【译者：生命在于运动？我从小不喜欢运动。在大学的时候，常常逃避早操。一直到过了50岁，一个偶然的机会让我迷上了瑜伽。疫情中，多多少少地每天做一些运动。但是，我总是怀疑“生命在于运动”，因为我奶奶、父母几乎没有参加过什么“锻炼身体”。这篇文章，让我明白了锻炼身体不一定非得“锻炼”。】

有一种甚至不用去健身房就能变得更健康的方法。 这就是所谓的NEAT

如果有人问我是否进行了足够的锻炼，我的回答将是明确的：是的，我会抽出时间（锻炼身体到）出汗、让心脏（使劲）跳动、并四处走动。

我可能不会提及，我更喜欢开车半英里去取咖啡，而不是步行 15 分钟。 或者，使用“drive through”（不下车）听起来比实际下车（买咖啡）更具吸引力。 或者你很少会发现我选择在下班时艰难地爬楼梯。

这些捷径本身并没有什么大不了的。 毕竟我今天锻炼了，对吧？ 但加起来，这些“懒”因素正在慢慢削弱有时被忽视的代谢健康来源。

这个概念被称为“非运动活动产热”，简称 NEAT。

这基本上是一个人通过日常活动燃烧的所有卡路里，不包括有目的的体育锻炼。 想一想你在一天中所做的一些轻松的活动，例如做家务、在超市过道漫步、爬楼梯、在办公桌前上下摆动腿、或做饭。

“如此之多的‘活动’，在一定程度上解释了为什么作者研究如此困难，因为你到底如何测量这一切？” 詹姆斯·莱文 (James Levine) 博士是一位内分泌学家，他在梅奥诊所 (Mayo Clinic) 期间率先开展了 NEAT 研究，现在是非营利组织 Ipsen 基金会的负责人。

但是，研究人员在理解 为什么NEAT有效 、以及我们如何利用它的好处方面已经取得了进展。 他们了解到，即使是很小的行为改变也可以增强或减少你获得的 NEAT 数量，这可以以强有力的方式塑造你的健康。

他们还发现，体型相同的人的 NEAT 水平可能存在显着差异，具体取决于他们的工作、居住地、以及起身和走动的生物动力等因素。

显而易见的是，我们许多过着和屏幕打交道的生活的人，有能力为我们的日常生活节奏注入更多的NEAT，不一定是通过生活方式的巨大改变，而是通过小规模的改变，主要需要思维方式的转变。

以下是有关 NEAT 工作原理、以及如何充分利用 NEAT 的信息。

NEAT 能够填补你能量消耗的空白

我们日常的大部分能量消耗都是相对固定的。 其中一半以上的卡路里用于支持基本的身体功能，即所谓的基础代谢率。

“这在很大程度上是不可改变的，”科罗拉多大学安舒茨医学院的运动生理学家 Seth Creasy 解释道。 “有些事情可能会改变你的基础代谢率，但不会很大。”

消化和代谢食物会占用我们日常能量的另一部分，大约为 10% 左右，而且同样无法显着改变。

“剩下的 30% ～ 40% 可以用于你的所有活动，”肯特州立大学神经科学家科琳·诺瓦克 (Colleen Novak) 的实验室研究 NEAT，她说。

这就是 NEAT 的用武之地——在一天中四处走动可以消耗掉剩余的能量部分。

即使对于那些经常锻炼的人来说，NEAT 在燃烧卡路里方面的作用通常也比锻炼更大。

这并不是说 NEAT 应该被视为是更有条理的剧烈体育锻炼的替代品，因为剧烈体育锻炼本身对健康有益。 但对于某些人来说，加速 NEAT 可能更容易，尤其是那些不经常运动（或者根本不运动）的人。

“有时很难每天抽出 30 ～ 60 分钟进行日常锻炼，”Creasy 说。 “这些小行为会累积起来，最终导致大量的能量消耗。”

常见的日常活动可以惊人地增加你的 NEAT

早在 Apple Watch （苹果手表）出现之前，Levine 就开始分析日常活动的能量消耗，进行涉及身体传感器和其他技术的严格控制实验，以了解对代谢健康的影响。

