What sort of "fidgeting" do you do? I don't remember you as that much of a fidgeter. My wife on the other hand is a classic fidgeter and cannot sit without moving her legs back and forth and I mean constantly. She's like one of those perpetual motion machines. BTW, she is pretty skinny which we support the gist of the study.
In general it doesn't bother me or strike me as unattractive. However, there are occassions when I want to say "enough already, you're driving me nuts." But that's just when I'm having a bad day.
When I was a kid, I was very fidgety (toe tapping was almost like an uncontrollable tic for me) but got that beaten out of me by the nuns at my parochial school who would always say, "stop fidgeting". I guess I was just born a little too early.
That's the thing. Fidgeting is associated with being a kid, which I guess is what I meant by "unattractive;" but it could be endearing in a significant other.
I'm a self-conscious fidgeter, which means that I keep it under control when I'm around people. I do a lot of shifting around, and, I noticed that just now, pausing between typing words, I was drumming on myself with my thumbs. And my leg is bouncing up and down. Also, I get up and walk around a lot. But none of this kept me from getting fat, back in the day.
Hee. I realized I was shaking my left leg as I read this. Can't help it.
While in Greece last year for a study-abroad program I got a set of komboloi, worry beads that you flip around your fingers and which make a satisfying clinking noise. For quite a while after I got them I used them incessantly. After the program ended I stayed with a friend in Berlin for 10 days, during part of which time his father was also there. After I left his father said that I had enough nervous energy to power a city.
I usually need some external object to assist my fidgeting, and since I work in a physics lab this means I unconsciously grab the nearest loose bolt/rf connector/kwikflange clamp (better if it has moving parts). I'm trying to cut down on this habit, since (a) I will occasionally pick up something coated with vacuum grease, usually while my advisor is talking to me so I have to pretend to pay attention while I surreptitiously wipe it off on something, or (b) I will occasionally pick up the end of a cable that I think is also disconnected at the other end, and plug it into a device that I think is off, and neither will be true.
My PE teacher told me this in seventh grade. Go Mr. Sobel.
Dang, I already answered in Kevin's blog, but bottom line is I believe it.
My pesonal assesment is that while sitting the best calorie burning fidget is the double knee bounce. It gives a somewhat good workout to the calfs. If you do that fourteen hours a day that is, what, twelve calories a half hour?
Yeah, the math passes the smell test.
Back when ephedrine was legal I was able to keep my girlish figure, do a wonderfully annoying double leg bounce coupled with a a teeth clench, and sleep without covers in 68 degrees.
Hey, I lived, pretty much.