If the ultimate goal of our brain is survival, why is it hard for us to stick to good habits which are good for our health?

Question

Why is it hard for most people to eat healthy or get good sleep or even workout if ultimately this will be good for our health and survival ?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Because we’ve evolved to survive deficiencies, whereas modern day health problems come from abundances.

For example, we’ve evolved to preserve energy and save it up as much as possible, which is backfiring now that energy is too easily available, causing obesity, T2 diabetes, etc.

Another example is the kind of food we seek. Fat, sugar, and salt are all important for our survivor, and they are much rarer in nature, so we’ve evolved to seek them out. Nowadays, we have too much of them for our body to handle, causing problems.