Lose weight chewing gum
Way back in the last century, when I was a skinny 13-year-old trying to gain weight, one of the guys at my beloved Belleville Weightlifting Club gave me a copy of a book titled appropriately “How to gain weight”. I can still close my eyes and see the cover of that little old paperback with a Charles Atlas looking guy on the cover staring at me in all his buff, albeit rather smooth, black-and-white glory.
The piece of advice from that book that I remember to this day was a very straightforward guideline on how to conserve energy throughout the day and thus help with the weight gaining effort. The book said something like, “When possible, walk instead of run; sit instead of stand.” Made sense. And to this day I avoid running (though mostly because running hurts me!)
Fast forward 30 years or so and someone actually quantified the value of being the opposite of lazy to gain weight (which not a whole bunch of grown-ups want to do). Namely, some folks with letters behind their names concluded that doing a whole bunch of little things that might be considered fidgeting can burn a bunch of calories throughout the day. (Who knew?!) Specifically, and I quote from a May 25, 2005 report on ABC’s Good Morning America:
“A new study from the Mayo Clinic shows that fidgety people can burn up to 350 calories more a day than people who sit still simply by doing what they do best — fidgeting. If you decide to forego the gym — chewing gum burns 11 calories an hour (if you chew six pieces at a time), standing instead of sitting can burn up to 20 calories an hour, and toe-tapping can burn nine calories an hour. If you spend two hours of your work day standing instead of sitting, you can burn an additional 340 calories a day, which can translate to a loss of 40 pounds a year for heavier people.”
Of course, this finding supports my theory that losing weight isn’t as hard as most people try to make it. That there are opportunities to burn calories all over the place; opportunities that don’t involve treadmills or gyms or weird home exercise equipment, or fat burners. Opportunities that don’t cost any money (well, other than buying a bunch of gum).
Several of my favorite suggestions for adding some “fidgeting” to your day/week include a) standing (and even pacing) at your kid’s soccer game instead of planting it in your lawn chair, b) standing at lunch instead of sitting (like you do all day at work anyway), and c) sitting on a stability ball at work or at home instead of becoming one with your fancy office furniture/lazy-boy. There are, of course, scores of other good examples of “fidgeting”. Just watch a 6-year-old for awhile and take notes.
People, the reality of this whole lose weight/gain muscle thing is that it ain’t rocket science. It’s just that lots of folks try to make it seem complicated (so that you will buy their supplements/magazines/equipment/etc).
Me, on the other hand, I like keep the message simple. Like, “When possible, stand when you could sit; run when you could walk.”
