Shiver Me......Lipids

Had to venture out into the cold windy rain one too many times today and as I shivered on The Tide after waiting outside for about 10 freezing minutes, a potential tweet occurred to me.

Because I think in potential tweets now.

I'm not proud.

Said tweet was along the lines of, "Wasn't able to run today, but my shivering has burned X calories per minute!  I shiver faster than I run, so..."

I was kinda kidding, but decided to look it up.  The first site returned on my internet search belongs to an organization whose founder has amazing athletic abilities -- some would say unnatural -- and so I'm sure the integrity of the information is sound.

According to Livestrong.com, shivering is "NEAT," or "Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis."

What's this, you say??  Non-exercise?  Tell me more...

"NEAT refers to ways to burn calories without exercising. When you get cold, your muscles involuntarily tense and then relax to warm your body. When shivering, you can burn up to 400 calories per hour, according to the website That's Fit."

Oh good, they got the information elsewhere.  ;)  

400 calories per hour?!  Thanks to the 40-degree air being pumped into my cubicle on a daily basis and the drop in outdoor temps, I should be a skeleton by spring.  Sexy!  

According to my calculations, I actively burned approximately 60 calories earlier today, totally wiping out the 5 chocolate chip, peanut butter chip, oatmeal cookies I ate yesterday.  

And guess what?  There are a bunch of other non-exercise activity thermogenesis activities that are non-exercise.  Hell, just typing that nonsense must have burned a quarter-cal, dontcha think?

According to "A Few Unique Ways to Burn Extra Calories -- NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis)" by Charles Stuart Platkin, the following are recommended in order to burn an additional 100-150 calories per hour:

- Laugh more (finding funny people should burn a couple hundred more calories as well);
- Stand up (actually standing, not stand up comedy, which burns far more calories if you're sweating and dying on stage than if people are laughing.  Trust me.  I was a lot thinner when I tried stand up comedy);
- Drink a cold glass of water (Glug, glug, glug.  Give me a second, I'm exercising.  Hydrate and feel the burn at the same time.  Fantastic!  Maintaining your correct body temperature requires your body to heat that water.  Drinking 8 glasses of water a day burns 60 calories.  Add in the trips to get water and then the trips to the bathroom and I can kiss my running shoes goodbye!)

One of the other recommendations is one of those treadmill workstations that I've wanted for a while, and I'd retain the running shoes if I could get one in my cube.  I could even power my computer with it, but no one is interested in innovation or energy conservation where I work.  They also talk about adding some steppers under your desk so that you can give yourself a seated step class every day.  I really don't think I'm coordinated enough to pull that one off, but here's a link if any of you are interested:

Things That Make Farting Noises in Your Cube

If you search online, you can find some mini-steppers that can power your computer as well.  Throw in some cymbals, a horn, chalk, and a British accent and you too can be Bert from Mary Poppins!