You can take a group of people, none of whom have obesity, and you can expose all of them to a thousand calories a day of overfeeding for months on end, okay? And the extraordinary thing first of all is that One person can take nearly all of those extra thousand calories and deposit it in body fat. that person is super prone almost like a sponge absorbing water to developing excess body fat.
On the other hand, another person can receive the same amount of excess food and somehow magically through their brain get up and start spontaneously moving. Their meat can increase for an extra thousand calories they've received. Their meat can increase 700 extra calories a day through movement. Not going to the gym, through movement. 700 calories extra a day. On one hand you've got somebody who seems to absorb every extra gram of food and deposit it in their body fat.
On the other hand, you've got somebody who you can overfeed a thousand calories a day and gains almost no body fat because they switch on their meat. They get up and they move. So what you realize is, first of all, some people are really predisposed to gaining obesity. Yeah, we all know that. And I'm sure some of your people listening are nodding their heads right now.
But other people have this capacity from inside of the brain to get up and move so much more that they don't gain any weight with overfeeding. And they never went to a gym. So that's the first thing. Now what's the second thing? The second thing is probably even more important than that. The second thing is...
If you are one of those people nodding your head right now, if you're one of those individuals who has a tremendous susceptibility to gaining excess body weight as soon as you sniff extra food, what you realize is that the body is designed in such a way that you can
not gain more body weight you cannot gain excess body weight and develop obesity if you are up you are moving and your body has the capacity to do this and you can even burn up to if you like 700 calories a day extra based on those data So,
it's a beautiful idea you can win you don't need to go to the gym you can get up and move hundreds of extra calories a day, whether that's converting a standard meeting at work to a walk and talk meeting, whether that's converting shopping online to actually shopping by foot, whether that's getting your groceries delivered to your door from the supermarket or actually going to the supermarket and physically choosing it. You can integrate movement into your day.
So much so to stave off excess body weight and you can even burn up to an extra 700 calories a day doing it. We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. I've got a few friends who run their own businesses and one thing I hear from them all the time is how tough it is to find the right people. They've got jobs to fill, teams to build, but sorting through unqualified candidates That eats up time they just don't have.
That's where Indeed can really help them out. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. If you ever posted a job online and felt like it disappeared into a black hole, Indeed's sponsored jobs are a game changer. They push your post to the top of search results for relevant candidates. So you're not just getting more applicants, you're getting the right ones faster.
One thing that I love about Indeed is you're not locked up into subscriptions or long term contracts. You only pay for results. And get this, in just the time I've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. All listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost visibility at indeed.com slash AOM.
Just go to Indeed.com slash AOM. That's I-N-D-E-E-D dot com slash AOM and support the show by saying you heard it here. Indeed.com slash AOM. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. I don't have a cat myself, but my parents do. His name's Toby. Toby the cat. He's got a big personality, lots of opinions, and like most cats, a very refined sense of what he likes and doesn't like.
We sent Toby some pretty litter recently, and let's just say, Toby approved. So do my parents. What's great about pretty litter, it's not just litter. It actually helps monitor your cat's health. It changes color to detect potential issues in your cat's urine like pH imbalances or even blood. It's a simple way to catch problems early that gives everyone peace of mind. It's pet safe, low dust, controls odors, and lasts up to a month. Plus, it ships straight to your door with no hassle.
Right now, you can save 20% off on your first order and get a free cat toy by going to prettylitter.com slash manliness. I was just going to say, Toby really enjoyed that cat toy that he got. Again, that's prettylitter.com slash manliness to save 20% off of your first order. Pretty litter can't detect every issue, so always check with your vet. Terms apply. See the site for details. Again, prettylitter.com slash manliness.
If you're the kind of person who sees a dirt road and wonders where it leads, the Defender 110 might be your kind of vehicle. It's purpose built for the modern explorer. Naturally capable, expedition ready, and designed for those who don't just dream of adventure, but actually live it.
