Caveman Exercise 101

When I say exercise what do you think of?

Almost everyone I talk with has a different answer to this. They range from the ludicrous (100 steps on the treadmill = cardio workout) to more than adequate  (100+ miles running per week). Most people probably have the picture in their minds of people on machines at a health club. All of these (except the first one, that's just crazy) can qualify as exercise. So, when we say "exercise," what should we mean?

I like to think about it in terms of the desired outcome. In the end, what are we trying to get out of exercising? The answer is fitness. The purpose of exercise is to keep the body fit and healthy, and able to perform whatever actions we require of it. Aside from that, exercise has many beneficial side effects: it is a potent antidepressant and mood stabilizer, it treats many diseases, such as high blood pressure, type II diabetes, heart disease, chronic pain, and high cholesterol (even if you don't change your diet too much). That being said, for exercise to do this, it needs to be done right.

Cavemen did not exercise per se. Their exercise was a part of daily life. They had to run down food, forage for food, and evade predators. To do this, they had to run, jump, climb, crawl, and possibly swim. Since probably 80-90% of their waking hours were spent in the search for food, They didn't really have to worry about exercising in addition to daily activities. Their daily activities WERE what kept them fit and healthy.

Fast forward to today. In the information age, most of us have desk jobs. That means that we wake up, get into our cars, drive to work, walk into the office, sit at a desk for eight hours, walk back to the car, drive home, and walk into the house. That's about it for walking. Depending how close to your job and house you park, that could be as few as 500 steps or so. Given our modern lifestyle, there is no doubt that we need additional activity in order to maintain the health of our bodies.

The government and health organizations try to address this by putting a time on it. They say things like "exercise for 30 minutes daily." In order not to scare people off, however, they lower the bar so much on what activities they recommend that that thirty minutes is mostly wasted time. Walking at a moderate pace, which the federal government considers adequate, barely qualifies as activity, let alone exercise. It can be a good starter when you are sedentary (that is how I started when I was 350 lbs), but unless you increase the intensity, you are doing yourself little good as far as the benefits of exercise are concerned.

More on what exercise should be like in Caveman Nutrition 102