N IS FOR NEAT

Not American for ‘quite good, actually’, but an acronym that stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis. NEAT denotes the calories you burn by incidental movement. This is often a plateau’s real culprit, not a ‘slow metabolism’. Subjects in one study lost the same whether they trained off 300 calories or 600 calories a day, because the latter group indulged in ‘compensatory’ inactivity and eating (see R). Keep moving.