7 Big Exercise Myths
Why laziness is normal and exercise is not
Robert Roy Britt
Robert Roy Britt
Jan 4·7 min read

Exercise myth 1: We evolved to exercise
Exercise myth 2: It’s unnatural to be lazy
Exercise myth 3: Sitting is intrinsically unhealthy
Exercise myth 4: Our ancestors were fast and strong and could run forever
Exercise myth 5: You can’t lose weight by just walking
Exercise myth 6: It’s normal to be less active as we age
Exercise myth 7: There is an optimal dose and type of exercise

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Photo: Allan Danahar/Getty Images

On a recent “bloody cold” Massachusetts morning, Harvard University evolutionary biologist and paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman, PhD, wasn’t eager to embark on his usual five-mile jog. “I did not want to leave the house, and I whined and complained to my wife for about 45 minutes,” he recalls. But as an expert on human movement and its many benefits, he understands the modern necessity of substituting unnatural exercises like jogging and weightlifting for the natural activities we evolved for, like hunting and gathering. Ultimately he forced himself out the door, slogged through the first miserable mile, finally hit his stride, and was glad for the effort and the feel-good chemicals it generated.

When the scientist, who in normal times travels the world for research, takes his morning jog in some remote village on a different continent, hunter-gatherers will often sit and stare, shake their heads, and even laugh at this person who chooses to undertake physical activity not necessary for survival or procreation.

“Exercise is like learning algebra. It can be useful, but we never evolved to do it.”

Women and men in Tanzania’s Hadza tribe, among the most well-studied hunter-gatherer societies, have no concept of what people living in more modern societies call exercise. They typically walk five to 10 miles a day to put food on the table and spend much of the rest of their waking hours doing light activities or sitting around, Lieberman explains in his new book, Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding.

Among the Hadza and other hunter-gatherer societies, those who survive into old age tend to remain healthy and highly active in contrast to the largely sedentary older people in Western societies who suffer high rates of heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and other chronic, debilitating conditions.
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But if physical activity is so good for humans, as overwhelming evidence suggests, why do so many people avoid it?

“Because it’s abnormal,” Lieberman tells Elemental. “Exercise is like learning algebra. It can be useful, but we never evolved to do it.” Rather, he says, we evolved to walk, run, dance, dig, and do other things that were necessary and rewarding while avoiding needless exertion.

In an interview, Lieberman makes clear that we modern humans should absolutely aim to be physically active, but he also debunks several myths about that oft-dreaded concept of exercise.
Exercise myth 1: We evolved to exercise

Lieberman: “Exercise is physical activity for the sake of health and fitness. And it’s abundantly clear that until recently, nobody exercised because people had to be physically active in order to survive. When you have a finite amount of energy, you have to trade off between how you use energy for one function or another. And every time you spend a calorie on exercise, you’re not spending a calorie on survival and reproduction. Natural selection did not ever gear us to needlessly spend energy going for a five-mile run or lifting weights whose sole purpose was to be lifted.”
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Exercise myth 2: It’s unnatural to be lazy

Lieberman: “It’s an instinct not to spend calories on being physically active when it isn’t necessary. And so it’s not laziness; it’s actually normal. If you put a piece of chocolate cake in front of me and a carrot, it’s kind of abnormal to prefer the carrot. Almost everybody prefers the chocolate cake because we evolved to go for as much energy as possible. And it doesn’t mean you’re a glutton if you prefer chocolate cake any more than you’re lazy if you’d rather take the escalators.”
Exercise myth 3: Sitting is intrinsically unhealthy

Lieberman: “Sitting isn’t intrinsically unhealthy, and your chair isn’t out to kill you. Much of the research on sitting [that suggests it’s bad for you] is correlation, not causation. This is part of the myopia of only looking at people in the West. The Hadza sit as much as we do. So there’s nothing abnormal about sitting.”

(In his book, Lieberman pins the problem partly on modern chairs and our tendency to sit for hours straight without moving. He notes his own inability to squat for extended periods like the Hudza often do, using a range of muscles that he has never developed. He also cites research showing that the backs of rural teenagers in Kenya who rarely sit in chairs with backrests are up to 41% stronger than the backs of urban Kenyan teens who use conventional chairs.)

