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Move a Little, Lose a Lot: New N.E.A.T. Science Reveals How to Be Thinner, Happier, and Smarter
Escape Your Desk Sentence!
Dr. James Levine, one of the country’s top specialists in obesity, says America suffers from “sitting disease.” We spend nearly ten to fifteen hours of our day sitting–in cars, at our desks, and in front of the television. The age of electronics and the Internet has robbed us of the chance to burn up to 1,500 to 2,000 calories per day, leaving Americans less active (and much heavier) than we were thirty years ago. We are facing a human energy crisis.
What you need, according to this doctor’s orders, is to get moving, or nonexercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). NEAT is as simple as standing, turning, and bending. Research proves that daily NEAT activity burns more calories than a half hour running on the treadmill. Just by the very act of standing and moving, you can boost your metabolism, lower your blood pressure, and increase your mental clarity. It’s about using your body as it was meant to be used. Move a Little, Lose a Lot gives you literal step-by-step instructions for small changes that equal radical results:
• Give at the office–burn 2,100 calories a week just by changing your daily work routine.
• Hey, Einstein–just like the scientist who thought up his most famous theory while riding his bike, you can increase production of new brain neurons in as little as three hours.
• Tired of being tired–reduce fatigue by 65 percent with low-intensity NEAT workouts.
• Don’t forget–an Italian study showed active men and women were 30 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
From the Hardcover edition.
Dr. James Levine, one of the country’s top specialists in obesity, says America suffers from “sitting disease.” We spend nearly ten to fifteen hours of our day sitting–in cars, at our desks, and in front of the television. The age of electronics and the Internet has robbed us of the chance to burn up to 1,500 to 2,000 calories per day, leaving Americans less active (and much heavier) than we were thirty years ago. We are facing a human energy crisis.
What you need, according to this doctor’s orders, is to get moving, or nonexercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). NEAT is as simple as standing, turning, and bending. Research proves that daily NEAT activity burns more calories than a half hour running on the treadmill. Just by the very act of standing and moving, you can boost your metabolism, lower your blood pressure, and increase your mental clarity. It’s about using your body as it was meant to be used. Move a Little, Lose a Lot gives you literal step-by-step instructions for small changes that equal radical results:
• Give at the office–burn 2,100 calories a week just by changing your daily work routine.
• Hey, Einstein–just like the scientist who thought up his most famous theory while riding his bike, you can increase production of new brain neurons in as little as three hours.
• Tired of being tired–reduce fatigue by 65 percent with low-intensity NEAT workouts.
• Don’t forget–an Italian study showed active men and women were 30 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
From the Hardcover edition.
363 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
45 people are currently reading
188 people want to read
About the author
James A. Levine
21 books46 followersBorn and educated in England, James A. Levine is a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic who has worked with impoverished children in the United States and internationally for more than thirty years. He has won more than fifty major awards in science, consulted to numerous governments, and lectures to humanitarian groups around the world. He is the author of the novel The Blue Notebook.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
March 16, 2009
This book is SO interesting! The first chapter is called Sentenced to the Chair. "Did you ever stop to think whether your body was equipped to sit for thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen or maybe more hours a day? Did you ever consider what happens to your heart, muscles,and metabolism?" He calls it NEAT, which stands for nonexercise activity thermogenesis. Basically the energy you burn living your life without going to the gym or walking on a treadmill. He claims "the difference between obestiy and leannes is less than you think. It's not hard-core exercise. It's organizing your tool-shed before you watch the game, walking in the mall instead of driving from store to store."
September 16, 2012
Don't bother with this book unless you really want any a motivational resource to format your activity. Over hyped. Non referenced. Self indulgent. It packages NEAT as a commodity and doesn't explore the science much at all.
Given what is being written elsewhere about exercise physiology ( such as the excellent Body By Science
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46...
this book can be easily replaced by a few keen Google searches.
Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoge...
NEAT does however make sense and rather than being the be all and end all of your routine, makes a logical supplement to what you may or may not be doing...
Given what is being written elsewhere about exercise physiology ( such as the excellent Body By Science
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46...
this book can be easily replaced by a few keen Google searches.
Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoge...
NEAT does however make sense and rather than being the be all and end all of your routine, makes a logical supplement to what you may or may not be doing...
March 31, 2012
The banner on the front of this book proclaims "NO GYM + NO DIET = BIG WEIGHT LOSS" which is entirely false. The "no diet" is 1400 calories a day and the "no gym" is hours a day of walking. The science was interesting but the title and hype don't match what's between the covers. He also does nothing to address people with mobility issues--he expects that everyone can just jump onto a treadmill in front of their desks for an 8 hour day with no restrictions.
August 11, 2023
Eh. Started off being interesting, discussing why humans need to move and not sit on their butts for 12 hours a day. Lots of useful, helpful facts that confirmed this need for movement. His general thesis makes sense, the more you move the more calories you burn. You don't have to schedule special work out time. Rather, you need to make a point of not sitting the majority of your day. Take the stairs, not the elevator, park far away from the building you're going to, don't hire a lawn but do your own yard work etc.
