Are you a fidgety person? The funny thing is that by fidgeting you can actually burn a significant amount of calories each day. What I am talking about here are things like crossing and uncrossing your legs, making up and down movements in your chair, spinning from side to side in a chair, stretching and standing often, and just being an overall restless individual. This fidgety person being described pretty much fits me to a T. I get my work done but I like to fidget, it just comes natural and thankfully it burns a significant amount of calories daily.
The study done that measured calorie loss through fidgeting involved feeding the subjects in the study 1,000 extra calories every day for 8 weeks. Once these people started eating the snacks some of them immediately began fidgeting to burn the extra calories without even realizing it. Almost 33 percent of the thousand calories that were eaten were burned off from fidgeting and restless behavior. The remaining calories left were deposited as fat.
The people in this 8 week study gained anywhere from 2 pounds to 16 pounds but those people that were fidgety at their office desk gained the least amount of fat. There is definitely something positive to be said for the fidgety person you sit next to at your office. Maybe it is you or maybe not but consider that standing up at your desk and stretching every once in awhile can be a really good thing especially if you are a snacker.
In summary you can expect to burn about 330 calories a day from fidgeting at your office desk if you are anything like me. Unfortunately if you eat a snickers bar and drink a coke everyday you aren’t really making any headway. If you fidget your body is simply trying to tell you that you are an active person and you need to get out an do something to shed off some of that activity. What I will do is take a 45 minute break during my lunch hour and go over to XTC Fitness in Tyler and do their noon kickboxing group class. I probably burn 1,000 calories or so in the group class each day and it further assists in burning calories as well as building a little muscle. Consider that for every pound of muscle you put on to your body that muscle will automatically burn an additional 35 – 50 calories a day even if you sat and didn’t fidget at all. So whether you fidget or don’t fidget you can always stay active and the XTC gym is my preferred choice to do that.