The Defender 110 combines on-road presence with off-road prowess. A raised hood and sculpted grille give it a bold, modern edge. And it's not just about looking tough, it's engineered for durability with materials that can handle whatever you throw at them. Inside, capability meets comfort, the Defender 110 seats 5 with an option for 7, making it ideal for family trips, weekend escapes, or just loading up gear and going.
Luxury appointments and rugged finishes mean it feels just as good inside as it looks outside. with smart tech like 3d surround cameras and clear sight ground view you can literally see under the vehicle as you drive plus it has clear sight rear view that gives you a full look behind even when your car goes in the way intuitive, customizable driver displays, and next-gen infotainment bring the whole experience together.
Ready to build your Defender 110? Explore the Defender 110 and the entire Defender family at LandRoverUSA.com That's LandRoverUSA.com When I became a dad, one of the first things I did right after figuring out how to put the car seat into the car was get term life insurance because it hit me if something ever happened to me, I needed to know my family would be taken care of. mortgage, tuition, daily expenses I didn't want to leave them guessing.
I didn't have ethos back then, but I wish I did because it would have made getting life insurance so much easier than the old school process that I went through. Ethos is completely online. No medical exams, no long applications. You just answer a few health questions, get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, and you can even get same day coverage.
Life insurance with Ethos is affordable too. Some policies start at just $2 a day and you can get up to $3 million in coverage customized to your needs and your budget. Over 3 million families have used Ethos and they got a 4.8 star rating on Trustpilot. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash AOM. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash A-O-M. Ethos.com slash A-O-M.
And now back to the show. Did you all figure out what causes some people to have that natural tendency to, when they consume more calories, they just start moving more naturally? Others don't do that? Is there a gene? Yeah, we spent a lot of time on that. And again, what's fascinating is this. Think about it for a second. So what we did in that experiment is we got completely sort of healthy, normal volunteers and we overfed them. We checked that they took every single extra calorie that they...
were given. We measured that. We even measured their urine in their stool, I should tell you. We had freezers full of poop. And what we then measured was that people responded to that by increasing their needs, their movement throughout their day.
if you think about it for a second how do people know to do that it had never been discovered before i mean how did that happen People if you like knew to do it subconsciously because there's a mechanism in the brain that counter-regulates how our food relates to our activity and we thought wow We've got to go and try and find that area in the brain because then we can actually help people really achieve their goals.
And so we had a whole neuroscience team led by Dr. Novak, a brilliant young neuroscientist.
And she identified tiny parts of the brain right in the hypothalamus, which is an old part of the brain, that switches on your NEAT and switches on NEAT more in some people than others. So in fact... right at the center of your brain right now as you're listening to this podcast your brain is analyzing your calories in your calories out and is propelling you to move more or move less So yes, there's a deep biology underpinning this.
Okay, so in some people, there's a part of the brain that's more discerning or more activated so that whenever you're taking excess calories, it sends a signal to move more. And then in some people, that part doesn't switch on as strongly. But a big point you make in all of your books you've written is that even if you don't have that natural tendency to want to move more whenever you consume excess calories,
You're not destined to be an inert lump. You can still take action. It doesn't have to be a big change. Just take small, tiny changes throughout the day to counteract that. Absolutely. And the trick, if you like, actually, as somebody who looks after patience, I really don't like tricks. But nonetheless, for you, Brett, the trick. The trick to all of this is to make a decision.
is to make a decision with your day. Today. Is today going to be the day I'm going to get up and take control of my life and step forward? Or is today going to be the day I stay on my seat? If you decide to stay on your seat, my only prayer is that tomorrow you think the same question of yourself. On the other hand, if today is the day right now that you are going to get up, take control and take a step forward, the moment you do that,
You will do it tomorrow and you'll do it the next day. And the data suggests that if you can find those moments throughout your day to consistently be up and moving and you do it for 21 days, approximately it will become a habit. Just like sitting down in the evening every evening. and binge watching as a habit you can actually have really cool and healthy motivational movement habits as well so if you can find those moments to get up and move throughout your day and keep doing it
It will become a habit. It will become part of your life. And here's what the data from, we've worked in over 70 US corporations, here's what the data from corporations show. It's really great stuff. is once you've taken on one good habit and done it for 21 days, we call it the neat ripple effect.