The book was written almost 15 years ago by an elderly author and it shows. I laughed out loud when the author mentioned his dictophone. Uh, the iphone was released in 2007. Ok, I double checked and voice memo wasn't released until 2009 when this book was published. Still, dictophone!? He was a blackberry user so I guess he came late to the smart phone game. He references other outdated technology as well and doesn't mention social media at all.
While he insists that with his method a person just needs to up their "NEAT" movements - i.e. walking around more, not sitting constantly - in order to lose a bunch of weight, once he starts delving into the nitty gritty of his program it turns out that - oh yeah - also you need to eat healthy and cook more and eat less fast food. You need to eat a lot of fruits and veggies, get a good night's sleep, eat a healthy breakfast, not smoke or drink etc. So more than "just get up and move". I wasn't reading this to lose weight but if I was, I would have been super irritated.
He barely touches on the societal reasons people don't move and puts the onus on the individual to change. Nothing about voting for politicians who support public transportation or increased PE time in school. Nothing about the difficulty of getting household chores done when you have health issues or are working 3 part time jobs and literally do not have time to cook every night, clean the house etc.
I certainly agree with his overall thesis. I live in NYC where people walk a lot more than in other parts of the country and you see far fewer obese people. Walking around does improve my mood. Living in a walkable neighborhood where you can walk to run your errands is a dream, so lovely. I have been wearing a fitbit for almost 10 years and it also motivates me to get up every hour and move at least 250 steps. I feel better the less I sit. Do I need an entire book to tell me this? No. Thank God for free books from the library.
NEAT is short for an essential part of your calorie burning metabolism known as nonexercise activity thermogenesis. It sounds complicated, but it couldn't be more simple. NEAT is the calories (i.e., energy) you burn living your life. If you think of "exercise" as activity for the sake of
developing and maintaining physical fitness, then NEAT is everything else. It's the calories you burn washing the car, walking to lunch, running errands, climbing the stairs, folding laundry, even tapping your toes and chewing gum. It is not going to the gym or taking an aerobics class. It is the energy we expend simply living.
"I have no energy" is the number two complaint | hear from patients immediately after the number one complaint, "I need to lose weight!" It's ironic, isn't it? You spend all day sitting, which should leave you with energy to burn by the end of the day. Yet you feel completely and utterly spent
and wanting nothing more than to collapse when you get home from work.
I see it time and time again in my office. The world-weary man or woman walks in burdened with
weight and saddled with the malaise of sedentary living. They often turn on me angrily when I offer a few simple NEAT solutions. Some even storm out.
You'll not only burn more calories and rev your fat-burning metabolism, but also you'll process the information faster and more clearly, because, as you'll soon learn, even your brain [works better on the move.
In the past fifty years- a blink of an eve in the history of all of humankind- we got so good at developing ingenious time-and labor-saving devices that we literally started running the world not from our feet as nature intended, but from our behinds.
This is not a call for us to go back to our agrarian roots or become a nation of step counters. NEAT is the buzz of human vibrancy, not simply "steps."
With a full 70 percent of our leisure fun now completely NEAT free, it's little wonder we feel so relentlessly tired and stressed. Our leisure-time activities no longer recharge our energies, but sink them into a state of depletion....unlike fishing, gardening, golf, knitting, and bridge playing, which provide pleasant, social escapes, most people consider gym exercise an obligation from which they would rather escape ... most likely to the TV.
The massive upswing in obesity rates during the past forty years matches the number of miles per day the average person travels by car in the United States. That is, we now drive an average of 30 miles a dav and weigh roughly 30 pounds more than we did in 1960.
How you expend calories is similar to how you spend money. The largest chunk (about 60 percent) goes to your basal metabolic rate (BMR). Those are the calories your body uses even when you are perfectly still to keep your heart pumping, your brain thinking, and all your organs doing their jobs. Similar to a mortgage, the bigger your "house" (i.e., body), the larger your BMR. Another, much-smaller number of calories are burned in what is called the thermic effect of food (TEF), a fancy way of saying the calories you burn digesting what you eat. TEF accounts for about 10 percent of your metabolism and doesn't vary very much. The final way you expend calories is movement- both purposeful exercise and NEAT
Physical movement accounts for about a third of the calories you burn each and every day.
What happens if you remove purposeful exercise(from the chart)? You lose what? One hundred calories? Not much in the big picture of human metabolism, especially if you exercise just three or four days a week. This distresses my patients who desperately carve out that twenty or thirty minutes to exercise. But unless you're exercising at a very high level for a long time, the calorie burn usually comes in at 100 to 200 - an amount easily erased by a few sips of frappuccino or a handful of M&M's.
