{"id":18929,"date":"2024-06-17T13:34:48","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T13:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/?p=18929"},"modified":"2024-06-17T15:09:09","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T15:09:09","slug":"what-to-do-if-you-dont-like-to-exercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bestratefinders.com\/blog\/everything-else\/what-to-do-if-you-dont-like-to-exercise\/","title":{"rendered":"What to do if you DON\u2019T like to exercise:"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t really <\/span>like<\/span><\/i> to exercise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, I <\/span>kind of<\/span><\/i> like picking up heavy weights and doing handstands.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I certainly don\u2019t love \u201ccardio.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Rather than nerd out about biomechanics, I\u2019m more interested in anthropology and human behavior.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather than going to run a 5K, I\u2019d rather sit on my couch and play <\/span>Fallout 4<\/span><\/i> I (just watched the show, it\u2019s fantastic.)<\/span><\/p>\n

What I\u2019m trying to say is I\u2019m not a fitness nerd.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a nerd who tries to be fit.<\/span><\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re somebody who also just doesn\u2019t \u201clike to exercise,\u201d you are in good company.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also have some amazing news for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in Time<\/b><\/h2>\n

I recently read<\/span> \u200b<\/span>Exercised<\/span><\/i>\u200b<\/span><\/a> by Daniel Lieberman, professor of anthropology at Harvard University.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lieberman has spent large swaths of time studying and living with hunter-gatherer tribes all over the world, including the Tarahumara (who appear in the book <\/span>Born to Run),<\/span><\/i> the people of Pemja (Kenya), and the Hazda tribe of Tanzania.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lieberman points out that most studies and research are conducted on very specific, narrow subset of humans:<\/span><\/p>\n

WEIRD humans!<\/span><\/p>\n

W<\/span>estern, <\/span>E<\/span>ducated, <\/span>I<\/span>ndustrialized, <\/span>R<\/span>ich, and <\/span>D<\/span>emocratic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Modern western society only makes up a tiny part of the total human experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Homo Sapiens have been around for 150,000-300,000+ years!<\/span><\/p>\n

So, if our goal is to see “what most humans do,” we need to expand the variety of humans we observe, look way back in time, and observe human behavior outside of modern western culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Luckily, Lieberman has done exactly that, living with modern hunter-gatherer tribes and studying ancient cultures:<\/b><\/p>\n

\n

For generation after generation, our ancestors young and old woke up each morning thankful to be alive and with no choice but to spend several hours walking, digging, and doing other physical activities to survive to the next day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes they also played or danced for enjoyment and social reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n

Otherwise, they generally steered clear of nonessential physical activities that divert energy from the only thing evolution really cares about: reproduction.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For 99.99% of our existence as a species, we needed to <\/span>conserve<\/span><\/i> energy, not needlessly try and burn extra energy. Whenever we weren\u2019t actively securing our survival, we were resting to conserve energy. This whole modern concept of trying to build excess muscle, or exercising to burn extra calories would be a foreign concept to our ancestors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Food was <\/span>always<\/span><\/i> in short supply, which meant every day the bodily cycle for each human has to decide how to use each calorie consumed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because we had to burn precious calories to hunt or find our food, needlessly burning excess calories during the rest of the day just doesn\u2019t make any sense to ancient humans, nor to modern hunter-gatherers.<\/span><\/p>\n

So! Of course\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

It makes sense you don’t want to exercise!<\/b><\/h2>\n

As Lieberman points out:<\/b><\/p>\n

\n

“<\/span>We never evolved to exercise<\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026exercise today is most commonly defined as voluntary physical activity undertaken for the sake of health and fitness.<\/span><\/p>\n

But as such it is a recent phenomenon\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

The mantra of this book is that nothing about the biology of exercise makes sense except in the light of evolution, and nothing about exercise as a behavior makes sense except in the light of anthropology.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As Lieberman shares in the book, tribes like the Hazda certainly burn more calories than western office-workers, but only because they have to, and not dramatically so: \u201cTypical hunter-gatherers are about as physically active as Americans or Europeans who include about an hour of exercise in their daily routine,\u201d but don\u2019t have abundant access to easily consumable energy the way the rest of us do.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is where we encounter the \u201c<\/b>\u200b<\/span>Evolutionary Mismatch Hypothesis<\/b>\u200b<\/span><\/a>\u201d:<\/b><\/p>\n

\n

Differences in stressors between the environment in which humans evolved and the current environment are mismatches that can cause disease.<\/span><\/p>\n

Up until 10,000 years ago, humans lived a nomadic lifestyle as hunter-gatherers, with different stressors from the ones that people experience nowadays in modern environments.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Note: this is NOT where I\u2019ll tell you to start eating Paleo (<\/span>\u200b<\/span>Paleo is a misguided diet<\/span>\u200b<\/span><\/a> that works because of math, not \u201cancestral\u201d reasons).<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m specifically talking about how our brains and bodies try and function in a modern environment. Edward Wilson said it best: \u201cWe have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Which means we need to<\/b> \u200b<\/span>start with acceptance<\/b>\u200b<\/span><\/a>: <\/b>Rather than beating ourselves up for struggling to build a voluntary exercise habit, we can accept we\u2019re human.<\/span><\/p>\n

We evolved to survive in scarcity, and now exist in a world of abundance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Exercise is beneficial AND no longer “necessary”<\/b><\/h2>\n

Exercise is good for us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cardio is good for our heart and lungs. Exercise of any type can help create a calorie deficit, and reducing our body fat percentage can help reduce all-cause mortality. Building and maintaining muscle mass and strong bones is <\/span>critical<\/span><\/i> for our health as we get older. We also feel better <\/span>after<\/span><\/i> we exercise: thanks dopamine and serotonin and endorphins!<\/span><\/p>\n

There are literally hundreds of benefits of exercise with regards to our health.<\/span><\/p>\n

We all know this.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet we all think: \u201cI know I <\/span>should<\/span><\/i> exercise more, but I can’t get myself to do it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s set aside the fact right now that we\u2019re all busy as hell, and taking extra time out of our day to exercise is a BIG ask for many (shout out to single parents working multiple jobs!). With that out of the way, why is it so hard for us to build a new exercise habit and stick with it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Because we\u2019re fighting against biology and our history.<\/b><\/p>\n

For our day-to-day survival, we don\u2019t <\/span>need<\/span><\/i> to exercise anymore:<\/span><\/p>\n