[Daniel] Lieberman, Lerner professor of biological sciences, says that humans have... been selected to exercise only as much as they must to survive. The ancestors of modern humans lived as hunter-gatherers. In this subsistence lifestyle, food was often scarce, so resting was key to conserving energy for survival and reproduction. In other words, humans were born to run— but as little as possible.
“No hunter-gatherer goes out for a jog, just for the sake of it, I can tell you from personal experience,” says Lieberman. “They go out to forage, they go out to work, but anything else would be unwise, not to mention maladaptive” in calorie-restricted environments.
So I am thinking that if you are idle and thinking of yourself as lazy, lethargic, sedentary, or even deserving of a diagnosis of pathological demand avoidance, think again. You may be the most authentically human of human beings, closer to what nature designed.
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Finally, I can stop feeling so bad about hating exercise. Which, btw, I have always - reluctantly - done, but have always strongly disliked. Stayin' alive...
I'm always surprised by how few calories are burned with physical effort, how long you need to exercise to burn off a sandwich. Most calories consumed are burned off slowly but steadily while not exerting oneself, sitting, or sleeping, but for long periods. When you look at physical work, lifting, running, etc. It seems like it would burn calories incredibly fast, but it doesn't. Intuitively, it seems to defy physics.
Exercise may be hard for some people, but I also know plenty who cannot go without it, addicted to the gym, like it's the most important thing in their life. Not doing it is the hard thing. I am not in this group.
IMO the most difficult aspect of any exercise, for the sake of exercise itself, is mental. One expects and accepts that physical work during the day could be tiring. But at the same time, one can see the results which makes the effort worthwhile. Time spent on a rowing machine, not so much.
Haven't we been told for years that food was so abundant in hunter-gatherer societies that they didn't need to spend much time gathering food each day and had more free time than we do? Now we're being told that looking for food took up so much energy that none was left over for anything else?
Once our rural, tribal hunter-gatherer ancestors evolved into more specialized citizens of villages and city-states, exercise as a tool for battle and defense readiness became crucial. At that point, it was deeply and profoundly important to have the strength and stamina to protect your property and women (but I repeat myself) from invading hordes.
It's always about efficiency and survival.
The Polynesians evolved as fantastic storers of fat, and it shows now that they don't routinely ride around on tiny sailboats looking for new islands.
Females worldwide become sharply less active and heavier as they age, which is theorized to follow from survival with limited food as widows and after childbearing age (i.e., less male mating interest).
The athletes of today would have been the best hunters and defenders of the tribe --> old time kings.
>R C Belaire said...
IMO the most difficult aspect of any exercise, for the sake of exercise itself, is mental.<
So true. As the spot-on old saw says: The hardest part about jogging is getting your running shoes on.
So it’s programmed into our very being to rest in front of the TV binge watching our favorite series or endless sports, foraging through the refrigerator only as necessary to be alive and have sex. Who knew? I’ll tell my wife.
Do any animals exercise more than they have to in order to survive? Even lions seem to spend a lot of time resting -- even cheetahs. Exerting oneself for fun or self-improvement seems to be a recent cultural development, but I think I get his point.
"I'm always surprised by how few calories are burned with physical effort, how long you need to exercise to burn off a sandwich."
The number of calories burned off during the exercise period is less than you would think, but there is a prolonged period (several hours) where your body's metabolism is increased, meaning you burn more additional calories in the hours post-exercise than you would have if you had not exercised. Also, increasing muscle mass results in an overall increase in metabolism throughout the day (and night).
Evolution shaped humans to work and rest intermittently but regularly. With perpetual states of idleness progress metabolic diseases and dementia.
Exercise is hard when you're not in shape. I would argue it's not quite all mental. I ran, worked out, etc., for years and only kind of liked it once I got started, but kept at it because of the results. Then I upped the intensity at the gym and it *really* sucked for a couple of weeks, but then it actually did become enjoyable. I mean, it's still kind of Type 2 Fun, but I look forward to it.
Just So stories about evolution are fun but not terribly rigorous.
"Evolution shaped humans to rest—and to run only when absolutely necessary."
Before They Make Me Run...
Gonna find my way to heaven, 'cause I did my time in hell,
Oh yeahI wasn't looking too good, but I was feeling real well
After all is said and done
Gotta move while it's still fun
Let me walk before they make me run
After all is said and doneI
Gotta move, it's still fun
I'm gonna walk before they make me run
- Keith Richards
We tried being subsistance farmers/hunter/gatherers for a year going to the supermarket only a few times. It's work, growiing, harvesting, preserving and it burned up all the calories needed. Would have been more so if we needed to find all our food in the wild with not much resting involved.