There is an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase (LPL). Its job is to break down fat molecules (i.e., triglycerides) in the blood. When you sit for a few hours, these enzymes start to switch off. Sit for the entire day and their activity levels plummet by 50 percent. Eat a high-fat meal after a day of sitting and you can watch your blood fats skyrocket 180 percent. The mere act of getting up out of your chair is all it takes to break out of hibernation mode and switch these enzymes on again. We're not talking about getting up to go for a jog; we're just talking about getting up.
the activity that provided the most profound protection against heart disease was walking.
Women whose waistlines were 35 inches or more were twice as likely to die of heart disease or cancer than those whose waistlines were less than 28 inches, even when their body mass index (BMI) fell within a normal, "healthy" range.
among 469 men and women over age seventy-five, dancing was by far the most effective brain-saving leisure activity...dancing reduced the risk of dementia by 76 percent, compared to just a 35 percent risk associated with reading. For the healthiest brain, you need both.
I'm going to tell you something you already know and have probably been frustrated by your entire life. Not everyone gains weight the same way when they eat the same amount of food. You probably don't eat more than you think; and yes, your best friend may indeed eat much more than you and still not gain weight. I have conducted the experiments. I have seen the science. The difference between the obese men and women and their lean peers came down to one thing and one thing alone:NEAT. Specifically, the obese volunteers sat planted like ferns for a full 2½ hours a day longer than the lean volunteers who stood, walked, and generally fidgeted about that much longer.
The healthy lean volunteers in our study were not gym goers or avid exercisers. They didn't alter their lives to work out at 5 a.m.; they simply lived their life with greater movement
She became very excited about infusing NEAT into her life and immediately vowed to start running three miles a day "like I did when I was in my thirties." I tried to talk her out of it to no avail. She lasted six days.
"If NEAT is the answer to obesity, then why is my mail carrier overweight?" an inquisitive reporter once asked me. It's a good question, and perhaps one you've been pondering yourself. The answer is
twofold. One simple possibility is that their eating is out of line with their NEAT activity. When and how you eat is an important part of the NEAT equation. Another essential element to the NEAT
life (and weight loss) is self-fulfillment, plotting your goals, and achieving your dreams.
For many, many of my clients, weight gain is a by-product of feeling unfulfilled in life. (And here is where the book begins to go off the rails....so the book's program is not just about moving more but about eating healthy foods and not skipping meals or eating constantly and about "fulfillment"???? Like you need therapy to work on your issues.)
In many cases, people who are obese are actually eating far less than their lean peers....their fueling patterns are either completely haphazard, with them mindlessly eating small bits of food, which never satisfy them for any meaningful stretch of time throughout the day, or, worse, they don't eat all day and pile on the food from 6 p.m. to bedtime.
If your eating is very out of sync with yourNEAT activity (as most people's is), it will take longer to lose weight through NEAT activity alone. (Duh)
The book was written almost 15 years ago by an elderly author and it shows. I laughed out loud when the author mentioned his dictophone. Uh, the iphone was released in 2007. Ok, I double checked and voice memo wasn't released until 2009 when this book was published. Still, dictophone!? He was a blackberry user so I guess he came late to the smart phone game. He references other outdated technology as well and doesn't mention social media at all.
While he insists that with his method a person just needs to up their "NEAT" movements - i.e. walking around more, not sitting constantly - in order to lose a bunch of weight, once he starts delving into the nitty gritty of his program it turns out that - oh yeah - also you need to eat healthy and cook more and eat less fast food. You need to eat a lot of fruits and veggies, get a good night's sleep, eat a healthy breakfast, not smoke or drink etc. So more than "just get up and move". I wasn't reading this to lose weight but if I was, I would have been super irritated.
He barely touches on the societal reasons people don't move and puts the onus on the individual to change. Nothing about voting for politicians who support public transportation or increased PE time in school. Nothing about the difficulty of getting household chores done when you have health issues or are working 3 part time jobs and literally do not have time to cook every night, clean the house etc.
I certainly agree with his overall thesis. I live in NYC where people walk a lot more than in other parts of the country and you see far fewer obese people. Walking around does improve my mood. Living in a walkable neighborhood where you can walk to run your errands is a dream, so lovely. I have been wearing a fitbit for almost 10 years and it also motivates me to get up every hour and move at least 250 steps. I feel better the less I sit. Do I need an entire book to tell me this? No. Thank God for free books from the library.
NEAT is short for an essential part of your calorie burning metabolism known as nonexercise activity thermogenesis. It sounds complicated, but it couldn't be more simple. NEAT is the calories (i.e., energy) you burn living your life. If you think of "exercise" as activity for the sake of
developing and maintaining physical fitness, then NEAT is everything else. It's the calories you burn washing the car, walking to lunch, running errands, climbing the stairs, folding laundry, even tapping your toes and chewing gum. It is not going to the gym or taking an aerobics class. It is the energy we expend simply living.
"I have no energy" is the number two complaint | hear from patients immediately after the number one complaint, "I need to lose weight!" It's ironic, isn't it? You spend all day sitting, which should leave you with energy to burn by the end of the day. Yet you feel completely and utterly spent
and wanting nothing more than to collapse when you get home from work.
