ZOE Science & Nutrition - Recap: Why we avoid exercise and how to overcome it | Daniel Lieberman

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Today we’re exploring what evolution can teach us about exercise. When it comes to doing exercise, there’s often a tug-of-war between our body and brain. Our body craves movement - it wants to be leaner, fitter, stronger. But our brain? Well, that’s a different story. It often dreads the thought of going on a run or lifting weights and will try and find any excuse to avoid doing it. So, why does this conflict exist, and more importantly, how can we overcome it? Harvard Professor of Biological Sciences Daniel Lieberman is here to unravel the mysteries of our exercising ancestors and explain how this can help us train today. 🥑 Make smarter food choices. Become a member a zoe.com - 10% off with code PODCAST 🌱 Try our new plant based wholefood supplement - Daily30+ *Naturally high in copper which contributes to normal energy yielding metabolism and the normal function of the immune system 📚 Books from our ZOE Scientists: The Food For Life Cookbook by Prof. Tim Spector Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati Free resources from ZOE: Live Healthier: Top 10 Tips From ZOE Science & Nutrition  Gut Guide - for a healthier microbiome in weeks Have feedback or a topic you'd like us to cover? Let us know here Listen to the full episode here

Hello and welcome to Zoey Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today we're exploring what evolution can teach us about exercise. When it comes to doing exercise, there's often a tug of war between our body and our brain. Our body craves movement. It wants to be leaner, fitter, stronger. But our brain? Well that's a different story.

It often dreads the thought of going on a run or lifting weights and will try and find any excuse to avoid doing it. So why does this conflict exist? And more importantly, how can we overcome it? Professor Daniel Lieberman is here to unravel the mysteries of our exercise in ancestors and explain how this can help us train today. Is exercise good for us? And if so, why do most of us hate it?

Well, to answer that question, let's start with the definition. Okay. All right, so exercise is a form of physical activity. So physical activity is just moving, right? You know, climbing the stairs to get to my office, making breakfast, whatever, that's all forms of physical activity.

And exercise is a special form of physical activity, which is discretionary, voluntary physical activity that we do for the sake of health and fitness. Rather than because I need to get to the top of the house in order to pick something up. Yeah. And if you think about exercise that way, and actually exercise comes from the Latin word that has to do with hoeing. There's a reason when you do your maths exercises,

we call them exercises, you're not using anything other than your brain there. But it's a modern behavior. Nobody until very recently exercised under several discretionary voluntary reasons for the sake of health and fitness. Is that right? You say that as if it's obvious, but weren't there weren't lots of people doing exercises in the Roman times or the- Well, that's still recent as far as I'm concerned. Okay. Your idea of recent is longer than mine. Yeah. I mean, I'm talking prehistory, right? For millions and millions of years, people were

physically active for two reasons and two reasons only. When it was necessary, in other words, in order to get food or to avoid being somebody else's food, right? Or when it was rewarding. Think about play. I mean, children in all cultures play, adults play, and play, of course, is very useful for all kinds of reasons. But our ancestors were not doing exercise in order to make sure that when they went hunting, they would be successful. No, never. Again, you say that, but that's really interesting because we think now you need to do lots of exercise in order to go and be successful at, you know, if you were going to be going

to have to run in a race, you think, well, you need to do lots of exercise in order to be successful at the race. But our ancestors didn't need to do that in order to catch the antelope. No, because, yeah, I mean, There's many ways to answer that question. But let me just say that the reason I started this book, actually, sometimes people make up these epiphanies, but I actually really had one when I was doing some research in Northern Mexico studying a Native American population that's famous for its running,

the Tarahumara. I was collecting data, I was being a good anthropologist, had my clipboard with all my questions that I'd worked out in advance and talked to ethnographer friends to make sure that I was doing it in the right proper way when I was being a good anthropologist, had my clipboard with all my questions that I'd worked out in advance and talked to ethnographer friends to make sure that I was doing it in the right proper way when I was measuring their feet and measuring their running biomechanics and doing all kinds of stuff. Just me and a guy who I'd hired to help me travel around and we were sleeping on the floors of Pueblos and all this sort of stuff.

Ever I asked people about training, that's what you're talking about, I got these really confused answers. People didn't understand the question. And I had a translator. And finally, there was this one old guy I was interviewing. And he was a shaman, famous for his long distance running, too. And so I could tell my translator was asking my usual question, how do you train for running?

And he looked at me. And I didn't even need a translator. I could say, why would anybody run if they didn't have to? That's what he said. This is a guy who runs like 100-mile races. He doesn't train. His life is his training. He's very physically active. He walks long distances. Occasionally when he was young,

he used to run in order to hunt. But the idea of getting up in the morning, this morning I ran about five or six miles, just for the sake of running five or six miles. The various places I go to do research and when I run in the morning, they laugh at me, they think it's hilarious. It makes sense because most people in most parts of the world, for most of our evolutionary history,

struggled to get enough food, right? It's hard, right? I spent about 500 calories this morning running my five miles. If you're struggling to get enough calories, wasting 500 calories in the morning, just for no purpose whatsoever, it's not a good idea, it's maladaptive. So when people say that we hate to exercise,

it's because we're asking people to do something that is intrinsically unnatural. And the example I love to point out is if you ever go to an airport or a mall or a subway stop or whatever where there's an escalator next to a stairway. I was just in the subway here in Boston going up to South Station and I got off the subway car and everybody filed and waited in line to go up the escalator and I was one of the few people who took the stairs because I have to, otherwise I'm a hypocrite, right? And did you take the stairs because you know it's good for you

but you hate doing it anyway? Or are you in this exception for some reason? No, I don't like taking the stairs. You don't like taking the stairs. But if anybody, you're like, I'm Mr. Like, I'm Mr. You Should Be Physically Active. Anybody catches me on the escalator, I'm in trouble, right? All right, so you're in the same world as me.

