Product Description
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.
Product Features
One of the commenters says it doesn’t take a PhD to say that activity is good, but I have to say that I’m a PhD in a related area and I think this book is terrific. (I don’t have any professional or personal connection to the author.)
Professionally: This book uses the best theories of health psychology to motivate readers to make changes in their lives. The main obstacles that most people face are not lack of knowledge or even the motivation to make changes. The most important obstacle is usually self-efficacy, people’s beliefs that they are capable of making the necessary changes, including psychological thought distortions such as negative self-talk, perfectionism, etc.
This book prevents perfectionist thinking by asking readers to give themselves points. If you get more than 3/4 of the points for a 2 week period the book says you’ve been successful. By contrast, most books will assume you’ve done everything in the book, and people who have skipped steps may get discouraged and put the book aside. The book tries to build a reader’s self-efficacy by asking her to work on other tasks, break larger tasks into components, and other experimentally proven techniques.
So, as a PhD in health, I can say that this book is cleverly designed.
Personally, I think this book is helpful because it reminded me that the time I’m spending at the gym isn’t the only time that counts. After living in a walking/biking city for my whole life, I moved to a driving suburb and unsurprisingly gained 10 pounds. I’m going to the gym regularly and am careful with my diet and am gradually losing weight, but this book reminded me that I should think also about my non-exercise activity since that’s what I’m doing for the 23 hours a day that I’m not at the gym.
I read the book 5 days ago, and it’s really affected how I see my overall health picture. I’ve been treadmill shopping and am strategizing how to build an inexpensive treadmill desk (walking 1 mile per hour for 8 hours = 800 calories). I’ve read some blogs of people who have treadmill desks and am impressed at their weight loss no matter what weights they started out at. I have tried using my computer standing up and found that I’m much more efficient that way.
This book’s plan does not replace regular diet and exercise, but it’s an important reminder that the 23 hours you’re not at the gym can help weight loss as well.
I have probably read just about every weight loss book out there. At 58, I can’t run anymore, so walking and cycling are my cardio exercises. This book helped me create and implement an activity regime to help burn more calories. I eat healthily, and watch calories, so I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the meal sections. The book starts your activity off small, say 15 minutes of walking 2 – 3x per day, working your way up in steady and doable increments. The goal setting section is a winner as well.
Get healthy!
It’s great to read a book that gives you a thoughtful way to lose unwanted pounds, and in a healthy way. It’s not hard to do and because of this I find the process inspirational.
Levine starts his book with the over done phrase “diets don’t.” Yet Levine jumps right in and gives us yet another gimmick. Levine program introduces “fuel cells.” First one is to convert the value of a food into a fuel cell and then eat a certain amount of fuel cells at certain meals. Though monotonous I find calorie counting more straight forward and effective.
Yes the world our grandparents lived in naturally had them burning way more calories every day. Walking to work, tilling the fields, even washing a load of laundry was a larger choir for them then it is for me. Drawing the water, bend and scrub, wring out, vs open a door, toss inside, adding a scoop of soap. Levine emphasizes changing one’s environment to increase calorie burn. A little here, a little there all adds up over time. However here is where Levine runs short. His examples of increased activity seem a little to few and far between to make significant health changes. Levine’s expectations of small changes such as putting resource books on higher shelf, pace while talking on the phone seem overblown.
An example of a random proscribed day in his plan. . . . . Week 3 day 5 NEAT FEET instead of seating, stand an additional 2 hrs 15 min’s. NEAT EXERCISE: Forty course chargers and twelve sunrise stretches. NEAT beat: Dug my hands into a dirty job today. Jot a few notes on what it was. NEAT Fuel Cells: two fuel-cell breakfast; two fuel-cell lunch; two fuel-cell dinner; one fuel-cell snack.
If you choose to do what the author advises that walks to the "basic chargers and parts of the Sunrise", you are officially the exercise (as opposed to the normal daily activity). All previous articles I remember reading Neat focused mainly on people, who of course usually bother to sit still instead. You can probably stretch the definition a little to the action, such as hanging clothes on a line rather than using dryers (for many people, hair-dryer is much easier than without washing), and have become when you use a computer (or doing any other activity desk, in this issue), instead of meeting, if the computer is on the counter, and no desk. However, when using the treadmill, which actively "use", or doing something else. Yes, you can fit more activity in the day, but there are other books there (too busy to exercise? By Porter Shimer comes to mind), which cover the subject better.