is a good movement habit will beget, will make another movement habit and so one becomes two and all of a sudden two becomes four and what happens is people who are sitters Become people who are movers and people who become movers also influence their families their kids husbands and wives and friends to become movers as well and so there's a neat ripple but the trick the trick
The trick is to think right now, today, is today I'm going to get up and take control of my life and take that first step forwards or not. And if the answer is yes, do it now. in other words Brett what I'm saying is if you can get it into your mindset into your thinking that I'm going to fight the chair, I'm going to win this battle, you can actually do it.
And what's great, you offer suggestions on how you can do that. I think the trick is understanding, okay, our social environment is pushing us to be sedentary. Everything is like, you do everything sitting down. And I think one trick is just, can I do this typically sedentary activity? Can I do it while moving somehow? So you offer suggestions like, if you like to watch TV, Get yourself a really cheap treadmill. You can find them on Amazon for $300 now. They're so cheap.
And then just stick that in your television room. And while you're watching your favorite show, just... walk at 1.1 miles per hour on that treadmill or if you like playing video games do the same thing you can play a video game while you're walking or like you said if you take phone calls during work don't do that sitting down Do that while you're walking. You are 100% correct. and i'm telling you what's really cool about this is is the other thing i mentioned is once you've
And I will tell you now, 300 bucks for a treadmill in your house, that's expensive these days. I mean, they're coming in at $100 now, or you can get a secondhand one, or you can get... People are throwing away their exercise bicycles. I mean, take it, refurbish it, put it in your TV room, and you'd be surprised that you couldn't binge watch.
I'm actually starting to rewatch Seinfeld again, I hate to tell you this, but I can binge watch Seinfeld gently cycling on my stationary bicycle. It makes almost no noise and I'm getting just as much TV.
And there is so much we can do if we put our mind to it. And the other thing, Brett, you mentioned is we sort of society has put us in our chair. But the other thing to think about for a second... is how we can change the society now I don't mean changing the world let's be serious but how can I change the society I live in. So next time if I'm dating, next time I choose a date on, I can't remember the name of the website, whatever, where you're swiping left and swiping right.
I'm actually going to choose a date for somebody who also likes to go walking. I'm going to sort of say next time we all sit to come for my birthday. And for those of you listening, my birthday is November the 20th.
Next all for all of you who are going to come to my birthday party. Yeah, we're gonna have cake you bet we are But also once we've done our cake, we're also all going to go out for a walk together going to a family war right so we actually have the opportunity to influence the micro society we live in but we need to choose to do that and it's all part of the same thing make that decision take your first step and the rest is going to flow from there
And one thing you've pointed out in your book is that you work with a lot of patients who have had extra weight and just by simply increasing the amount of need in their lives. they've been able to lose weight, like a lot of weight. They don't even become serious gym goers. They're just moving more during the day. a hundred percent and uh so yes and and if you like there is the world of what i call testimonies and and and this is this is fine
And I'm 100% respectful. But as somebody with a science background, I'm actually more interested in the hardcore data from the scientific studies. When the scientific studies conducted in normal US office workers Show that even in people who don't want to lose weight
they will tend to lose weight and become more active. But in people who want to lose weight, people will start, if they activate their lives, they take on NEAT, are going to be losing 10 to 20 pounds Slowly and gently if you like without breaking a sweat, right? And they're going to do that over six months, and then over the six months, the same. And so what's really powerful about this is, yes, 60% of the population may be dieting in any given year.
But what's really cool about NEAT is NEAT is going to help you keep off that excess body weight and it's going to nudge you forwards and forwards and forwards. And what's important about this is you're not going to get a sports injury from NEAT. You're not going to have to pay a... a gym membership for NEAT, everyone can get up and move throughout their day without paying a penny for doing it.
