A 2005 Mayo Clinic research study shows that even tiny amounts of activity (tapping your foot, walking your dog, standing up to stretch at work, getting up off the couch to change the channel, and more) can make vast differences in your daily calorie burning.
Specifically the research showed that this behavior is one of the many variables that is almost uniformly different from obese people to lean people. They found that generally people prone to moving more often than not were lean, while people who were not prone to these habits were generally obese. All these small movements totalled up to large calorie deficits for the lean people that the obese people miss out on.
Up to 350 calories PER DAY!!! That can add up to around 30 pounds of extra weight PER YEAR lost or gained, depending on which end of the fidgeting spectrum you fall under.
They also found that people formed their patterns of which way they would go on the spectrum at very early ages. Don’t dispair though, that doesn’t mean you’re locked in to the sedentary habits you formed as a child.
James A Levine, who led the research study, had this to say:
“Some may say this is a story of doom and gloom — that people with obesity have no choice. It’s all over. I would argue exactly the opposite, there’s a massive beacon of hope here. But it’s going to take a massive, top-down approach to change the environment in which we live to get us up and be lean again.”
And don’t miss the silver lining here too, pointed out by William Deitz of the Centers For Disease Control:
“Figuring out ways to increase physical activity — not necessarily getting people jogging every day but just building physical activity into a person’s day — are reasonable strategies that have the promise to combat this epidemic of obesity,”
What he’s saying is that the study shows that you don’t even necessarily need to “work out” so much as just MOVE more in your day-to-day life. Put simply those bad habits you may have of loafing around have been largely UNconcious all these years. Now that I’ve brought your attention to it; you CAN make a change.
Get up and move!