I see it time and time again in my office. The world-weary man or woman walks in burdened with
weight and saddled with the malaise of sedentary living. They often turn on me angrily when I offer a few simple NEAT solutions. Some even storm out.
You'll not only burn more calories and rev your fat-burning metabolism, but also you'll process the information faster and more clearly, because, as you'll soon learn, even your brain [works better on the move.
In the past fifty years- a blink of an eve in the history of all of humankind- we got so good at developing ingenious time-and labor-saving devices that we literally started running the world not from our feet as nature intended, but from our behinds.
This is not a call for us to go back to our agrarian roots or become a nation of step counters. NEAT is the buzz of human vibrancy, not simply "steps."
With a full 70 percent of our leisure fun now completely NEAT free, it's little wonder we feel so relentlessly tired and stressed. Our leisure-time activities no longer recharge our energies, but sink them into a state of depletion....unlike fishing, gardening, golf, knitting, and bridge playing, which provide pleasant, social escapes, most people consider gym exercise an obligation from which they would rather escape ... most likely to the TV.
The massive upswing in obesity rates during the past forty years matches the number of miles per day the average person travels by car in the United States. That is, we now drive an average of 30 miles a dav and weigh roughly 30 pounds more than we did in 1960.
How you expend calories is similar to how you spend money. The largest chunk (about 60 percent) goes to your basal metabolic rate (BMR). Those are the calories your body uses even when you are perfectly still to keep your heart pumping, your brain thinking, and all your organs doing their jobs. Similar to a mortgage, the bigger your "house" (i.e., body), the larger your BMR. Another, much-smaller number of calories are burned in what is called the thermic effect of food (TEF), a fancy way of saying the calories you burn digesting what you eat. TEF accounts for about 10 percent of your metabolism and doesn't vary very much. The final way you expend calories is movement- both purposeful exercise and NEAT
Physical movement accounts for about a third of the calories you burn each and every day.
What happens if you remove purposeful exercise(from the chart)? You lose what? One hundred calories? Not much in the big picture of human metabolism, especially if you exercise just three or four days a week. This distresses my patients who desperately carve out that twenty or thirty minutes to exercise. But unless you're exercising at a very high level for a long time, the calorie burn usually comes in at 100 to 200 - an amount easily erased by a few sips of frappuccino or a handful of M&M's.
There is an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase (LPL). Its job is to break down fat molecules (i.e., triglycerides) in the blood. When you sit for a few hours, these enzymes start to switch off. Sit for the entire day and their activity levels plummet by 50 percent. Eat a high-fat meal after a day of sitting and you can watch your blood fats skyrocket 180 percent. The mere act of getting up out of your chair is all it takes to break out of hibernation mode and switch these enzymes on again. We're not talking about getting up to go for a jog; we're just talking about getting up.
the activity that provided the most profound protection against heart disease was walking.
Women whose waistlines were 35 inches or more were twice as likely to die of heart disease or cancer than those whose waistlines were less than 28 inches, even when their body mass index (BMI) fell within a normal, "healthy" range.
among 469 men and women over age seventy-five, dancing was by far the most effective brain-saving leisure activity...dancing reduced the risk of dementia by 76 percent, compared to just a 35 percent risk associated with reading. For the healthiest brain, you need both.
I'm going to tell you something you already know and have probably been frustrated by your entire life. Not everyone gains weight the same way when they eat the same amount of food. You probably don't eat more than you think; and yes, your best friend may indeed eat much more than you and still not gain weight. I have conducted the experiments. I have seen the science. The difference between the obese men and women and their lean peers came down to one thing and one thing alone:NEAT. Specifically, the obese volunteers sat planted like ferns for a full 2½ hours a day longer than the lean volunteers who stood, walked, and generally fidgeted about that much longer.
The healthy lean volunteers in our study were not gym goers or avid exercisers. They didn't alter their lives to work out at 5 a.m.; they simply lived their life with greater movement
She became very excited about infusing NEAT into her life and immediately vowed to start running three miles a day "like I did when I was in my thirties." I tried to talk her out of it to no avail. She lasted six days.
"If NEAT is the answer to obesity, then why is my mail carrier overweight?" an inquisitive reporter once asked me. It's a good question, and perhaps one you've been pondering yourself. The answer is
twofold. One simple possibility is that their eating is out of line with their NEAT activity. When and how you eat is an important part of the NEAT equation. Another essential element to the NEAT
life (and weight loss) is self-fulfillment, plotting your goals, and achieving your dreams.
For many, many of my clients, weight gain is a by-product of feeling unfulfilled in life. (And here is where the book begins to go off the rails....so the book's program is not just about moving more but about eating healthy foods and not skipping meals or eating constantly and about "fulfillment"???? Like you need therapy to work on your issues.)
