Modern Metabolic Health with Dr. Lindsay Ogle, MD

Raising Metabolism With NEAT: Small Daily Moves That Change Your Health

• Lindsay Ogle, MD

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We explore how non-exercise activity thermogenesis boosts daily calorie burn and why small, frequent movement can unlock stalled progress. We share step targets, practical tactics for desk jobs, and the wider metabolic, heart, joint, and mental health gains.

• what NEAT is and how it works
• how NEAT fits into total daily energy expenditure
• examples of daily movement that raise NEAT
• step goals, tracking, and gradual progression
• strategies for sedentary jobs and busy parents
• metabolic, cardiovascular, and joint benefits
• using outdoor movement and microbreaks
• how NEAT supports long-term weight maintenance

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Dr. Lindsay Ogle, MD:

Welcome to the Modern Metabolic Health Podcast with your host, Dr. Lindsay Ogle, Board Certified Family Medicine and Obesity Medicine Physician. Here we learn how we can treat and prevent modern metabolic conditions such as diabetes, PCOS, fatty liver disease, metabolic syndrome, sleep apnea, and more. We focus on optimizing lifestyle while utilizing safe and effective medical treatments. Please remember that while I am a physician, I am not your physician. Everything discussed here is provided as general medical knowledge and not direct medical advice. Please talk to your doctor about what is best for you. If you want to increase your metabolism, I'm going to share with you today a great trick in doing this. My name is Dr. Lindsay Ol, and I'm a board certified obesity medicine physician. And most of my patients are wanting to do just this. They're wanting to increase their metabolism to help with weight management and health-related goals. There is so much in our health that we do not have control over. We do not have control over our genetics or our environment or our childhood upbringing and the habits that were introduced to us. But we do have control over how much we move throughout the day. And this translates into something called NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And this can actually be a major contributor to somebody's metabolism and may be the difference between somebody who seemingly has a quote unquote high metabolism and a quote unquote low metabolism. This is especially important for people who have a difficult time fitting exercise into their lifestyle. So if somebody has very long work hours or is very busy taking care of kids, or for whatever reason, regular exercise is difficult, or if somebody has already maxed out their exercise recommendations. And last week's video went over how to start an exercise regimen and to maximize it, especially if that is your goal in 2026. So go back and listen to that. But if you've already reached your exercise goal, you're getting at 300 minutes a week, but you're still not at your health goal, then introducing and increasing meat may have a huge impact on help you reach your health and weight goals. So what is meat? What is non-exercise activity thermogenesis? So meat is energy that is utilized in anything outside of sleep, eating, or dedicated exercise. So it's that movement that we do throughout the day. And that can be anything from walking to a mailbox or walking to a store from your car. It is doing chores around the house, playing with your kids, it's fidgeting or the hand movements that I'm doing right now during the video talking to you. It's standing at a desk rather than sitting down. All of those count as neat. And the amount of neat that somebody has varies widely depending on your job or your lifestyle or your family situation at home. But you can make decisions throughout your day and throughout your life that will help you increase neat, which will help increase your overall metabolism, meaning how many calories you're burning throughout the day, which can either be helpful in aiding with weight loss, if that is your goal, or help with weight maintenance to keep that weight off long term and keep you at your healthy weight. So neat is added into an equation that will end up calculating your total daily energy expenditure. So this includes your resting metabolic rate, the thermo effect of food. So this is the amount of energy that is required to digest and utilize the nutrients from the food that we intake. We also add in our activity, the dedicated exercise during the day, and then neat, the non-acercise activity thermogenesis. So when you add those four things up, those four components, then that total will be your total energy expenditure for the day. And this is measured in calories. If that total expenditure is higher than the amount that you're eating, then that'll lead to weight loss over time. If the total daily energy expenditure is lower than the amount of calories that you're eating on a regular basis, then you will gain weight over time. The percentage of meat in that equation can vary from person to person. Like I said earlier, it can be anywhere from 15% of the total daily energy expenditure all the way up to 50%. Again, depending on someone's job and just their habits. If someone has a sedentary job like myself, I sit at a desk most of the day. And if they're not actively, you know, incorporating movement throughout the day, then their meat could be as low as 300 calories a day. For somebody who is extremely active in their job or has been able to incorporate movement in different ways throughout the day, meat could be as high as 1 to 2,000 calories per day. So our goal is to incorporate more movement into our daily routines, and this will help to increase the calories burned throughout the day and can help with that weight management both in the short and long term. As I said, I have a sedentary job, and so this is something that I actively have to incorporate in my day-to-day. And some things that I do to help incorporate meat are I do have a standing desk that I like to use from time to time. I also, when I'm on the phone, I will walk back and forth throughout my apartment to get some steps in that way. I also do chores around the house, um, parking further away, and you know, having that longer walk to and from the car. You can also set timers or brakes throughout your workday to do a little bit of stretching, body weight squats, sit-ups, push-ups, all of those mini exercises add up and make a difference. If you like to monitor your progress, this is where step counts can be extremely helpful. If your phone or your watch, or if you get a pedometer, a step counter, then you can see how many steps a day you're getting. You want to just start wherever your baseline is and then slowly increase over time. Many people hear a goal of 10,000 steps a day, and that's wonderful, but not everybody is going to be able to achieve that, and that is okay. We see huge health improvements with a minimum of five, but a goal of 7,000 steps per day, and then even more at the 10, but at least 7,000 steps a day should be a good goal for most people. In addition to weight management, increasing your neat will also increase other health markers. It can decrease insulin resistance and lower blood sugar and insulin levels. It can also help protect against heart disease. It can improve your joint function and decrease joint pain as well as back pain. Movement can also help with mental health and people feel better both physically and mentally as they're moving their bodies more often. Bonus points if you can get this movement outside. In the colder months, that can be harder in some locations, but many times still doable. So, in an ideal world, we are doing many things to help improve our health. We are getting adequate sleep, managing our stress, eating nutrient-dense foods, drinking plenty of water, avoiding harmful substances like tobacco, alcohol, other drugs. We are moving our bodies, we're doing cardiovascular exercise and resistance and strength training and balance activities like yoga or Pilates and stretching. And we are avoiding sitting for long periods of time and having adequate need. Now that is a lot of things to think about. Not even mentioning scheduling an appointment with your primary care doctor, making sure you're up to date on your preventative health screenings, your immunizations, and all of your health conditions are controlled. Um, it's a lot, it's a lot to deal with. And NEAT is one of those items that is seems to be more manageable and more approachable, especially if you are just starting out. Or again, if you are actually hitting all of those other, you know, health markers or goals, but still not at your health goal that you've set for yourself, neat might be the thing that's missing. And so I hope you found this information helpful. If so, please share with somebody in your life that would benefit from this. And if you have any questions, definitely let me know. I would love to explain in further detail if there was something that I missed here. And I hope you all get out, start moving your body more. And I hope to see you next week for another topic on modern metabolic health. Thank you for listening and learning how you can improve your metabolic health in this modern world. If you found this information helpful, please share with a friend, family member, or colleague. We need to do all we can to combat the dangerous misinformation that is out there. Please subscribe and write a review. This will help others find the podcast so they may also improve their metabolic health. I look forward to our conversation next week.