N.E.A.T
I’ve come to realize over the last two decades that fitness, real fitness, is not about how much you
can bench press or how many squats you can do; it’s about longev-
ity and survival. The type of fitness associated with longevity and
survival is real, functional fitness. It’s broad, inclusive, and diverse.
It isn’t measured by your mile pace or calories burned. It’s mea-
sured in how long you live and your quality of life. Of course, the
fitness we gain in the gym or on the bike or following our favorite
app are important and support longevity and survival, but there is
so much more.
My good friend and client Ethan Zohn, winner of CBS’s
Survivor, taught me this lesson the hard way. I helped Ethan
prepare for many of his extreme adventures, including the 2019
Survivor: Winners at War, the 40th season, which featured 20 past
winners. It took almost a year to get Ethan, who is also a two-time
cancer survivor, to a place where he was happy with his fitness
level. We spent time online together and we ran training camps in
Minneapolis, on his farm in New Hampshire and at his summer
house, which was outside of Atlanta at the time. As we approached
the filming and competition date, I put together a five-day, winner-
takes-all training camp as close to a real “survivor” experience
as I could come up with. I was stronger, faster, leaner, and more
athletic than Ethan; after all, I spent my days in the gym, and my
life revolved around health and fitness. Ethan was coming off of
two major battles with cancer and his job was traveling the world
as a public speaker sharing his story. I thought I could beat him.
The five-day camp was full of fitness challenges, solving
puzzles, throwing knives at targets, and living in the woods,
making fire, swimming through lakes, all on limited calories. It
didn’t take long for me to realize that fitness wasn’t just about how
far I could run or how much weight I could lift; it was about how
I applied my skills in real-life situations. Well, I didn’t win a single
point, and if it had been a real Survivor season, I definitely would
have been voted off after the first day. I specifically remember one
challenge: we had to hold a heavy med ball over our head as we
made our way through a series of balance beams we made out of
2 x 4 boards that rested on uneven tree stumps in the forest. I had
no problem holding something heavy over my head and I could do
anything in the gym while I balanced on one foot (one-leg squats,
planks, and even one-leg box jumps), but I had never had to hold
something heavy overhead while balancing above muddy ground
in the middle of the forest, wet and freezing cold from swimming
across the lake to get to the balance beam course. Ethan was able
to express strength and balance while dealing with the elements
and the different environment. Ethan showed me that fitness is
only a part of the puzzle to longevity. It’s an important part, to be
sure, but not the whole of it. If we equate fitness with work we do
inside the gym, we limit what fitness is and who can participate in
it. The more broad and inclusive we can make fitness, the more fit
we will all truly be.
Perhaps you have heard of Blue Zones. It’s a term coined by
Dan Buettner, a National Geographic Explorer who, building on
the work of Gianni Pes and Michel Poulain, identified the five
places around the world where people not only lived the longest
but enjoyed a “high quality of life in their old age.”The five Blue
Zones are Sardinia, Italy; Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan; Loma
Linda, California (the Seventh Day Adventist community); and the
Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica. The health data that comes out of
these communities is impressive: less disease, lower health care
costs, more happiness, greater life expectancy, and more robust-
ness later in life. In other words, the old people are still active,
healthy, and disease-free. They are cooking, gardening, socializ-
ing, walking, and enjoying life beyond their 80s and into their 90s
and, for some, into their 100s.
The more I read about these places, the more I see why life is
longer and more fulfilling. They live closer to one another, often
with generations of family and friends, and they eat foods that are
simple whole foods, seasonally prepared in delicious traditional
ways. “Centenarians in all five Blue Zone areas enjoy much lower
rates of chronic disease like obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes,
and dementia. They eat a plant-slant diet of whole foods; fruits and
vegetables are present at every meal, lowering inflammation and
increasing immunity.”
I do realize I talk about the
importance of true strength training, HIIT and
the importance of intensity. And I stand by that science. But it’s only part
of the picture, and we don’t need gyms to live long, healthy lives.
After all, there are no Core Powers in Sardinia. No CrossFits on
the Nicoya Peninsula. And I doubt that Planet Fitness will arrive
anytime soon in Ikaria.
One of the commonalities of the populations in Blue Zones is
that they move naturally because they “live in environments that
constantly nudge them into moving without thinking about it.
They grow gardens and don’t have mechanical conveniences for
house and yard work.” This is called N.E.A.T (non-exercise activ-
ity thermogenesis).
Even the hardest workout you will ever do in a group fitness
class (think: crushing intervals, burpees, squats, push-ups, and
lunges that leave you exhausted and torched) will only burn 13
percent of your daily calories. Now think about being active
throughout the day: walking more than 10K steps, standing most
of the time instead of sitting at your desk, working with your
hands, or getting out for a hike after dinner instead of watching
TV. This—N.E.A.T.—burns up to 30 percent of daily calories, and
is a way of life. But before you think about replacing your interval
or strength training with N.E.A.T., remember that you still need
strength training to elicit a hormonal response. It’s about balance.
And there are some simple ways to make impactful changes to
your N.E.A.T. Try and shoot for 10K steps a day or more. Take
walking meetings on the phone or in person. Go for a walk after
dinner, first thing in the morning, or over lunch.
Let me know how it goes!
See you in the gym,
Aaron Leventhal CSCS, PN1, ACSM Cancer Specialist