In many cases, people who are obese are actually eating far less than their lean peers....their fueling patterns are either completely haphazard, with them mindlessly eating small bits of food, which never satisfy them for any meaningful stretch of time throughout the day, or, worse, they don't eat all day and pile on the food from 6 p.m. to bedtime.
If your eating is very out of sync with yourNEAT activity (as most people's is), it will take longer to lose weight through NEAT activity alone. (Duh)
August 20, 2017
I actually liked this book more than his newer book, Get Up. This book covers so much more then just living an active lifestyle such as: having more energy, living the life you want, achieving your dreams, being happier, decluttering, nutrition and organic, sleeping, volunteering, and writing to your state representatives to make change happen. Think about that list if everyone applied all that we would be living in a better world, not to mention seeing less disease. Therefore I think everyone should read this even if they don't have weight to lose. On the contrary I could see that list overwhelming a lot of people with trying to change to much at one time. Also some of the wording could have been done better instead of saying take 3 - 45 min walks and occasionally reminding us that that doesn't actually need done in 45 min increments saying make sure to get in 2hrs and 15mins of neat activity over the course of the day. I personally think 5 or 10 mins here or there seems so much less daunting then trying to find 3 45min time slots even if your multitasking. Overall great read and I will be revisiting this book in the future.
August 18, 2009
I love the concept -- add small bits of low-intensity exercise and movement throughout your day to reap big returns in metabolism and weight loss. But I still have some reservations.
-Why are people who are on their feet all day (teachers, waitresses, retail people) often still overweight?
-Why does Levine say "without dieting" in the title, yet spend a lot of the book talking about restricting caloric intake?
As someone who is fairly active and who has had trouble losing the last 10 baby pounds (yup, the "baby" is turning 5 next month), I am having trouble believing that just strolling around more will burn off those stubborn pounds. But I'm willing to give it a shot.
-Why are people who are on their feet all day (teachers, waitresses, retail people) often still overweight?
-Why does Levine say "without dieting" in the title, yet spend a lot of the book talking about restricting caloric intake?
As someone who is fairly active and who has had trouble losing the last 10 baby pounds (yup, the "baby" is turning 5 next month), I am having trouble believing that just strolling around more will burn off those stubborn pounds. But I'm willing to give it a shot.
September 14, 2009
For those who hate diets and can't exercise much this book give you some great ideas on how to just change a few things in your life style and loose weight.
September 3, 2019
This was a thoroughly thought provoking book. Levine starts by getting the reader to think of all the things that we can do to sneak more activity into our day without going to the gym. From simple things like standing to take a call and parking at the end of the parking lot at work to sneak a little bit more walking to more involved ideas such as getting a treadmill desk, Levine seeks to show how much more active we can be without having to block out time to go the gym. Throughout the book it is also Levine own attitude that becomes infectious, from suggesting that you walk while reading his book to nudging you to sign up for those classes you always wanted to take. While he also has a detailed 8-week plan for increasing our non-exercise activity, the suggestions and strategies that he outlines in it are simple enough that you can adopt them without signing up to his entire program. It is his can-do attitude and realistic promises regarding results that start convincing you that even if it’ll take 3 months to lose those 10 pounds it won’t hurt to move a little more every day.
December 30, 2018
The whole idea of this book can be summarized in one example. 50 years ago there were no gyms because people used to be a little bit more active in their day. If you become more active, you wouldn't need to go to the gym either. Instead of putting all your effort in a 45 minutes session in a gym, try to spread it out by being more active in your daily stuff (Taking steps instead of elevator, walking instead of driving, chewing gum, dancing while cooking, and so on.. Just make sure you don't sit a lot and you should be fine)
Overall, good book.
Overall, good book.
November 20, 2016
This is a good plan for someone who has no idea about how to lose Weight and/or start moving more. He makes good points (which ultimately are - move more, eat better and wiser) and the research to back his plan up is thorough. However, for me the book would be too prescriptive to follow to the letter. What I will do is identify opps to move more in my daily life, eat only what I can recognise and I will consider a home treadmill for when I watch TV, and a standing desk.
June 23, 2017
Decent actionable insights, and science and research to back it up. It is a good one time read.
April 11, 2020
Very light on actual science.
August 18, 2015
The book is interesting and may appeal to those who are quite sedentary as a nudge to get up more often. It makes the case that we sit entirely too much and need strategies for incorporating more standing and movement in our lives. He mentions various studies of interest, but I feel the book would have been stronger if it actually listed those references in the back so they could be reviewed, if desired. It encourages 135 minutes of daily movement in a gentle, not-necessary-to-break-a-sweat manner. The pace recommended for treadmill activities while watching TV, for example, is one mile per hour. It also includes a generalized diet recommendation with specific units of energy, though the consumer is left to pick the foods that would fit within that plan. What I think would be most overwhelming to users of this book is the action steps that are meant to move you in a direction of valuing yourself and your time---lots of planning and building, so that makes this seem a bit more suitable for a subset that is truly just sedentary and not merely so busy they've put off making their diet and exercise habits a priority.
