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

Put simply, regular movement, including getting up every once in a while, helps prevent chronic inflammation by keeping down postprandial levels of fat and sugar.

We are exercised about exercise.

Saving a few calories by parking in a prime location is hardly preventing me from fulfilling my duties to anyone. It’s just an instinct.

Okay, so exercise is paradoxical: salubrious but abnormal, intrinsically free but highly commodified, a source of pleasure and health but a cause of discomfort, guilt, and opprobrium. Why did this realization motivate me to write this book? And why might you wish to read it?

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.

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

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.

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.