And what is going to help with, for those people who want to lose weight, you don't have to lose weight even if you have excess body weight. You're not obliged to, right? If you want to, this will help. So we've been talking about the benefits of NEAT and weight loss, but you mentioned earlier there's other benefits to moving more throughout the day. How can NEAT improve metabolic health? We're talking like how we regulate glucose.
Oh, this is really, I hope we have enough time for this, Brett, but let me explain briefly. This is super cool. Experiments were done where healthy volunteers came onto a research center, very, very carefully monitored, and their glucose from their blood was being monitored every 30 seconds. These individuals were given breakfast, lunch and dinner in the metabolic unit in the research center and then were instructed to get on with their normal day.
And that was, you know, computer work for the morning, then lunch, computer work and a bit of Facebook and then dinner and then evening time, Facebook binge watching and TV. Okay. and we measured their blood glucose every 30 seconds continuously throughout the day. And what actually happens is
When you have breakfast, lunch and dinner, your blood glucose climbs to a mountain and then slowly descends over a total period of about an hour and a half. After each of the three meals, that's what happens. Then we said to people, we want you to do exactly the same day again. We'll measure your glucose again. We'll give you the same breakfast, lunch and dinner again. But we want you to do... One single thing different.
After every meal we want you to take a 15 minute walk or stroll at one and a half miles an hour. That's literally strolling. 15 minutes after every meal. Now, as I mentioned, without the stroll, normal day, you have breakfast, lunch and dinner. Your blood sugar, your blood glucose climbs to a mountain breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you add a 15-minute stroll, that's it, the mountain becomes a hill. It literally halves the size of that blood glucose mountain.
15 minutes stroll after each of your meals. The biggest predictor of type 2 diabetes is the size of those mountains. So all of a sudden, for taking a 15 minute stroll after each of your meals, everyone listening can do this. you halve your blood glucose response to meals and potentially risk of type 2 diabetes.
What a win-win-win. That is really powerful. Another thing you talk about is the benefit of NEAT to our mental health. I know a lot of people out there are struggling with their mental health. What effect can NEAT have on that? there has not been one clinical trial in depression prevention that includes a walking program that hasn't helped people.
Many of us are susceptible to feeling blue. I am feeling low, feeling bad. Most people listening will know that when you're feeling bad and you go for a walk, for a reason you quite can't understand, you actually feel a little bit better. What's really powerful are that the data that show that if you actually sort of take on neat walking as part of your routine that will actually help you feel brighter, smarter and sort of more alive.
All of us already sort of know this, right? We all know this. When you're down, somebody says, let's go for a walk and you feel better. This is actually a truth. And so for those of us who can take on a neat approach to life, not only is your sort of body going to be better whether that's with respect to obesity prevention or diabetes what blood pressure whatever it may be but actually you're going to feel brighter too and what's really cool
is once you feel brighter and happier doing a little bit of walking even after each of your meals guess what you're going to keep doing it and you're going to take on more stuff so you can feel even brighter and happier And again, that's what the data suggests.
And another thing you've seen in your research and working with patients is that a lot of these patients that come to see you, they talk about, I'm just so tired all the time. And it seems weird because like, you're just sitting around all day. Why would you be tired? But I think everyone has experienced
how doing absolutely nothing can just be exhausting. And by incorporating some more light physical activity during your day, it'll actually give you the physical energy you need to do the things you want to do in life. i mean i think we all again know this to be a common truth but brett that allows me to touch on one other thing which is so important and this will not shock anybody sleep
Sleep is a critical component of this equation. It is absolutely critical. And the data on NEAT and sleep are fascinating. We brought people again onto our amazing research centres at Mayo Clinic. These are extraordinary places where people volunteer to do studies to help us understand what's going on. And we brought them onto the research centre. And we said, have a good night's sleep in your normal way. Get used to our facilities. And people did.
What we then did is we sleep restricted people. We said to people, you're going to sleep 30% less. We're going to wake you up. We're going to twiddle your toes. We're going to keep you awake. And my goodness, yes, you're going to get tired. And that's exactly what happened. But here is what the data show. The data shows when you sleep restrict people. They eat more.