A piece of info from one study I thought noteworthy, "Three hours of brisk walking per week is enough to boost blood flow to the brain and trigger biochemical changes that increase the production of new neurons" and "growth is especially pronounced in the frontal love and hippocampus, parts of the brain that govern memory, multitasking, and decision making.
This book explores moving forward, but acknowledges that letting go is a necessary component to success. "Promise to yourself you will put that bad experience behind you. Whatever happened, whoever was to blame, whatever you or anyone else did, it's done. Over. In the past. You must forgive and move forward...forgiveness is merely the act of untying yourself from the thoughts and feelings that bind you to the offense committed against you or that you committed. This doesn't mean you're forgetting or condoning it. You're simply reducing the power these feelings have over you so you can live a freer, happier, more NEAT life."
Here is a thought to end with; "Staying where you are may feel safe and comfortable, but if it's not making you happy, you must push out of that comfort zone."
A piece of info from one study I thought noteworthy, "Three hours of brisk walking per week is enough to boost blood flow to the brain and trigger biochemical changes that increase the production of new neurons" and "growth is especially pronounced in the frontal love and hippocampus, parts of the brain that govern memory, multitasking, and decision making.
This book explores moving forward, but acknowledges that letting go is a necessary component to success. "Promise to yourself you will put that bad experience behind you. Whatever happened, whoever was to blame, whatever you or anyone else did, it's done. Over. In the past. You must forgive and move forward...forgiveness is merely the act of untying yourself from the thoughts and feelings that bind you to the offense committed against you or that you committed. This doesn't mean you're forgetting or condoning it. You're simply reducing the power these feelings have over you so you can live a freer, happier, more NEAT life."
Here is a thought to end with; "Staying where you are may feel safe and comfortable, but if it's not making you happy, you must push out of that comfort zone."
December 16, 2010
I didn't actually finish this, but liked the first half, with a few reservations. First, I was pretty convinced by his demonstrations of the huge difference in calories burned due to things you wouldn't pay much attention to (sitting vs. standing, for example). His basic premise made a lot of sense, and I think it would be helpful to those people who go faithfully to the gym every day but refuse to walk a few blocks to pick up lunch (??).
I feel like there was a bit of false advertising involved--what at first sounds like a vague and minimal adding in of activity here and there turns out to be what amounts to quite a vigorous regimen when you get into the daily plans. There was a lot of focus on fitting in increased activity in unconventional ways, which I thought was simultaneously encouraging and discouraging (everyone can park farther out in the parking lot, but whose boss is really going to chip in for a "walking desk"?).
One thing that I liked, though, was his attitude toward improving your whole life (a focus on doing creative things, overall well-being, etc.). I only read about half of the actual daily (weekly?) routines to follow*, but I thought his focus on things other than just physical fitness were a nice refreshing change from the usual fitness/diet book. Overall he gave the impression of being an endearingly earnest nerd, which I much prefer to the Motivational Speaker hardbody type (although that endearing nerdiness leads him to espouse things that most people just aren't going to be nerdy enough to embrace, like fitting a mini-cycle under their desk at work to pedal away at all day).
Overall, not bad for a book that I just picked up because someone had left it in on the self check-out at the library, and I think I would recommend it for someone wanting a concrete weight-loss/life-improvement plan laid out for them.
*I realize that the point of a book like this is to actually follow the plan, not just skim the whole thing, so that probably skews my review of it.
I feel like there was a bit of false advertising involved--what at first sounds like a vague and minimal adding in of activity here and there turns out to be what amounts to quite a vigorous regimen when you get into the daily plans. There was a lot of focus on fitting in increased activity in unconventional ways, which I thought was simultaneously encouraging and discouraging (everyone can park farther out in the parking lot, but whose boss is really going to chip in for a "walking desk"?).
One thing that I liked, though, was his attitude toward improving your whole life (a focus on doing creative things, overall well-being, etc.). I only read about half of the actual daily (weekly?) routines to follow*, but I thought his focus on things other than just physical fitness were a nice refreshing change from the usual fitness/diet book. Overall he gave the impression of being an endearingly earnest nerd, which I much prefer to the Motivational Speaker hardbody type (although that endearing nerdiness leads him to espouse things that most people just aren't going to be nerdy enough to embrace, like fitting a mini-cycle under their desk at work to pedal away at all day).
Overall, not bad for a book that I just picked up because someone had left it in on the self check-out at the library, and I think I would recommend it for someone wanting a concrete weight-loss/life-improvement plan laid out for them.
*I realize that the point of a book like this is to actually follow the plan, not just skim the whole thing, so that probably skews my review of it.
April 25, 2010
I like several things about the author's approach:
1) Get off your behind. I agree with him that this is very important and that an overall active lifestyle will do more for us than 30 minutes of exercise 5 days a week. (He agrees that work-outs are beneficial - just not the whole picture).
2) Don't wait to shed pounds to live your life now. Do the things you want to do - be more active - and this will help the pounds come off along the way.
