Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding

When my colleague Dr. Aaron Baggish attached accelerometers (tiny devices, like Fitbits, that measure steps per day) to more than twenty Tarahumara men, he discovered they walked on average ten miles a day. In other words, the training that enables them to run back-to-back marathons is the physical work that is part and parcel of their everyday lif

In other words, typical hunter-gatherers are about as physically active as Americans or Europeans who include about an hour of exercise in their daily routine.

We are exercised about exercise.

A multiyear analysis of almost five thousand Americans found that people who broke up their sitting time with frequent short breaks had up to 25 percent less inflammation than those who rarely rose from their chairs despite sitting the same number of hours.

Expert consensus is that we need 150 minutes of exercise a week, but we also read that just a few minutes of high-intensity exercise a day is enough to make us fit.

How can something so ancient, universal, and ordinary as sitting be so unhealthy?

The essential premise of this myth is that people like the Tarahumara whose bodies are untainted by modern decadent lifestyles are natural superathletes, not only capable of amazing physical feats, but also free from laziness.

Chief among these myths is the notion that we are supposed to want to exercise. There is a class of people whom I define as “exercists” who like to brag about exercise and who repeatedly remind us that exercise is medicine, a magic pill that slows aging and delays death. You know the type.

1 One prominent physician has declared that chairs are “out to get us, harm us, kill us” and that “sitting is the new smoking.”2