他解释说，坐在电脑前只比躺着休息多燃烧 5% ～ 7% 的卡路里。 坐着时过度坐立不安（Fidgeting）可能会多燃烧几个百分点。

“如果我开始四处走动，比如熨烫或折叠衣服，我可以将其提高到 15%，”他说。 “但当我开始走路的那一刻，一切都改变了。”

只需每小时步行一英里半到两英里（人们在购物时通常采用的速度）就可以使新陈代谢率加倍。

所有这些都开始让人们意识到，看似微不足道的动作，比如走到街角的商店，或者修剪草坪，可以在一天中产生巨大的变化。 即使是嚼口香糖也能发挥惊人的作用（根据 Levine 的计算，每小时比静息代谢率高出约 20 卡路里）。

他举了一个再熟悉不过的例子：下班回家，坐下来看电视直到晚上。 如果你整个晚上都这样，你的 NEAT 最终可能只有 30 卡路里热量。 从事一些迫使你回家后四处走动的家庭项目，可能会在同一时间内使你的 NEAT 摄入量增加 700 卡路里或更多。

NEAT的核心是很简单：将流动性——最好是任何能让你四处走动的东西——注入到原本默认的坐着的时间中。

人体内部的 Apple Watch：生物学可能会影响我们对 NEAT 的追求

有证据表明，有些人在摄入额外卡路里时具有更好的感知能力，这可能会无意识地激发更多运动的动力。【译者：哈哈，我就是。】

20 世纪 90 年代，Levine 和他的同事进行了一项现已被广泛引用的研究，该研究调查了 16 名瘦人在两个月内每天额外摄入 1,000 卡路里的热量。 发现体重增加差异很大，NEAT 水平直接预测一个人避免增加脂肪的能力。

“那些有能力燃烧掉多余卡路里并保持苗条身材的人，就是那些可以开启 NEAT 的人，”莱文说。

明尼苏达大学研究肥胖症的综合生物学家和生理学家凯茜·科茨 (Cathy Kotz) 表示，NEAT 会根据摄入的能量而自然调节的观点在后续研究中并不总是得到重复。

“研究这种补偿措施有点困难，”她指出，“我想说，目前还没有定论。”

然而，来自实验室的证据支持我们的生物学在 NEAT 中发挥作用的观点。 Kotz 正在研究大脑中一种名为食欲素的化合物，它似乎在调节 NEAT 方面发挥着关键作用。

当她正在研究它如何影响动物的进食行为时，她注意到它还产生了另一种影响。

“通过大量实验，我们发现，当我们给动物提供更多的食欲素，或者刺激它们大脑中的食欲素神经元时，它们会走动得更多，”她说。

这可能有助于解释为什么某些动物在相同的环境下，吃相同的食物最终会增加体重，而其他动物却不会。

在 NEAT 的背景下，Kotz 将食欲素的作用描述为“类似于我们的 Apple Watch 试图做的事情——时不时地提醒我们，‘嘿，你应该站起来，你应该走动。’”

“食欲素似乎很自然地做到这一点，”她说。

此类实验尚未在人类身上进行，但科茨说，希望药物可以利用食欲素，使人们更容易活跃起来。 然而，这并不意味着食欲素“信号或语气”较低的人注定要久坐。

“我认为只要有意识地意识到你确实需要更多的运动，就可以克服这个问题，”她说。

诺瓦克表示，增加 NEAT 是控制体重的“未开发资源”，但它本身并不太有效果——也就是说，如果不改变饮食的话。

保持 NEAT 水平对健康有持续的好处

这不仅仅与体重有关。 久坐与一系列与肥胖无关的健康问题有关，从心血管疾病到关节问题再到心理健康问题。

佛罗里达大学研究身体活动和衰老的流行病学家托德·马尼尼说，随着年龄的增长，保持运动变得更加重要。

在一项研究中，Manini 追踪了大约 300 名老年人在大约两周内从身体活动（包括锻炼）中消耗的能量。

他们每日能量消耗的“简单事实”有助于预测大约7～10年后的生存或死亡风险。 一个人每天每燃烧 287 卡路里，死亡的几率就会降低约 30%。

马尼尼说：“我们立即认为这个能量消耗较高群体的人将是锻炼的全明星，但事实并非如此。”