3) Think of food as fuel, and eat to fuel your activity. Hey, if I can view food as a tool vs. a compulsion or comfort under stress or a form of entertainment, that would be a very good thing.
My only criticism of the book is that he makes the statement that diet and exercise don't work - but then goes on to suggest diet and exercise. The thing is, though, that his approach is different from the traditional "work-out" and diet approaches that we're all familiar with.
After following the program for a couple of weeks I'm finally ready to give a 4-star rating to the book. It really is a good program that deals with mind, body and soul (witness buying a plant, and taking a photo of the sunrise as two of the steps). I think that's very important; it's all connected. I also like that in the program he works on coaxing good habits to replace bad ones a little bit at a time. Extremely doable, and it's helping me a lot.
1) Get off your behind. I agree with him that this is very important and that an overall active lifestyle will do more for us than 30 minutes of exercise 5 days a week. (He agrees that work-outs are beneficial - just not the whole picture).
2) Don't wait to shed pounds to live your life now. Do the things you want to do - be more active - and this will help the pounds come off along the way.
3) Think of food as fuel, and eat to fuel your activity. Hey, if I can view food as a tool vs. a compulsion or comfort under stress or a form of entertainment, that would be a very good thing.
My only criticism of the book is that he makes the statement that diet and exercise don't work - but then goes on to suggest diet and exercise. The thing is, though, that his approach is different from the traditional "work-out" and diet approaches that we're all familiar with.
After following the program for a couple of weeks I'm finally ready to give a 4-star rating to the book. It really is a good program that deals with mind, body and soul (witness buying a plant, and taking a photo of the sunrise as two of the steps). I think that's very important; it's all connected. I also like that in the program he works on coaxing good habits to replace bad ones a little bit at a time. Extremely doable, and it's helping me a lot.
August 7, 2013
I think that the main point of this book is very interesting, and I liked a lot of the points he made about living the life you want to have now instead of waiting for conditions to be perfect. I agree with his main thesis, and I have already started applying some of the ideas I got from the book. However, I think that it is deceptive to say that it is not a diet, because his 8-week plan definitely includes a diet, and the plan is quite complicated on the whole. I also thought it was interesting that near the beginning of the book he says that everybody needs some spirituality in their lives, but he then proceeds to pack every day of the week full of activity, instead of allowing for the possibility of a Sabbath or other day of rest for those who wish to keep it. Instead, he suggest shopping and preparing food for the week on Sunday. I will take a lot of ideas from this book, but the plan is not for me.
September 29, 2010
2 1/2 stars.
The book begins with a lot of facts about obesity and you've heard them all before. After that the author delves into his theory that if we would simply move more we would be healthier. The interesting thing about the book, and why I checked it out from the library (no, I don't think I need to lose weight), is I had heard about the detailed program in the book. Detailed may be an understatement. The author lays out instructions for every day of his multiple week program. Directives include things like: buy a plant, volunteer, in addition to taking walks and eating better. For the program to actually be successful, I think it would have to be done with a group. Overall, if you are looking for a life change, this book may fit the bill for you, for me I just want to eek out a little more energy so I can make it through the day.
The book begins with a lot of facts about obesity and you've heard them all before. After that the author delves into his theory that if we would simply move more we would be healthier. The interesting thing about the book, and why I checked it out from the library (no, I don't think I need to lose weight), is I had heard about the detailed program in the book. Detailed may be an understatement. The author lays out instructions for every day of his multiple week program. Directives include things like: buy a plant, volunteer, in addition to taking walks and eating better. For the program to actually be successful, I think it would have to be done with a group. Overall, if you are looking for a life change, this book may fit the bill for you, for me I just want to eek out a little more energy so I can make it through the day.
January 19, 2013
This book has already had a big impact on my life, just two weeks after I finished. Levine's advice is very good and should be taught and practiced in schools, homes and workplaces across the nation. Five stars for that.
As a book there are several flaws that detract from the score. I bought this as an e-book. The book is packed with paperwork to complete (trackers, contracts, lists) with no good way of completing the paperwork. This led to me dropping a lot of the paperwork-related exercises, since it seems wrong to sit in front of the PC for hours to make up for this flaw.
The book is also packaging NEAT slightly too much, and at times it feels more like a sales pitch than advice rooted firmly in science. If it had dropped the need to hype it would have been a better experience to read. So three stars as a book.
As a book there are several flaws that detract from the score. I bought this as an e-book. The book is packed with paperwork to complete (trackers, contracts, lists) with no good way of completing the paperwork. This led to me dropping a lot of the paperwork-related exercises, since it seems wrong to sit in front of the PC for hours to make up for this flaw.
The book is also packaging NEAT slightly too much, and at times it feels more like a sales pitch than advice rooted firmly in science. If it had dropped the need to hype it would have been a better experience to read. So three stars as a book.
