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A review by jayniepaige
Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding by Daniel E. Lieberman
I am having trouble rating this book because I’m having an intensely personal reaction to it now that I have finished. At the beginning, I was fascinated by Dr. Lieberman’s anthropological and evolutionary approach to understanding exercise and our reluctance to participate in it. I felt hopeful that he would provide a new way to think about exercise and health. But, the further I got into the book, the less I liked it.
To start with the positives, I do think it’s helpful to understand how our bodies have evolved to need physical activity. As I told my sister, part of me wanted to read this book and find out that we don’t need exercise to be healthy, but that is obviously and scientifically false. Dr. Lieberman proves that by walking us through studies of hunter-gatherers and their levels of physical activity in their daily lives. Additionally, Dr. Lieberman’s explanation of our inclination towards laziness is empathetic and reassuring. I also appreciate how he challenges various myths about activity and inactivity such as the suggestion that sitting is the new smoking (he clearly refutes this).
Now for my major qualms: Dr. Lieberman focuses mostly on running, he does not adequately discuss/explore the potential harm of over-exercise, he says that we should not shame people for being inactive but does not dive into the psychology/sociology of this, and he is redundant.
I don’t feel the need to expand on why I found the redundancy annoying, so I’ll start with Dr. Lieberman’s focus on running. In a book about exercise, I think it is fair to expect a discussion about multiple types of exercise. However, this book constantly and almost exclusively looks at the benefits of running. While Dr. Lieberman does offer solace that walking constitutes exercise, I still finished the book feeling like he suggested running is the best way to stay healthy. Furthermore, this focus on just running left out a significant discussion about the benefits of non-cardio exercise. Perhaps that’s what an evolutionary perspective would lead us to — that cardio is really what we need — but I wish he at least delved into the topic.
Next, let’s take the idea that laziness is natural and that shaming people for inactivity is wrong. I totally agree with this sentiment, but there were a couple of sentences saying exactly that and then nothing more!! This is where we need to expand the conversation about physical activity. We know that exercise is important for our health. But how can we create an environment that encourages people to exercise and have a healthy relationship with their bodies instead of scaring or shaming them? That’s the book I want to read.
Okay, so now we are at the thing that really got to me: Dr. Lieberman’s failure to even engage with the idea that over-exercise could be dangerous. He makes it abundantly clear that some exercise is better than none and that more is better than less. But when he says that there is really no such thing as too much exercise, he doesn’t do enough to prove the point. I could really go off about this and I could go off about it in many different directions, but I’m just going to focus on the thing most personal to me: eating disorders. In my experience, over-exercising is VERY real and INCREDIBLY dangerous. To not even mention this, to not even add a footnote about eating disorders seems almost criminal to me. In fact, I would discourage anyone who has had a troubled relationship with their body, their eating, or their exercising from reading this book. I don’t actually think I would recommend this book in general, but I think that especially for people in recovery, this is absolutely not what you need to read.
Again, I read this book hoping it would be a different perspective/view on exercise and that it would offer something new to the discussion about physical activity and inactivity in our society. Instead, it just provided different types of evidence for the same points that we already know. I believe we need to radically change the way we think about and discuss eating and moving in our society and I am disappointed that this book is just more of the same.
To start with the positives, I do think it’s helpful to understand how our bodies have evolved to need physical activity. As I told my sister, part of me wanted to read this book and find out that we don’t need exercise to be healthy, but that is obviously and scientifically false. Dr. Lieberman proves that by walking us through studies of hunter-gatherers and their levels of physical activity in their daily lives. Additionally, Dr. Lieberman’s explanation of our inclination towards laziness is empathetic and reassuring. I also appreciate how he challenges various myths about activity and inactivity such as the suggestion that sitting is the new smoking (he clearly refutes this).
Now for my major qualms: Dr. Lieberman focuses mostly on running, he does not adequately discuss/explore the potential harm of over-exercise, he says that we should not shame people for being inactive but does not dive into the psychology/sociology of this, and he is redundant.
I don’t feel the need to expand on why I found the redundancy annoying, so I’ll start with Dr. Lieberman’s focus on running. In a book about exercise, I think it is fair to expect a discussion about multiple types of exercise. However, this book constantly and almost exclusively looks at the benefits of running. While Dr. Lieberman does offer solace that walking constitutes exercise, I still finished the book feeling like he suggested running is the best way to stay healthy. Furthermore, this focus on just running left out a significant discussion about the benefits of non-cardio exercise. Perhaps that’s what an evolutionary perspective would lead us to — that cardio is really what we need — but I wish he at least delved into the topic.
Next, let’s take the idea that laziness is natural and that shaming people for inactivity is wrong. I totally agree with this sentiment, but there were a couple of sentences saying exactly that and then nothing more!! This is where we need to expand the conversation about physical activity. We know that exercise is important for our health. But how can we create an environment that encourages people to exercise and have a healthy relationship with their bodies instead of scaring or shaming them? That’s the book I want to read.
Okay, so now we are at the thing that really got to me: Dr. Lieberman’s failure to even engage with the idea that over-exercise could be dangerous. He makes it abundantly clear that some exercise is better than none and that more is better than less. But when he says that there is really no such thing as too much exercise, he doesn’t do enough to prove the point. I could really go off about this and I could go off about it in many different directions, but I’m just going to focus on the thing most personal to me: eating disorders. In my experience, over-exercising is VERY real and INCREDIBLY dangerous. To not even mention this, to not even add a footnote about eating disorders seems almost criminal to me. In fact, I would discourage anyone who has had a troubled relationship with their body, their eating, or their exercising from reading this book. I don’t actually think I would recommend this book in general, but I think that especially for people in recovery, this is absolutely not what you need to read.
Again, I read this book hoping it would be a different perspective/view on exercise and that it would offer something new to the discussion about physical activity and inactivity in our society. Instead, it just provided different types of evidence for the same points that we already know. I believe we need to radically change the way we think about and discuss eating and moving in our society and I am disappointed that this book is just more of the same.