We all know this, right? When you're tired, this is me, by the way. Okay, this is me. When I'm tired, I eat more. This is always the case, right? For some reason, you reach for the chop. You reach for the chips, whatever it may be, but you eat more. This is what happens when you sleep deprived. You're feeling tired, you're feeling pooped out, you're noshing, you're eating a few snacks here and there. But the one thing when you're tired you don't want to do...
is to get up and go for a walk. When you're fully rested and you've got good sleep, you get up and you feel, what's the word we all use? Synergized. That's what we feel. And that energised means get up and go for a walk, get up and do some cool stuff, let's do something fun today. And guess what? You think less about that food you're going to lean on to deal with your tiredness.
So I fully understand that people may have two or sometimes three jobs. I totally get it. I totally do understand that there is tremendous stress at the moment and tremendous mental anguish.
But if you can find a good method to get good sleep, whether that involves, for example, stopping your coffee Noon or or starting to relax early in the evening So you're ready for sleep not stressing yourself out with text messages or arguments before you go to bed Whatever it may be if you can find a method of getting good sleep That is a critically important part of the NEAT equation. Well, I also think moving more can help you sleep better. I've noticed in my own life,
There's this idea I've heard about sleep pressure. You have to build up some sleep pressure so your body wants to go to sleep. And one way you can do that is just moving more i've had the best nights of sleep when i've had a really active day i think the best night of sleep i've been chasing this night of sleep for 20 years now is when my wife and i went to rome and you just walked there's like all day you're just walking
Hours on hours and I remember we came back to our hotel and we just laid down And we just both fell asleep. We didn't wake up until like 14 hours later. And we both felt that was the best night's sleep. And I think it's because we just walk so much. And I noticed in the times where I don't move a lot during the day, I have a hard time falling asleep.
This is 100% correct. Your body, if you remember earlier, Brett, we were talking about the parts of your brain that are sort of monitoring all of this. I mean, one question you've got to ask yourself is, Okay, I've now got my movement going. Just as you say, you've walked around Rome all day. You know, you sort of met your neat goal set by your brain. What happens if you don't? And I think a lot of people actually understand this but haven't necessarily thought about it the way you put it.
So if I am sort of forced to sit in meetings all day long, and I assure you that's often many of my days, you get home sort of feeling this sort of anxiety, right? This sort of tightness inside of you. And I don't know about you, but I get this thing sort of like my thoughts and I get frustrated and irritated much more than if I'd actually had an active day where I dissipated all of my energy. And I think the other thing that...
Again, many people relate to when you've come back from work and it's been a day that you've been in your chair You haven't been up moving and so on and so forth. What's one thing you do you reach for a bear? Really what that's saying is I need an anesthetic, right? There's too much pressure in my head. I need to anesthetize myself. And so therefore the complexity of getting a good night's sleep.
absolutely relates to the need to burn off the energy that our body needs us to burn off. We're designed to get up and move. If you suppress the human, The human doesn't do well. We get really, really internally upset by that and we need to move. So part of our argument is that by forcing people to be seated all day, it's fundamentally unnatural to people and they need to move. Just to function normally and your day in Rome is illustrative of that
So we talked about some ways people can incorporate more need into their lives. There's an activity that you do sitting down. See if you can do that standing up or even walking. For people who want to incorporate more NEAT in their life, is there a goal they should shoot for? What's the minimum dose of NEAT that we need to get before we start seeing that benefit? Is it an hour of extra NEAT, two hours? Is there steps? What have you found in your research?
Yeah, I mean this is a terrific question. There has been a huge vogue, as many people know, to buy various gadgets to look at various watches and sort of monitor stuff. Now, if you're somebody who loves monitoring stuff, go for it enjoy it that's great but what is actually the truth and again when you study this in sort of normal folk what you find is if you give people a monitoring device they'll use it for a short period of time and it can be literally i kid you not days
and their use of that monitoring device will fall off almost exponentially, almost sort of like over a cliff face, and they'll sort of put it into a drawer. And how many people listening today have exercise monitoring? devices, wearable little things that are in their drawer, that's powered down, that's unused. So my advice to people is to actually look at it completely differently. If you love monitoring stuff, get the equipment, it's great.