It's what you're saying, you don't, it's not that you enjoy it. I'm a different, yeah. You're just trying to override your natural tendency to basically be lazy and not do this. Just like most people, if you put a piece of cake in front of me and an apple, I'm going to want the cake. I have to override my instincts to eat the cake rather than the apple.

If nobody's looking, I'm going to have the cake. I do sometimes meet people who seem to really enjoy exercise and they do like these extreme things like Ironman or ultra marathons or the rest of it. So are you saying that they're just a bit weird, which I've always suspected? Well, I think it's more complicated than that. I mean, I usually rarely enjoy starting exercise. But I usually, I'm glad I've done it when it's over.

And that's what you mentioned at the beginning, right? So, I mean, this morning is no exception. There was a beautiful morning here in Boston. It was perfect weather. Could not have been nicer for running. And I was like dithering and complaining. And finally my wife said, come on, just go. Time for you to go.

And, you know, I didn't enjoy the first mile very much. I never do. Then I settled in and I enjoyed myself. And by the time I came home, I was glad I did it, but I've done it enough to know that I get some benefit and I'm reasonably fit, that it's not a horrible chore. But if I'm unfit and struggling to exercise, if I'm overweight or haven't exercised in a long time,

it's hard and we shouldn't make people feel bad for not liking it. You have to overcome some inertia. And you're saying that is deeply rooted in us. It's actually our body has sort of evolved to protect our calories, not waste energy on doing this exercise. So whenever you do do this exercise, you deserve a big round of applause is what I'm hearing. Like you're sort of overcoming something that is actually natural to say, well, don't waste

your energy doing this because after all, if you really needed to do this, you'd go and do it anyway because you won't get any food or whatever. So at which point you wouldn't need this strong desire to do exercise. You'd just be like, well, I have to go and walk that far in order to get this food. Otherwise I'm going to go hungry and that is definitely worse. Is that how I understand it? Yeah. I mean, I think you've made it more complicated than necessary.

I mean, again, just to simplify it, it's not really complicated, right? We evolved to be physically active for two reasons and two reasons only, full stop, when it was necessary or rewarding. And so if we want to help people exercise, we have to either make it necessary or rewarding or both. So if I'm going to meet a friend for a run,

I don't necessarily even think about it as exercise. Hey, I'm going to go meet, I'm going to go meet my for a run, I don't necessarily even think about it as exercise. Hey, I'm going to go meet, I'm going to go meet my friend Elena, which I do every Friday morning and we run together. And it's fun. We chat about the week and this, what's that, et cetera. And I don't think about it so much as exercise. It's my weekly meeting with my friend and neighbor Elena.

Or maybe I have a coach, right? And my coach says, you know, training for Boston Marathon on Tuesday, want you to do this. He's kind of made it necessary for coach, right? And my coach says, training for Boston Marathon on Tuesday, I want you to do this. He's kind of made it necessary for me, right? And I've signed up for this race. And I better damn well train, otherwise I'm going to be humiliated or have a horrible time.

So we use carrots, we use sticks, but it's really very simple. We evolved to be physically active, either because it's necessary or rewarding. Now we live in this world where people know that it's good for rewarding. Now we live in this world where people know that it's good for them to be physically active, aka exercise, because they don't otherwise,

you know, they sit in chairs all day long. And either they somehow have the willpower to overcome that distaste for what they're doing, or they find ways to make it fun. That's brilliant. So one way is that suddenly, instead of this being unpleasant, there's this way that switches it to being fun. And actually you talk about dancing in the book and I was sort

of struck by that. That in my mind, I enjoy dancing. That's definitely not exercise. That's fun. And then you point out, well, actually it's quite a lot of exercise really, but because you switch to think, you don't think about it like that. It's just fun. And therefore you just respond to it in a different way. Yeah. I mean, the Tarahumara I was mentioning earlier are famous for their endurance dancing. Everybody talks about their endurance running. They have dances. I've been there. They'll dance for 24 hours. 24 hours?

Yes. They just go on and on and on and on. There's a lot of drinking going on. It's a party. They're having a great time, right? And that, of course, is obviously training, right? They don't think of it as training. And of course, it helps them because dancing is jumping and running is actually just jumping from one leg to another. The bottom line is you're struggling to do it. A, don't feel bad about yourself. There's nothing wrong with you. And try to make it

fun. So example, I like to run and I often run with friends. And so on Tuesdays I run with so and so and on Fridays I run with so and so and on Sundays we have this big running group and we often email each other the night before. It's like, hey, let's meet on Tuesday at 7 15. And I guarantee you at Tuesday at seven o'clock it's like, oh my god, I'm like, what am I doing? I don't, I know it's raining or it's cold or I've got like, I've got to work on this paper, I got to get ready for class or whatever, you know, whatever and I don't want to do it but I've already promised, you know, my friend Aaron that I'm going to be there and if I'm not there he's going to be pissed off and so I go and you know we're often like grumbling in the morning and neither of us want to see each

other and then you know after 10-15 minutes, you know, it's fun. So we've made it necessary for each other. Thank you for listening to today's recap episode. I want to take 30 seconds to talk about something that's not talked about enough. Menopause. Over half the people on the planet experience perimenopause and menopause. Yet symptoms are often misunderstood or dismissed. At ZOE we're moving menopause research forward. We recently conducted the largest study of menopause and nutrition in the world and our study showed that two-thirds of perimenopausal women reported experiencing over 12 symptoms. Symptoms

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