Top 10 Tips to Live Healthier from ZOE Science & Nutrition - download our FREE guideE: https://zoe.com/freeguide

Exercise culture is crazy. But what you need to do is simple.

There are many misconceptions about exercise. The worst myth is that it's normal to be less active the older we get. But modern hunter-gatherers remain physically active with age.

Humans need about 150 minutes of exercise per week to be healthy, but 80% of us aren’t getting even that. What to do? Simply walking more.

Daniel Lieberman is Edwin M. Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences and a professor of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He received degrees from Harvard and Cambridge, and taught at Rutgers University and George Washington University before joining Harvard University as a Professor in 2001. He is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lieberman loves teaching and has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers, many in journals such as Nature, Science, and PNAS, as well as three popular books, The Evolution of the Human Head (2011), The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease (2013), and Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do is Healthy and Rewarding (2020).

If you want to uncover the right foods for your body, head to zoe.com/podcast, and get 10% off your personalized nutrition program.

Timecodes:

00:00 Introduction
01:34 Quickfire questions
03:22 The Rudyard Kipling view of our ancestors
04:54 Is exercise good for us and why do most of us hate it?
06:19 For millions of years, people were physically active for 2 reasons only…
15:38 Our bodies have evolved to save calroies and preserve energy
18:31 It’s normal to think your life is normal
22:27 We need to exercise because we don’t move enough!
34:00 Diet, exercise and sleep can prevent these diseases…
39:54 The active Grandparent hypothesis
43:10 Study of men matriculating as undergraduates at Harvard University
49:44 How can we enjoy keeping physically active?
01:00:00 The importance of weights exercise
01:06:43 Summary

Mentioned in today’s episode:

Three generations of HSPH researchers explore health benefits of exercise from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Stanford marshmallow test experiment, a summary from Simply Psychology

You can purchase Dr Lieberman’s newest book, ‘Exercised: The Science of Physical Activity, Rest and Health’, here: https://amzn.to/49udz2v


Episode transcripts are available here: https://zoe.com/learn/category/podcasts

Is there a nutrition topic you’d like us to explore? Email us at [email protected] and we’ll do our best to cover it.