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Exercised
Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding | Daniel Lieberman
6 posts | 7 read | 11 to read
If exercise is healthy (so good for you!), why do many people dislike or avoid it? If we are born to walk and run, why do most of us take it easy whenever possible? And how do we make sense of the conflicting, anxiety-inducing information about rest, physical activity, and exercise with which we are bombarded? Is sitting really the new smoking? Can you lose weight by walking? Does running ruin your knees? Should we do weights, cardio, or high-intensity training? In this myth-busting book, Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity, tells the story of how we never evolved to exercise—to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, Lieberman recounts without jargon how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion. His engaging stories and ex­planations will revolutionize the way you think about exercising—not to mention sitting, sleep­ing, sprinting, weight lifting, playing, fighting, walking, jogging, and even dancing. Exercised is entertaining and enlightening but also constructive. As our increasingly sedentary lifestyles have contributed to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diseases such as diabetes, Lieberman audaciously argues that to become more active we need to do more than medicalize and commodify exercise. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology and anthropology, Lieberman suggests how we can make exercise more enjoyable, rather than shaming and blaming people for avoiding it. He also tackles the ques­tion of whether you can exercise too much, even as he explains why exercise can reduce our vul­nerability to the diseases mostly likely to make us sick and kill us.
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Veebee
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"Without seeming like a madman or an idiot, how would I explain to a hunter-gatherer, a farmer in Pemja, or even my great-great-great-grandparents that I spend most of my days sitting in chairs and then compensate for my idleness by paying money to go to a gym to make myself sweaty, tired, and uncomfortable on a machine that forces me to struggle to stay in the same place?"

IndoorDame 😂😂😂sadly sooo true! 13mo
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TheBookDream
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Trying out a low carb diet so when I was out I had sashimi. Also trying to exercise more so reading a book about it.

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Floresj
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Interesting read about the evolution of how we move, how it affects our body systems and the impact of exercise on our health. Definitely motivated me to start exercising more!

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Chelsea.Poole
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Being more active has been life changing; I feel better & I never thought I‘d look forward to getting my workout in each day. This book popped up on my radar after becoming invested in my exercise program, but I‘m sure I never would have given it a shot beforehand. Exercised dives pretty deep into human evolution, biology, and bodily processes. I have a greater understanding of how hunter gatherer societies operate and why our bodies need to move.

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