Sitting Around Eating Constantly Used to Be a Survival Strategy, This Is Now Killing Us, What Gives?

Sitting Around Eating Constantly Used to Be a Survival Strategy, This Is Now Killing Us, What Gives?

We have evolved to survive. We need to eat to survive. Hunger is a powerful integrated biological need to make us look for food. It made a big survival advantage in the Stone Age.

There are forty thousand years ago, we did not cook our food and had to find ourselves. The day was taken up with a lot of foraging, walking in search of food places or chasing prey. Once we got our food, so needed to eat. Eating raw plants, vegetables and meat takes a lot of chewing. This could chew keep us occupied long most of the day. Only really fruit and honey would have given us a lot of calories for very little effort (if you discount bee stings). All other calories took a lot of time and effort to obtain.

Although our bodies and our brains have not evolved to a significant extent since, life is very different now. We have many hours a day when we are not busy. We get more calories in a few bites of modern food we would run all day in the Stone Age. The problem is that our bodies and our brains are set up for life in a different era.

We love naturally chew and eat constantly. It is human to want to eat everything in front of us. We sit down, and then do nothing if we can. All in the bid to conserve energy.

There are forty thousand years, these actions would have to survive us and have healthy children. In the 21st century, these actions will kill us early and make our children sick.

Save energy

Laze around when you're not busy is a great survival strategy.

Relaxation feels good. To help our bodies lay down fat stores for famine to come, our bodies are equipped with the ability to conserve energy when we can.

Ideally it also feels good to do things. Exercise releases endorphins and jobs completing tasks and gives a feeling of well-being to encourage us to do more.

It is not only in modern society where people have become accustomed to do as little as possible. It is in our genes. Today we drive when we were walking, we prepared dishes when we must prepare our own food. We are doing everything possible to sit and lie about because it's good. We convince ourselves that we are tired, we need rest and give our thoughts, desires and feelings to lie just on the couch doing nothing.

If we were animals that do not have the need to go looking for food, making babies or trying to impress a potential partner, then it would not make sense to be wandering or wanting to burn a lot of energy. What would be the point in that? So whenever we have the opportunity to rest, our bodies and our brains are wired to try to take advantage of this.

We must fight against these impulses. They are not useful. We are no longer in a survival situation and our bodies will not be healthy if we do not get any exercise. I'm not describing the powerful drives that keep us stuck on the couch to give you an excuse. I simply say that they are completely natural.

We need to work on ways to overcome this tendency to save energy. When we bad shape we need to do the opposite of what our bodies and our minds tell us. We need to burn energy. It is time to say goodbye to the couch a little more often.

More another day