事实证明，那些死亡可能性较小的人并没有比其他人锻炼得更多，这似乎是他们生活中有许多NEAT的事。 “他们居住的地方更有可能有楼梯，并且更有可能成为志愿者，”他说。

“我们并不将这些等同于锻炼，但它就是运动，”他说。

跳过捷径（懒方式）并提高你的 NEAT（水平）

最大化 NEAT 的解决方案不一定很吸引人（尽管这也可以燃烧相当多的卡路里），但其中许多都相对容易采取。 它们通常涉及选择付出更多的努力，而不是选择便利。

不幸的是，我们自然的走动冲动可能与我们周围的环境发生直接冲突。 许多人坐在屏幕前完成工作、办理银行业务和购物等个人事务，以及享受休闲时光。

对于那些从事办公室工作的人来说，工作对我们的 NEAT 有着特别强大的影响。 “如果你的大脑正在共享走动信号，而你的工作又把你绑在椅子上，那么这是不自然的，你就不会走动，”莱文说。

NEAT 在不同的社会和职业中差异很大。 研究表明，相同体型的人之间可能存在高达 2,000 卡路里的差异，具体取决于他们从事的职业的体力活动程度。

“仅在他们居住的环境中，生活在农业社区的人们的活动量实际上是北美瘦或超重人群的三倍，”他说。

诺瓦克在描述 NEAT 谱的两端时喜欢用她自己的祖父母的例子。

“其中一位住在农场里，经常出去做事，挖杂草。你就是不能让他（们）坐下来，”她说。 “另一位只喜欢静、和我们说说话。”

据估计，必须坐下来工作的人每天可能会通过 NEAT 燃烧 700 卡路里； 需要整天站立的工作会是这个数字的两倍。

由于工作占用了如此多的时间，因此尝试增加 NEAT 是一个明智的选择。

尝试站立办公桌、在会议期间步行，或者如果你在家工作，请尝试用家务来结束一天的工作日。

Levine 的个人 NEAT 技巧是：他没有寻找最近的停车位，而是找到了较远的停车位，然后步行 20 分钟。

“然后我会在一天结束时走回来，开着我的车回家，”他说。 “步行 40 分钟，免费消耗 100 卡路里热量！”

工作之余，诸如吸尘、洗衣服、或园艺等平凡的任务在一小时内可以燃烧数百卡路里。 如果你四处走动，玩电子游戏每小时消耗的热量可能会从大约 50 卡路里增加到100 卡路里以上。 走楼梯所消耗的能量是乘坐电梯时的三倍以上。 如果你在广告期间走来走去，甚至看电视也会发生变化。

马尼尼说：“令我惊讶的是，铺床实际上比你可能想到的其他活动（例如慢步散步）消耗更多的卡路里。”

值得注意的是：马尼尼表示，流行的可穿戴设备中的卡路里估算可以很好地测量步行，但它们在测量其他生活方式活动时并不那么准确。

最终，关键是要根除阻碍我们自然行动冲动的捷径。

“NEAT 的强大之处在于它绝对可供所有人使用，”Levine 说道。 “我们都可以做到，而且我们都可以做得更多一点。”

There's a way to get healthier without even going to a gym. It's called NEAT

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/22/1189303227/neat-fitness-non-exercise-activity-thermogenesis

If anyone asked if I get enough exercise, my answer would be unequivocal: Yes, I make a point of carving out time to sweat, get my heart pumping and move around.

I probably would not mention that I prefer to drive the half mile to pick up my coffee instead of taking a 15-minute walk. Or that using the drive thru sounds infinitely more appealing than actually getting out of my car. Or that you'd rarely spot me choosing to trudge up the stairs at the end of the day.

None of these shortcuts on their own feel like that a big deal. After all, I worked out today, right? But added up these are slowly sapping a sometimes overlooked source of metabolic health.

It's a concept that goes by the name non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, for short. 

This is essentially all the calories that a person burns through their daily activity excluding purposeful physical exercise. Think of the low-effort movements that you string together over the course of your day – things like household chores, strolling through the grocery aisle, climbing the stairs, bobbing your leg up and down at your desk, or cooking dinner. 