Bradford Angiers 's famous How To Survive In The Woods is divided into two parts: a true survival section and a kind of homesteading section.
In the survival section, he advocates never standing when you can sit, and never sitting when you can lie down. If you're in a truly calorie-restricted environment, this is excellent advice.
Humans also evolved to live in a state of scarcity. Hunter-gatherers never had an abundance of food. Was there ever such a thing as an obese Homo erectus? I doubt it. Evolution is not over; it continues, perhaps at a much faster rate. (Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium at work?) The Age of Scarcity is closed, and the Age of EBT has dawned. Adults with sub-normal intelligence are allowed to buy what they like to eat, regardless of nutritional value, in quantities that restaurateurs would envy, and devour it all within four weeks, all at taxpayers' expense. Evolution is at work in the climbing rates of obesity and the attendant pathologies, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and exponentially climbing public debt. One way or another, the Age of Scarcity will return, and waddling whales will go extinct.
Hunter gatherers. Almost any four legged critter can outrun the fastest human being. But they can't run as far as a human can walk--we're slow but can keep moving for a long time--and eventually catch up to the exhausted beasts. Then it's lunch time. --circa 4,000 B.C,
I'm not committing until we hear from Achilles.
Bullshit. The lands were teeming with game. Our ancestors made Greek gods look like wimps.
What was the average range of calorie burn for adult male? Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherers in northern Europe?
An adult male Cro-Magnon (Upper Paleolithic Homo sapiens) hunter-gatherer in northern Europe burned an estimated 3,500 to 5,000 calories per day, with specific academic models pinning the precise statistical baseline at 3,788.5 calories daily. This high metabolic demand far exceeds the average 2,500 calories burned by modern men, driven primarily by a larger physical frame, extreme climate conditions, and high-intensity lifestyle demands.
An average adult Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer male living in Northern Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum would have to consume roughly 3 to 4 whole antelopes per month if antelope were his primary source of meat.
Joints evolve, become inflamed, and arthritic. Everything in moderation is a path to fitness and forward-looking viability.
In addition to land animals, the oceans were chock full of seafood and humans were few and far between. So the abundance remain for eons upon eons of evolution.
Sitting down is the new smoking.
Carnivorous apex predators, big cats, crocs, seem to loll around a lot. So do little cats and dogs. They become active when they spot prey. "Hey, look, a bag of Doritos!"
Regarding burning of calories, even at rest the fit musculature burns more calories than the sedentary fat. BTW, this article has made me,wonder, again, why is Harvard considered an elite institution?
Key Factors Driving Caloric Burn
Larger Body Mass: Cro-Magnon males were robust and heavily muscled, typically standing between 5'9" and 6'1" and weighing significantly more in lean muscle tissue than modern humans. Larger, denser muscular frames naturally require higher basal metabolic rates (BMR).
The Glacial Climate: Northern Europe during the Last Glacial Period was a cold, mammoth-steppe environment. Thermoregulation (the body generating heat to combat freezing temperatures) exponentially increased their resting energy expenditure.Strenuous Subsistence Activities: Tracking large megafauna like mammoths and reindeer over rough terrain meant walking or running immense distances every day.
Physical Activity Level (PAL): Their physical activity required an isolated expenditure of 800 to 1,200 calories per day just for movement. This is roughly three to five times higher than that of an average modern sedentary adult.
NAP FOR HUMANITY!
For those who are concerned about the fate of humanity and global whatsit, or perhaps just a good excuse for the your wife, we respire about half as much CO2 when asleep as we do when awake.
So when anyone complains you rest too much, tell them you really don't want to but are sacrificing yourself for humanity.
John Henry
Robert Heinlein's Lazarous long famously said in his novella "The man who was too lazy to fail"
"All Progress is Made by a Lazy Man [or woman-JRH] Looking for an Easier Way"
I liberally pass out big yellow buttons that say "Be Lazy, Find and Easier Way" I've built my professional practice for the past 30 years out of teaching people to be lazy. (I can teach your people too!)
John Henry
John Henry
It seems to me that most of the activity we and other mammals engage in is non-essential. The premise here is very thin.
As n.n. noted this still points to alternating periods of activity and rest, not constant sloth.
What a relief! Once again science comes to my rescue. I thought I was getting lazy, but I was just “evolving.” /s
I never feel so authentic as when I'm resting.