December 24, 2013
I did not finish this book as the second half of it is the "plan" to follow in order to "Move a Little, Lose a Lot." I found the first part of the book that explains the reason our bodies need to move interesting. It has certainly made me more aware of how much of my day is spent sitting. The title is a little misleading as the plan actually requires quite a bit of movement. He doesn't call it "exercising" in the way that we normally think of exercising -going to the gym, running, swimming, working up a sweat - but it is more than just getting up our of your chair more often that usual. The plan requires a lot of walking and changes in your diet. I was not really interested in that part of the book, but more the science part of it.
Might be a good way for people to become healthier if you really do not like to work up a sweat.
Might be a good way for people to become healthier if you really do not like to work up a sweat.
February 22, 2011
I think this method makes sense. I'm going to try the 8-week program. I'm hoping it'll help me stay in shape so I don't have as much weight to lose after the baby arrives in October.
UPDATE: I did the program June-August. Well, actually, I did the exercising part of the program (not the food and not all the activities). It really helped. I was in good shape when I delivered my baby, and had all the baby weight off in about 2 months. I really like how I have now changed my thinking about planning family activities. It's fun to get out an "do" something as a family, instead of the same old, same old. There are so many community things going on all the time, and a lot of them are free. I just never took the time to find out about them.
2/7/11 - Started reading again.
UPDATE: I did the program June-August. Well, actually, I did the exercising part of the program (not the food and not all the activities). It really helped. I was in good shape when I delivered my baby, and had all the baby weight off in about 2 months. I really like how I have now changed my thinking about planning family activities. It's fun to get out an "do" something as a family, instead of the same old, same old. There are so many community things going on all the time, and a lot of them are free. I just never took the time to find out about them.
2/7/11 - Started reading again.
April 3, 2012
Here it is:
Stand and Move more, sit not too much.
Idea is a 5 , Delivery especially toward the end is a 3. Worth getting from library.
Additional research confirms:
This suggests, says Qibin Qi, lead study author and a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, that both an increase in exercise and a reduction in sedentary behavior are necessary to reduce your genetic predisposition to obesity.
http://news.menshealth.com/activate-y...
a Q & A with the author:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/w...
Stand and Move more, sit not too much.
Idea is a 5 , Delivery especially toward the end is a 3. Worth getting from library.
Additional research confirms:
This suggests, says Qibin Qi, lead study author and a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, that both an increase in exercise and a reduction in sedentary behavior are necessary to reduce your genetic predisposition to obesity.
http://news.menshealth.com/activate-y...
a Q & A with the author:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/w...
March 19, 2009
As books for your well being go, this one actually makes sense and does not restrict food choices or tell you to exercise 50 minutes a day every day with impossible expectations. This follows the idea that we need to put more movement into daily life, such as walking around your office or home when talking on the phone, weeding your own flower beds instead of hiring someone to do it for you, etc. The ideas in this book are accessable and realistic to achieve and I will be trying some of them.
March 7, 2011
Got a few good tips. Learned some stuff. I didn't read this to follow the diet...just to learn more about NEAT and how it can be such a powerful tool for weight loss, especially for inactive folks. I've worked with Dr. Levine in the past. He is fabulous and loves what he does. His enthusiasm shows in this book.
February 7, 2012
I liked reading this and I learned alot about calories and how small standing for 2 hours a day can make such a big difference on your body. I liked the plan but I feel like the book was targeted for older men and women not for people in their 20's. But again this is only my opinion :) Happy Reading
August 25, 2013
Good ideas, especially for people who sit at their desks or are in meetings much of the day. Have started walking 20 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at lunch, and 30 minutes after work. And moving at home, getting up from the desk at scheduled intervals. This book supports all the studies about how bad it is for your health to sit all day. Sitting disease.
August 18, 2014
Dare you to read this and not want to walk. I found it an interesting read, and a lot of it made sense. I do sometimes wonder why people phone people in the same building as them rather than going over and talking to them, and this argues for that, that we should be moving, that our sedentary lives are killing us and that we should walk more, move more, energise ourselves.
Food for thought
Food for thought
August 12, 2016
I love the concept of this book. Although I exercise nearly every day, I hadn't realized how offset that was by my several hits of sitting. Levine provides an incredibly thorough set of examples of how to bring more movement into your life. I personally did not enjoy the prescriptive way it was structured, but I simply read it through and took the pieces I needed.
October 31, 2009
Well if I take the time to walk 3x' a day for 20 minutes, I am on my way to the solutions offered here.
He makes a good case that we are way too sedentary. All you have to do is move...he has some good motivation for moving.
He makes a good case that we are way too sedentary. All you have to do is move...he has some good motivation for moving.
June 6, 2010
So much jargon, when it really just saying...got to move it, move it! It is a journey and you have to start today on your path. Weight loss overall is to see what works and doesn't work, then stick with what does! He says it towards the ending of the book!
March 5, 2011
I enjoyed reading the first half of the book. The research was interesting. I didn't follow the program, but I found the ideas interesting. I think you can implement (and many people do) his ideas without using his program.
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