if you're really interested in burning calories and you don't have the opportunity to exercise or you're averse to exercise for whatever reason is one of the strongest stimula that one can incorporate to stimulate fat loss 800 to 2500 calories per day that's a considerable amount this has nothing to do with exercise in the traditional form these small movements are actually mobilizing and oxidizing a lot of fat and a lot of energy so one of the most powerful ways to stimulate epinephrine which is also called adrenaline from these neurons that connect to fat and to thereby
stimulate more fat mobilization and oxidation is through movement but I'm not talking about exercise the type of movement that I'm referring to is extremely subtle and some of you may be familiar with this type of movement but I'm guessing you're probably not familiar with what I'm about to tell you which is that shiver or shivering is a strong stimulus for the release of adrenaline into fat and the increase in fat oxidation and mobilization but shiver is not just induced by cold and there are other subtle forms of movement that can greatly increase fat metabolism and
fat loss there was a group in England during the 1960s and70s that discovered a pathway by which subtle forms of movement can greatly increase fat loss this is the work of Rothwell and stock it's very famous in the thermogenesis literature and I learned about this early on when I was an under undergraduate and I asked how did they come across this and here's How The Story Goes they were aware that some people overeat and yet don't put on weight other people overeat even just a little bit and they seem to accumulate extra adapost tissue now
this is long before all the discussions about microbiome and hormone factors and you know was long before it many of the hormone factors besides insulin had even been discovered what they did was they examined people who overate and did not gain weight and what they observed was that those people engaged in lots of subtle movement throughout the day in other words they were fidgeters and that's what they called them what they found were people that overeat but don't gain weight as a consequence and in fact many people who had low levels of body fat had
a lot of resting Tremor not of the parkinsonian type but they would bounce their knee while they were sitting when they would talk they would engage in very angular movements they were sort of electric in fact now in science I was chuckling about this as I was diving back into this literature because the other day I heard a a wonderful lecture on a totally different topic from a colleague of mine we all adore him uh he's over in Europe and he's this tremendously successful scientist so we like to poke fun at him and every one
of his movements is incredibly electric and staccato and he's rail thin and he eats like a horse and so it fits very well into the discovery of Rothwell and stock who discovered that fidgeters people that bounce their knee people that have a headbob while they're listening people that nod a lot people that stand up and sit sit down a lot throughout the day and people that pace burn anywhere from 800 to 2500 calories more than the EXP the control group in the experiments that they looked at and indeed there's been a modern look into all
this and these numbers check out that simply moving around a lot even if those are subtle movements greatly increases the amount of energy that you burn and people who overeat the people who can have the the second or the third doughnut or Donuts at all and don't seem to put on weight to the same degree they are people that move around a lot even when seated they are people that will often move their limbs very quickly as well that there even have been studies that have explored other things that correlate with fidgeters fidgeters stand up
very quickly at the end of a lecture or they start to gather their things very quickly whereas non- fidgeters don't so dogs like my Bulldog Costello definitely not a fidgeter every movement is incredibly slow and deliberate sitting down is a process if you ask him to sit down it's sort of a slow motion you ask him to get up and he kind of looks at you size and stands up the fidgeters are the opposite of that right you say how are you doing and they go great so even sometimes their speech will be accelerated although
not always but staccato movements fidgeting Etc and in 2015 and again in 2017 there have been studies that have been have explored this using some Modern metabolic tracking and indeed simply moving a lot being a fidgeter bouncing your knee standing up and pacing several times or many times throughout the day led to considerable amounts of fat loss and weight loss when people were ingesting the same amount of food if they overate they were able to compensate and burn off that food and if they were trying to lose weight and they Incorporated this fidgeting protocol of
deliberately trying to fidget more and move around during the day Pace stand up more quickly sit down more often sit down and stand up more often rather they found that they greatly increased their weight loss anywhere from 20 to 30% increases and in some cases you know there are always those few people who burned a lot more it seems to work best in people who are already slightly overweight so for people that are overweight who are kind of averse to exercise fidgeting might actually be a good entry point and 800 to 2500 calories is a
considerable amount of calories when you really think about it now why am I telling you this well there's clearly a tool to export from this which is that you can increase the amount of calories burn without having to go on additional long runs I do hope that people are exercising regularly because it's so important for other aspects of brain and body Health but nonetheless we all we are all time limited and we are not all so ready to embrace exercise I have a family member who has been slowly coaxed into exercise but if I were
to tell her for instance you need to fidget more she'd probably go for it so this is a powerful way to increase the calories that are burned now that's great and you can think about the protocols but I want to Nest that protocol in what I said before which is that fat is controlled by these neurons and the epinephrine they release you might say well how could these little micro movements lead to so much caloric burn and that's where it really gets interesting Rothwell and stock and others that they worked with subsequently found that these
little fidgety movements the engagement of certain aspects of our musculature that are nothing like exercise it's not these large coordinated or rhythmic uh body movements but rather subtle little bits of fidgety movement and here I am doing a lot of fidgety movement as an example tapping the pen this kind of thing there I was probably that kid in class most of the time I was like I try not to do it to irritate people but I was definitely a knee bouncer um I'm not particularly lean or or not but um you know I was definitely
this is a a common activity for me people that do that sort of thing it turns out that it's not the kind of caloric burn that we normally think of of like oh you're running lifting weight swimming yoga etc those subtle movements of our core musculature not just the core but all our Limbs and our in our musculature those low-level movements they trigger epinephrine release from these neurons and they stimulate the mobilization of fat and then that fat is oxidized at higher rates and I find this fascinating I wish more people knew about it which
is why I'm telling you about it today this has nothing to do with exercise in the traditional form and yet 800 to 2500 calories per day that's a considerable amount of fat oxidized if you are in a calorie maintenance mode or a if you're sub caloric that's going to add to it still additional fat loss the data on this are tremendous I'll link to a few studies if you're really interested in learning about what's called neat neat which is non-exercise activity thermogenesis neat so what's the protocol fidget if you're really interested in burning calories and
you already exercise you want to burn more or you don't have the opportunity to exercise or you're averse to exercise for whatever reason fidgeting movements staccato movements standing up walking around pacing all the sort of nervous activities that we're so critical of in other people and sometimes in ourselves are actually mobilizing and oxidizing a lot of fat and a lot of energy and while this probably won't compensate for chronic overeating the caloric burn from this is considerable and very likely can offset a you know a meal that had excessive calories or a kind of steady
state of accumul of eating too much and it also starts to open up all sorts of thoughts and discussion about you know when you travel you tend to eat foods that are kind of outside your your normal ones we tend to eat uh you know foods that aren't so great for us we also tend to be a little bit more sedentary when we travel we're on the plane Etc but all of that aside just the use of something like low-level movement and it's almost like a Tremor but also the these like short small fidgety movements
I'm intentionally doing a lot of these today so you have examples that you can use that to select from if you like these can have a major effect on fat loss and it raises a second tool if these low meaning these small movements that we engage in trigger epinephrine adrenaline release from these neurons of the sympathetic nervous system that innervate fat and increase fat mobilization and oxidation now it should make sense why shivering is one of the strongest stimul that one can incorporate to stimulate fat loss [Music]