Someone please clear up the calorie burning confusion???

I hear a lot of things and CC usually wakes me up to the truth. I am having a hard time sorting this one out...

I heard that any kind of additional movement will burn calories ( leg tapping, fidgeting, etc). I also heard that burning calories means raising your heart rate- I'm pretty sure my heart rate is not going up so much when I'm tapping my fingers on my desk to burn extra calories. How does this work and who's the big liar here?

I'm pretty sure they're both true...  If you move more in, say, two minutes, then you burn more calories in those two minutes than you would had you not been moving (as much).  "Raising your heart rate" means your heart is beating faster: moving more in the same amount of time.  Pumping your blood takes a significant amount of calories.

any extra movement definitely burns more calories, but small movements such as tapping your fingers burn an insignificant amount. you naturally burn probably 70 to 100 cals an hour just by sitting on your ass. if you naturally burn 80 cals an hour and you tap your fingers that whole time, you might burn 85. but standing or walking more, taking stairs instead of the elevator, stuff like that, will definitely add up extra calories burned. still no substitute for an increase in heart rate for at least 20 minutes a day, though.

I really appreciate the clarification. I probably should be a little more accurate when I ask a question though. I am laughing right now because the finger tapping thing was my extreme sarcasm coming out and I didn't really realize it at the time. Really what my question was aimed at was exactly what naturallyd said...walking to someone's office instead of calling or standing vs. sitting. These thing don't exactly "wear me out" but I'm glad I can burn a couple extra calories doing them. Thanks again guys for the help.

Fidgeter burn something like an average of 100 calories more per hour.  I forget where I saw that but I saw it somewhere.  Any activity, any movement burns calories.  That is not the same as raising your heart rate. 

WW preaches "opporunities for activity" and they're all about getting up and moving around at every possible chance you get. 

Yes, your body uses calories to run itself (obviously). So, any movement at all uses calories. Even not moving, even sitting in your bed all day doing nothing but breathing burns a tremendous amount of calories. But such things as tapping your fingers. I imagine that burns probably no more than 5 calories an hour? I wouldn't even count such an activity. But that's just me.

The advantage to significantly increasing your heart rate for a period of time isn't weight loss.  Certainly it leads to weight loss, because it involves burning calories, but raising your heart rate *makes your heart stronger*.  That's the reason behind aiming for a high heart rate.

Check out this article about 'fidgeting' and how it is defined for the studies that show fidgeting increases calorie burn. It isn't just tapping your toes or jiggling your leg, it is consciously making an effort to maintain motion throughout your day.

http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articl es/050221/21diversions.htm

Namaste

~Katt

Dancing also is a great way to burn calories.....do you like to dance?? I like to walk so I can walk 5 miles easy.....it will also lower your blood pressure. I went from 130/83 to 117/74....that is great for an old lady....