"The fact there's so many things in part explains why it's so difficult to study, because how on earth do you measure everything?" says Dr. James Levine, an endocrinologist who pioneered research on NEAT while at the Mayo Clinic and now heads the nonprofit Foundation Ipsen.

But researchers have made progress understanding how NEAT works – and how we can tap into its benefits. They've learned that even small behavior changes can amplify or diminish how much NEAT you get, and this can shape your health in powerful ways. 

They've also found that people of the same size can have dramatically different levels of NEAT, based on factors like their job and where they live, as well as their biological drive to get up and move around. 

What's clear is that many of us who live screen-based lives have the capacity to inject more NEAT into our daily rhythms, not necessarily through seismic changes in our lifestyle, but small-scale ones that mostly just require a shift in mindset.

Here's what to know about how NEAT works and how to get more of it.

Much of our daily energy expenditure is relatively fixed. More than half of those calories go toward supporting basic bodily functions, what's known as our basal metabolic rate. 

"That's for the most part not modifiable," explains Seth Creasy, an exercise physiologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. "There are some things that can maybe change your basal metabolic rate, but not drastically."

Digesting and metabolizing food takes up another sliver of our daily energy, roughly about 10%, and likewise cannot be changed significantly. 

"That leaves the remaining 30% to 40% for all your activity," says Colleen Novak, a neuroscientist whose lab studies NEAT at Kent State University. 

That's where NEAT comes in – moving around as you go about your day can chip away at that remaining slice of the energy pie. 

And even among those who do exercise regularly, NEAT usually plays a bigger role in calorie burning than working out. 

It's not that NEAT should be considered a substitute for more structured bouts of intense physical exercise, which has its own well-established health benefits. But revving up NEAT can be more accessible for some people, especially those who don't exercise as much, if at all. 

"Sometimes it's hard to carve out 30 to 60 minutes of your day to do an exercise routine," says Creasy. "These little behaviors can accumulate and end up comprising a lot of energy expenditure."

Long before the advent of the Apple Watch, Levine began picking apart the energetic costs of daily activities, performing tightly controlled experiments involving body sensors and other technology to understand the implications for metabolic health. 

He explains that sitting up as you would at the computer only burns about 5% to 7% more calories than if you were lying down at rest. Fidgeting excessively while seated can bring that up a few percentage points.

"If I then start to move around, let's say ironing or folding up clothes, I can move that to 15%," he says. "But it all changes the moment I start to walk."

Just strolling about one and a half to two miles an hour — the speed people tend to go while shopping — can double your metabolic rate. 

All of this starts to give a sense of how seemingly trivial movements, like walking to the corner store, or mowing the lawn, can add up to make a big difference over the course of the day. Even chewing gum can go a surprisingly long way (about 20 calories an hour above your resting metabolic rate, according to Levine's calculations.)

He offers the all-too-familiar example of coming home from work, sitting down and watching TV for the rest of the night. If that's your entire evening, your NEAT could end up at just 30 calories. Taking up household projects that force you to move around when you get home could alternatively bring up your NEAT by 700 calories or more in the same time frame. 

It's a simple idea at its core: Inject mobility — ideally whatever gets you walking around — into what would otherwise default into sitting time. 

Evidence suggests that some people have a better ability to sense when they take in extra calories and this may set in motion an unconscious drive to move more. 

In the 1990s, Levine and his colleagues carried out a now widely cited study examining what happened to 16 lean people who were fed an extra 1,000 calories a day for two months. The found weight gain varied considerably and that levels of NEAT directly predicted how well someone was able to avoid putting on fat. 

"People who have the capacity to burn off extra calories and remain thin are people who can switch on their NEAT," Levine says.

The idea that NEAT is naturally dialed up or down in response to how much energy you are taking in hasn't always been replicated in subsequent research, says Cathy Kotz, an integrative biologist and physiologist who studies obesity at the University of Minnesota.

"It's just been a little bit hard to study that compensatory action," she notes, "I would say the jury is still out." 

However, evidence from the lab supports the idea that our biology plays a role in NEAT. Kotz is researching a compound in the brain, called orexin, that appears to have a key role in regulating NEAT. 

She was studying how it influenced feeding behavior in animals when she noticed that it also was having another effect.

"Through a lot of experiments, we discovered that when we either give the animals more orexin, or we stimulate their orexin neurons in the brain, it causes them to move more," she says. 

