… when she said “Stop fidgeting!”
Couch potatoes and computer users can jump for glee as according to a new study the simple act of fidgeting burns important calories that can keep people lean.
Mayo Clinic researchers recruited 10 lean and 10 mildly obese self-proclaimed couch potatoes to wear specially designed underwear that monitored and recorded their every movement over a period of 10 days. And also the study was conducted using high-tech underwear, which detect the smallest movements and take measurements every half second. Twenty people, half of them lean and the other half mildly obese, wore the garments nonstop for ten days as they went about their every day, normal activities. All participants were self professed ‘couch potatoes’ and none engaged in regular exercise The researchers found the obese volunteers tended to be less active than their lean counterparts.
At my age I wear special high tech underwear too!!
They’re called Depends.
I’ve seen this before. I don’t buy it. I believe it has more to do with your internal rate of burn that your external fidgeting.
I’m glad you posted this, because while I had pulled it from the web, I hadn’t read it—-and so missed the part about both groups being self-defined ‘couch potatoes.’
Years ago I read an estimate that fidgeters burn upwards of 500 extra calories a day. I believe it. I am a natural-born fidgeter; my leg is always jiggling. Either my leg or my foot.
I spent years telling myself, halfheartedly, to stop & to just sit still, but once I read about the number of calories you can burn through the simple act of frantically pumping your leg up and down 18 hours a day I thought: well, heck.
This is working.
Now all I need is a study showing that people who chew their cuticles live longer.
I actually stopped chewing my cuticles years ago, in the car, while driving to Sun Valley. I went cold turkey.
But I’d be happy to start again.
Please understand that those of us who don’t fidget are accomplishing something far more important than the burning of a few calories. We are preventing ourselves from pounding the snot out of figeting leg bouncers who not only can’t sit still, but vibrate every damned thing around you!
We non-fidgeters, each and every one, are sitting silently and thinking, “If I allow myself to move even one little muscle I won’t be able to stop myself from sprining off this couch like a starving leopard and tearing the throat of that freakin’, figetting loon over there!”
The whole thing’s quite unfair. As a self confessed couch potato who doesn’t fidget but does think hard while sitting on the couch thinking thoughts that go nowhere but do leave me exhausted yet don’t burn calories (time out to get a breath) all I have to say is: “It’s quite unfair.”
Knucklehead
I am AWARE of this problem!
The ONLY time I am NOT jiggling is when jiggling will result in everyone else’s desk/movie seat/SUV jiggling right along with me.
Which reminds me.
Jimmy, who is autistic, is a major jiggler.
About two days after the Northridge earthquake I was driving back from somewhere, and I stopped at a red light on the corner of Laurel Canyon & Ventura.
All of the sudden the car started rocking back and forth and I said, “Jimmy! Stop jigglng!”
Then I noticed that the traffic light suspended above me was also bouncing around on its line, something you don’t see every day . . . and then I noticed folks tumbling out of stores & out onto the sidewalk, something I’ve never seen happen as a result of a person seated in a car jiggling his leg . . . EARTHQUAKE!!!!!
So I hear you.
A 6 year old child can jiggle as hard as an aftershock.
I used to fidget.
I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted to, too.
I yielded to certain social pressure and stopped fidgeting.
That decision won me an extra 35 lbs, and a constant battle with my weight.
On the other hand, those extra pounds and the muscles to move them have made it much less likely that anyone will complain about my behavior.
RicPic
Well, that’s something I don’t understand, because the brain consumes zillions of calories.
Zillions.
I’ve never understood why nobody seems to lose weight from thinking.
I assume it’s because the brain can only burn carbohydrates, not fat, so the brain can’t burn stored fat for fuel.
But I don’t know.
http://www.cas.northwestern.edu/ anthropology/LHBR/sciamerican-2002.pdf
This explains so much. I eat quite a bit, but I fidget constantly, and that must be how I’m keeping my girlish figure.