"Exercised" by Dr. Daniel Lieberman
If you ever felt it’s hard to get up from the couch to exercise I have some good news for you: you are normal from an evolutionary standpoint. Dr. Daniel Lieberman’s book “Exercised” says it all in its subtitle: “Why something we never evolved to do is healthy and rewarding.”
Professor of Biological Sciences at Harvard University, Dr. Lieberman writes about exercise with the eyes of an anthropologist. “Our ancestors never ever ran or walked several miles for health,” Dr. Lieberman reminds us. Throughout his book he debunks several myths about exercise. Like “It’s unnatural to be indolent” or “Sitting is intrinsically unhealthy,” spoiler alert: it’s not.
Dr. Lieberman explains how ignoring evolutionary perpectives on physical activity leads our contemporary approach to misconceptions, overstatements and faulty logic. And that is why his book is so interesting to anyone intrigued by exercise in general. It helps us understanding how exercise works for us, humans.
We all know that moving is good for us, we experience it first hand but we don’t always know why. Dr. Lieberman’s book enlightens us on the subject with many concrete examples based on his work with Indigenous population.
A few points I loved learning in the book:
The instinct to avoid non-essential physical activity is a pragmatic adaptation": not spending energy for nothing.
Active muscles have potent anti-inflammatory effects, the virtuous effect of exercising. Note that inflammation damages tissues in our arteries, muscles, liver, brain…
Exercise has an important effect on the quality of your sleep.
HIIT sessions 2 times per week are excellent for health: it increases heart ability to pump blood efficiently and increases the elasticity of arteries.
Athletes are both born AND made.
Strength training helps prevent injuries which is particularly important when aging.
Before being about physical health sports are a way to teach cooperation.
There is such a thing as metabolic compensation so dieting is more effective than exercising to lose weight in the first place BUT keeping weight off almost always demands physical activity. And you can lose weight by exercising, it’s just much slower and more gradual than weight loss from dieting.
Either we like it or not it appears humans’ bodies are loaded with features that help running long distance. Features that do not help for anything except running.
The key to prevent injuries for runners is to be careful about the increase of the mileage (no more than 10% per week) and to build muscle strength outside running.
Think about dancing as a form of exercise, it’s more fun than running for the most of us and it creates the same benefits. There is such a thing as dancer’s high just like the runner’s high.
Regular physical activity prevents bad things that accelerate senescence. It increases the chances of staying healthy as we age.
Exercise can sometimes lead to allostasis: making things even better than before in your body. Dr. Lieberman uses a very interesting metaphor to explain this phenomenon: '“It’s like scrubbing the floor so well after a spill than the whole floor ends up cleaner.”
Finally Dr. Lieberman sums up the problem very clearly: the paradox is our bodies never evolved to function optimally without lifelong physical activity BUT our minds never evolved to get us moving unless it’s necessary, pleasurable or rewarding.
Final piece of advice from Dr. Lieberman: “Some is better than none.”
A fascinating read that I highly recommend, get your copy here: “Exercised” by Dr. Daniel Lieberman.