The Globe and Mail
Published January 17, 2021
BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images
Here’s one small way in which this highly unusual year is not so different from its predecessors: In the waning weeks of January, gyms are empty.
Every year, we resolve to mend our sedentary ways and exercise more. We know it’s good for us. We were born to leap and thrust and ramble across the savannah. So why do we abandon those resolutions so quickly and predictably?
That’s the question at the heart of a new book by Harvard University evolutionary anthropologist Daniel Lieberman.
Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding is, in some ways, a book full of excuses. Our aversion to wasting energy is hard-wired into our genes, he tells us: “Exhorting us to ‘Just Do It,’ ” he writes, “is about as helpful as telling a drug addict to ‘Just Say No.’ ”