Why do the children play? Because young humans like the skipping and a-jumping and it develops their bodies for the future.
And absent very easily available calories due to their specific environment even the early humans would have realized that they needed strength and stamina to catch the antelope (and fight other humans) and that practicing the skills required would develop and enhance those capabilities.
I'm saying that Ugga probably had a weight set in the back 0f the cave and that physical competitions were likely common among even our earliest ancestors.
Lieberman does indeed say in his book that humans evolved to shun unnecessary exercise but to require periods of fairly strenuous activity when necessary for getting food, etc. Which is why most people don't want to exercise but get metabolic syndrome if they are overweight slugs.
The book is "Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding" (2020). It is very good (proof that Harvard isn't all "woke crap"). His earlier "The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease" is broader and even better."
Here's a solution. Get rid of your car and expend energy walking or biking to a store a good distance away to get food. Return and then kick back until you need more food.
Well, humans were also "genetically selected" to live only about 40 years or so (until the past few centuries).
My dog regularly goes out into our yard, picks up an object like a plastic garden pot, a glove, or a plastic water bottle, and runs around in circles and figure-eights at great speed. He is not chasing anything. He is playing/exercising. He seems to enjoy it. He also does this on walks when I let him off the leash (we live in very open, unpopulated area). Not just chasing squirrels--just running for the apparent sake of running.
When humans engaged in hard physical labor (whether hunting and gathering or working in farms or later factories), and for the most part did not live to see 70 or 80, they did not need to exercise. Now that most of us work at desks and get our food from supermarkets, and can frequently live well into our 80s and 90s, we need to exercise. And the point of exercise is not to burn calories but to build or maintain strength and cardiovascular health.
“ Evolution shaped humans to rest—and to run only when absolutely necessary.”. Sounds like Joe Biden in 2020.
Lazy fucks will make every excuse to eat junk, drink beer and couch potato they life away then run to doctors to give them drugs and surgery to save their life for an extra couple years of misery and lethargy.
Adulthood Survival: Anthropological data from The Paleo Diet research and comparative studies of subsistence groups show that if an individual survived the dangerous periods of infancy and adolescence, their modal (most common) adult lifespan was 68 to 78 years.
Unlike modern populations, Northern European hunter-gatherers did not experience a long, slow decline from chronic illness.
Lack of Degenerative Disease: Skeletal remains show that they rarely suffered from modern cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, or obesity.
Causes of Death: Elders who reached their maximum potential age of 70+ usually died of acute infections, physical wear from a harsh climate, or ultimate organ failure rather than prolonged chronic decay.
Genetic Legacy: Recent evolutionary studies highlighted by ScienceAlert indicate that modern Europeans who inherit higher percentages of Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) DNA have a 38% higher probability of living past 100, proving that these ancient populations possessed robust genetic variants for longevity.
@Howard --
Now do Indians with their history extreme poverty, famine, limited protein/sacred cows, and early-onset medical conditions.
Primitive hunter gatherers did the least amount of work for the greatest amount of calories. When game was plentiful they would gorge themselves to insensibility. They would take the choicest cuts and leave the rest to rot. The gathering and growing was done by the women so it was up to them to preserve enough for the winter. When game was scarce and there weren't enough tubers and berries to harvest the tribe starved and the old people were left in the snow.
Anyone who reads the NYTs and thinks they are learning anything true is a fucking retard.
This is so provably opposite of the truth. It isn't even intuitive.
It is just fucking stupid.
Narr said...
I'm not committing until we hear from Achilles.
There hasn't been a dumber article in the NYTs that I can remember.
The reason we out competed every other predator in the world is literally the ability to sweat.
The problem is that there are people stupid enough to believe this.
Our brains grew because we ate meat.
In the beginning we were short legged and slow. We hunted the giant ground sloth and similar megafauna to extinction.
Then we had to hunt things that were fast. On two legs we were never able to outrun things over short distances.
There have been 3 major bottlenecks in the genomic record for humans in the last million years. The first two ~900,000 years ago and 75,000 years ago were major climate disasters that reduced populations of megafauna to the point we had to run down smaller faster game.
About 7000 years ago as our populations clustered in agricultural communities the breeding male to female ratios went to 1 : 17 and this is when the shape and size of humans diverged with male height becoming the most important predictor of mating success.
That sociological change was consistent with a small number of men eating all of the meat and everyone else getting mashed up wheat.
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