If you're going to take on for yourself a goal, I suggest you take on one goal, not 100 goals, one thing. What's the one thing you're going to do for the next few weeks? And let's say for the sake of argument is every Thursday and this is as simple as it gets. Every Thursday, I have to do a conference call with central corporate where they talk about, you know, health and wellness, whatever it is, right? It's a 40 minute call every single week. I...
Only have to listen to fulfill my obligation. So I'm gonna do that walk and talk That's one thing. I'm gonna do every Thursday super simple Actually, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna have a little chart on my fridge And every time I do it, I'm going to put a check mark against it until I've done it 21 times. Monitoring, as simple as it gets. On the other hand, I'm going to be a different person. I'm going to say, you know what?
My daughter loves the art stuff and I live in Washington DC where all the galleries are free at Smithsonian. So once a week I'm going to go with my daughter and we're going to stroll through the art gallery. And we're going to do that together for two months. Now, honestly, do you need to put that on your fridge to remind yourself to go for a walk with your daughter in the art gallery? No. What you want to do is to do it for three weeks and it becomes a habit between you and your daughter.
And so what I suggest again is be smart. What works for you? But pick something, find a way of monitoring it and do it. And the last concept I'd like to share with you in this regard is the idea of rewards. Now, rewards are great. Okay? They're really, really cool. But again, you have to be smart. So giving yourself a reward to go to the mailbox and collecting your mail on foot every day, to me, honestly, sounds a bit silly.
right i'm not going to reward myself for collecting the mail right however If my goal is to walk a half marathon and I had this amazing patient who did this, She came into clinic in her wheelchair and she sent me a photograph of her and the grandchildren when they walked a half marathon. I kid you not, it was like, it blew my mind.
Her reward was if she could walk a half marathon, she'd saved up enough money to go to South Dakota for a week. Okay, that was her award and that was her goal. And she actually said to me, actually, the reward was to do it. So I think if you can think of the idea of finding things that you want to do, finding a method to record it, and then finding a method to recognize yourself. Pat yourself on the back or have some sort of achievement recognition, you're off to the races.
I love it. So just find ways to move more. That's it. Again, it's not hard. It doesn't have to be that hard. It could be as simple as standing up at work occasionally. It could be doing the walk and talk. Something that I've done after reading your book, or we've done this for a long time as a family. When we park somewhere, we park the furthest away so we can walk there, take the stairs.
It kind of becomes a game and finding ways that you can move more in an environment that is fighting for you to sit more. It's kind of fun to be a rebel. I'm going to move more instead. Yeah, be a rebel for yourself. Do it. Get off and move. Well James, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?
Well, I mean, it's fantastic if people wish to go to the library and get the book Get Up. It really summarises the work we did in the lab. It's, of course, available on our favourite online website as well. That's great, but also I mean places like mayoclinic.com have really high quality information on the internet And so please please make a decision to get up and move today
and learn more from these various resources and make it happen for yourself. Fantastic. Well, James Levine, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. It's my pleasure as well. Thank you so much, Brett. I really enjoyed it. My guest today is Dr. James Levine. He's the author of the book, Get Up, Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It. Check out our show notes at aom.is slash neat where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic.
Well, that wraps up a Make sure to check out our website at art of medicine And while you're there, sign up for our newsletter.
We're both free. It's the best way to stay on top of what we're doing at The Art of Manliness. And if you haven't done this already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to hear us reviewing off a podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. If you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who would think we get something out of it.
always thank you for the continued support until next time it's brett mckay reminding you to listen to am podcast what you've heard into action. Before you hit stop, a quick bonus episode recommendation. In episode number 341, The Kaizen Method, we break down this Japanese practice of constant incremental improvement with author Robert Maurer.
to show how 1% tweaks beat grand overhauls in fitness, work, and family life. Again, that's episode number 341, or you can go to aom.is slash kaizen to get a direct link