Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Fidgeting

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has an article about fidgeting.  Apparently, it can have a massive effect on your metabolic rate.  Energy expenditure while sitting motionless --> fidgeting = ~50% increase... while standing motionless --> fidgeting = ~94% increase!  If you actually take a close look at the article though, you'll see it isn't a great way to actually try and lose weight, since the overall burn rate is nowhere close to actual weight loss activities (like exercise).  But what it does do though is to stabilize your weight and prevent gain.  Fidgeting is a simple enough activity to do (since it comes naturally to me anyway) - and if it helps stave off gaining weight - I'll take it!  It's not the magic bullet for weight loss (that's exercise), but still.

So... apparently now it's good to fidget?  Awesome!  I guess not listening to my parents/family when it came to fidgeting worked out for me!

Now if only they could prove that procrastinating is awesome too, I'll be all set!

Also - and this is a tangent - I get really annoyed at those stupid ads on the side that keep saying "lose 10000 pounds by just following this one simple/old/odd rule! OBEY!" and they show a picture of 2 women (usually) - one who's chunky and one who is really (really) skinny and expect us to believe they are the same person (even though an 8 year old could say they aren't actually the same person).  And they expect us to believe this mythical (and fake) tranformation happened by following this "1 rule".  Yea well I've got a rule of my own (that actually has a good chance of working):

Go exercise (for real - getting up to go to the bathroom and back doesn't count).  Regularly.


That's the only real rule that's going to work.  The others are probably hocus pocus (if it wasn't, wouldn't everybody be super hot, skinny and fit?)

Ok I'm done with the rant part of this blog.