This may help explain why certain animals in the same setting with the same food, end up gaining weight, while others don't. 

In the context of NEAT, Kotz describes the role of orexin as "similar to what our Apple Watch is trying to do – every now and again reminding us, 'hey, you should stand up, you should move around.'" 

"Orexin seems to do this naturally," she says. 

These kinds of experiments haven't been done yet in humans, but the hope, Kotz says, is that a medication could leverage orexin so that it's easier for people to be active. However, that doesn't mean people who have lower orexin "signaling or tone" are destined to be sedentary. 

"I think it can be overcome just by being conscious and aware of the fact that you do need to move more," she says. 

Novak says increasing NEAT is an "untapped resource" for managing weight, but that it's not effective on its own — that is, absent changes in diet.

It's not all about weight. Being sedentary is associated with a range of health problems independent of obesity, from cardiovascular disease to joint problems to mental health issues. 

Keeping yourself moving is all the more important as we age, says Todd Manini, an epidemiologist who researches physical activity and aging at the University of Florida. 

In one study, Manini tracked how much energy about 300 older adults expended from physical activity, including exercise, over about two weeks. 

This snapshot of their daily energy expenditure helped predict the risk of being alive or dead about seven to 10 years later. For every 287 calories a person burned per day, there was about a 30% lower chance of dying. 

"We immediately thought that the people in this higher group would be the all-stars of exercising," says Manini, "But that wasn't the case at all."

It turned out those who were less likely to die didn't exercise more than others, it seemed to be the NEAT in their lives. "They were more likely to have stairs where they live and were more likely to volunteer," he says. 

"Those things we don't equate to exercise, but it is movement," he says. 

The solutions for maximizing NEAT aren't necessarily sexy (although that, too, can burn quite a few calories), but many of them are relatively easy to take up. They often involve choosing to make slightly more effort, rather than choosing convenience.

Unfortunately, our natural impulses to move can be in direct conflict with the environment around us. Many people sit at screens to do their work, their personal errands like banking and shopping, and for their leisure time.

For those with office jobs, work exerts an especially powerful influence over our NEAT. "If your brain is sharing signals to move and you have a job that ties you to the chair, it's unnatural and you don't move," says Levine. 

NEAT varies greatly across societies and occupations. Research shows there can be as much as a 2,000-calorie difference between people of the same body size, depending on how physically active their occupation is. 

"People who are living in agricultural communities are literally moving three times more than even lean or overweight people in North America, just in the environments in which they live," he says.

Novak likes to use the example of her own grandparents when describing the two ends of the NEAT spectrum. 

"One lived on a farm and was constantly out doing things, digging out weeds. You just couldn't have them sit down," she says. "The other grandparent just preferred to chill and talk to us." 

Estimates show that someone who has to sit down for work might burn 700 calories per day through NEAT; a job that involves standing all day would be twice that.

Since jobs take up so much time, it's a smart place to try to increase NEAT.

Try standing desks, walking during meetings, or if you work from home, try breaking up the work day with household chores.

Levine's personal NEAT trick: Instead of hunting for the closest parking spot, he finds one farther away and walks 20 minutes. 

"Then I walk back at the end of the day and take my car and go home," he says. "That's a 40 minute walk, 100 calories for free!" 

Outside of work, mundane tasks like vacuuming, doing the laundry or gardening can burn a few hundred calories in an hour. Playing a video game can go from about 50 calories an hour to more than 100 if you move around. Taking the stairs can more than triple the amount of energy you'd use when riding the elevator. Even watching TV can be transformed if you walk aroundduring commercials. 

"I was surprised that making your bed actually expends more calories than other activities that you might think of, like taking a slow walk," says Manini. 

Worth noting: Manini says the calorie estimates in popular wearable devices can measure walking pretty well, but they aren't all that accurate at gauging other lifestyle activities. 

Ultimately, the key is to root out the shortcuts that hamper our natural impulses to move.

"The power of NEAT is that it's available to absolutely everybody," Levine says. "We can all do it and we can all do a little bit more." 

This story was edited for broadcast by Jane Greenhalgh and for web by Carmel Wroth. Illustrations by Laura Gao. Art production by Pierre Kattar.