NEAT stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis: every calorie a client burns moving that isn't a workout. Walking to the car, standing on a call, carrying shopping, fidgeting, pacing while the kettle boils. It is the most variable part of energy expenditure, and it falls when you put someone in a deficit.
That last part is why the term matters to you. A client who is hitting their macros and still not losing weight in week six usually has not broken their diet. They have quietly stopped moving.
Where NEAT sits in total daily energy expenditure
Total daily energy expenditure is usually split four ways. The proportions below are typical for a moderately active adult, not fixed values — the whole point of NEAT is that it refuses to sit still.
| Component | Roughly | How much it varies |
|---|---|---|
| Basal metabolic rate | 60–70% | Small between people of the same size; drops slowly with weight loss |
| Thermic effect of food | About 10% | Tracks how much a client eats, and slightly with protein intake |
| Exercise activity | 5–10% for most clients | You prescribe it, so you can count it |
| NEAT | 10–20% | Enormous, both between clients and within the same client week to week |
Two clients of the same weight, both training four times a week, can differ by several hundred calories a day on NEAT alone. A tradesperson on site and an accountant working from home are not on the same maintenance number, and no calculator will tell you that.
Why NEAT falls in a deficit
When energy intake drops, expenditure follows — and NEAT does most of the moving. Overfeeding and underfeeding research has consistently found spontaneous activity to be the component that swings hardest, with differences between individuals running into the hundreds of calories a day.
The important part for coaching is that it is unconscious. Nobody decides to take the lift. They sit down between sets instead of walking around, take the closest car park, stop taking the dog for the second walk, and answer emails on the couch rather than at the standing desk. Ask the client whether anything changed and they will honestly say no. They are not lying to you. It genuinely does not register.
So a deficit you set at 500 calories can be worth 250 by week six without a single logging error. The scale stalls, the client gets frustrated, and if you respond by cutting food again you make the drop worse — less energy in, less spontaneous movement out.
Step targets are the practical lever
You cannot measure NEAT directly, and you do not need to. Steps are a good enough proxy, they are already on the client's phone, and unlike "move more" they are a number the client can hit.
Walking costs roughly 30–40 calories per 1,000 steps for an 80kg adult. That makes a drift in daily steps easy to price:
| Client's average day | Steps | Approximate walking burn | Difference vs. baseline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1, motivated | 11,000 | ~380 kcal | — |
| Week 6, deep in the diet | 6,500 | ~230 kcal | −150 kcal/day |
| Week 10, holding a target | 10,000 | ~350 kcal | −30 kcal/day |
The week 6 client has given back a third of a 450-calorie deficit without touching their food. Set a floor instead — 8,000 or 10,000 steps a day, whatever is realistic against their job — and the deficit you wrote is closer to the deficit they live in.
Set the target as a habit rather than an instruction, because you want the daily number, not a self-report at the check-in. In Fitsly, a habit measured in steps fills itself in from the client's Apple Health or Health Connect data, so their daily habits show the real count without either of you logging anything.
Reading it at a check-in
Look at the step average before you look at the weight. Comparing this fortnight to the first fortnight of the diet answers most stalls on its own, which is why an activity number belongs in your standard check-in questions rather than in an ad-hoc message when something goes wrong.
Three patterns worth knowing:
- Steps down, weight stalled. Restore the steps before you touch calories. This is the common one.
- Steps held, weight stalled for three weeks. Now a food adjustment is warranted — see how to adjust client macros.
- Steps up sharply, recovery poor. Some clients solve a stall by adding cardio on top of a low intake. Cap it.
Numbers that arrive on their own, rather than ones you have to ask for every fortnight, are what make asynchronous coaching workable at volume.