“Natural selection did not ever gear us to needlessly spend energy going for a five-mile run or lifting weights whose sole purpose was to be lifted.”

Exercise myth 4: Our ancestors were fast and strong and could run forever

Lieberman: “There’s a kind of myth out there that our ancestors were jacked. Not only is that not true, it actually would be a really bad idea to be too strong because when energy is limited, all that extra muscle increases your energy demands for no real reason. I’ve met hunter-gatherers. They’re not weak. They’re fit and they’re strong and they have low levels of body fat, so you can really see their muscles. But they’re not super strong by any stretch of the imagination. Our ancestors weren’t super strong any more than they were super fast, and they didn’t run crazy distances. They just worked a little bit, but that little bit has enormous effects, especially if you keep it up over your lifetime.”
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Exercise myth 5: You can’t lose weight by just walking

Lieberman: “Everybody says if you want to lose weight, you should do it by dieting. But if you’re not in a rush and you want to do it carefully and slowly, and also want to get all the benefits of exercise, you can lose weight by walking. It’s just that you’re not going to do it fast, and you’re not going to do it in huge quantities. The other thing that’s really important that often doesn’t get mentioned is that there are two aspects to dieting. One is losing weight, but in some ways, the more important problem is keeping that weight off. And that’s where study after study shows that physical activity is really important because what physical activity is most effective for is preventing weight gain and weight regain.”
Exercise myth 6: It’s normal to be less active as we age

Lieberman: “Exercise turns on repair and maintenance mechanisms that become more important, not less important, as we get old. In hunter-gatherer societies, grandmothers often work harder than mothers. They’re spending more hours a day being physically active than their daughters because now they don’t have kids in tow. And their walking speed doesn’t decline. I’ve been out there and seen these grandmothers, and let me tell you: They go zipping along, carrying huge weights. They just keep going.”

“Well, first of all, it’s your right not to exercise if you don’t want to, and there’s nothing abnormal about you, and you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself.”

Exercise myth 7: There is an optimal dose and type of exercise

Lieberman: “We love to give prescriptions, right? This is part of the medicalization of exercise. Do this; do that. But the problem is that there is no one perfect prescription. Certainly, there’s no question that some exercise is better than none. But the dose-response curve is going to be different for different individuals, and it also is going to differ depending upon the desired outcome. Are you worried about heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, or osteoporosis? Are you a male or female? Do you live in the suburbs or the city? The surgeon general has a minimum requirement — just get 150 minutes of exercise a week. Well, that’s just a number that was kind of plucked out of the firmament. It’s based on data, which is that 150 minutes a week takes the average person’s rate of [premature] death down by about 50%, but there’s nothing special about that number. You can still get benefits from doing less, and you get more benefits from doing more.”

Exercise has been medicalized to stress its importance and commercialized to make it convenient and profit-generating, and that’s all useful and even necessary to help counteract the inactivity of modern life, Lieberman says. But there are downsides. At best, exercise is rarely more fun or rewarding than hunting, gathering, or sporting. At worst: “People who don’t exercise are made to feel bad about it and feel shamed and blamed, and many of them are sick of being bullied and lectured,” he says. “Well, first of all, it’s your right not to exercise if you don’t want to, and there’s nothing abnormal about you, and you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself.”

Rather, Lieberman suggests, consider the rewards of moving your body more. Exercise and a healthy diet support the immune system and can slow or reverse the process of aging of many cells in organs throughout our bodies.

“Many conditions occur more commonly with advancing age,” he explains, “but only some are actually caused by age.” While it’s no fountain of youth, he says, physical activity helps us avoid preventable chronic diseases that rarely dogged our ancestors.

Meanwhile, the scientist is motivated by how a workout makes him feel on any given day.

“I find that physical activity is its own reward,” Lieberman says. “You know, you get that dopamine hit. The unfortunate thing about dopamine, however, is that it doesn’t make you want to run. It makes you glad that you did run.”
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Me: I am totally lazy and have been for over 25 years. I don’t walk when I can sit and I don’t sit when I can lie down. I have type 2 Diabetes for over 20 years, which I have under control with food choices and tablets – why exercise when I don’t want to or have to, so I don’t. Food greens or low fat 350g meals (frozen from supermarket)
Exercise is a myth!!