The Fidget Factor in Weight Control

Someone in my aerobics class can eat whatever she wants and not gain weight. She exercises religiously like all her gym friends but the difference is she can eat high-calorie food all day long while her classmates, myself included, have to watch what they eat. If she weren't so darn nice, we would all hate her.

I know someone else who eats ice cream and chocolates every day and does not exercise. He isn't skinny but he isn't fat either. If I ate what he did, I would easily be 10 pounds overweight despite working out every day.

If you have to sweat it out and count your calories to maintain your weight, you must be wondering what secret formula these people have to get away with eating so much without putting on the pounds.

Exercise scientists have been asking the same question and one of the answers they found is that people who can eat a lot without gaining much weight despite not exercising are usually "fidgeters."

Fidgeting is a spontaneous physical activity or movement made without thinking. Examples are crossing and uncrossing the legs, toe tapping and leg jiggling.

Metabolism expert Dr. Eric Ravussin did an experiment by placing participants inside a "calorie-measuring" room that contained motion detectors to monitor how much movement they made. He found that there were big differences in the way people performed an everyday activity like watching television. Some participants sat as still as statues without moving a muscle. Others changed their position every so often. There were also those who kept getting up and moving around the room. Ravussin estimated that the fidget factor burned up 300-800 calories a day.

In another experiment at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, researchers James Levine and Norman Eberhardt found that people who fidgeted while seated burn 40-60 more calories compared to people who sit motionless. Fidgeters burn 70-100 calories more per hour when they stand compared to more laid-back people who stand still.

To find out how much of a role fidgeting plays in weight gain, Levine and his team fed 16 normal weight sedentary men and women an extra 1,000 calories a day for two months. The participants gained between 2 to 16 pounds. The ones who gained the least were the one who did the most fidgeting.

What makes one person a fidgeter and another person a non-fidgeter? It seems that this tendency is controlled by your genes. Ravussin noted that fidgeting and restlessness ran in families.

Fidgeting is "non-volitional movement." It is done spontaneously and without your realizing it. But even though you cannot force yourself to become a fidgeter, you can still learn a thing or two from these hyperactive people by consciously trying to be more active.

When talking on your cordless phone or cell phone, walk around instead of sitting down. You'll burn 35 to 50 calories in 10 minutes.

If you sit down while you watch TV, you burn 72 calories an hour, but if you do light housework while you are watching, you can burn between 144-216 calories.

If you do exercises like abdominal crunches and leg lifts during the commercial breaks, you will tone your muscles and burn about 65 calories in one hour (assuming there are 16 minutes worth of ads in a one-hour TV show).

Instead of parking your car or being dropped off at the mall entrance closest to the store you want to go to, try doing the opposite. Enter the mall through the farthest entrance. Even if you just walk at a strolling pace, you will burn 3.5 calories for every additional minute it takes you to get to and from your destination. That may not seem like much, but if you can accumulate an hour's worth of strolling, you can burn an extra 206 calories daily. If you walk at a fast pace, you can increase this to 270-360 calories per hour.

By taking the stairs instead of the elevator, you burn 8 calories a minute. If you live in a multilevel house or work in a building, take advantage and use the stairs as often as possible. You can burn as many calories as doing a 30-minute step aerobics or kickboxing class.

If you have no time to exercise at home or in a gym, consciously looking for ways to become more physically active can help you keep your weight down. And even if you are involved in an exercise program, a "burn 'em up active lifestyle is more effective than just exercise alone," according to nutritionist Gay Riley of NetNutritionist.com.

Riley compared the calorie difference in the lifestyles of a person who is sedentary and works out and a person who is active and works out. In an eight-hour period, the sedentary exerciser burned 914 calories while the active exerciser burned 1,436 calories. The difference is that the active exerciser burned additional calories by taking the stairs, walking to do errands, housework and watched less TV.

So even if you are not a natural-born fidgeter like the people I mentioned above, you can still burn more calories by keeping in mind the advice of Frank Butterfield of the American Council of Exercise: "Sitting up is better than lying down, standing is better than sitting up, and walking is better than standing."

Continue reading here: Lift Weights to Lose Weight

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