I know a lot of people like it, but it’s not nearly as common as it is in other animals. All other animals I can think of actively seek out and enjoy things like running, jumping ect. It seems to come naturally and be painless while for us it takes training and pushing through pain. Why? How? Does it hurt them too but they don’t care or?
In: Biology
In a nutshell, we were built to live very different lives than we do today.
When surviving was the name of the game, spending any energy that didn’t net you food, shelter, mating, etc was just a dangerous waste of calories.
We evolved so that fatty, calorie-packed foods taste good for pretty similar reasons. Lots of calories = energy = survival. If you ran out of energy before you could hunt or gather your next meal, or spent significantly more calories than you earned from that meal, you were in trouble.
Now, as some people have already pointed out, there are circumstances in which humans do enjoy exercise. It releases endorphins, so it’s not a clear cut “bad” thing to our brains. However, the lack of motivation that you see in people is often driven by this, our bodies or “lizard brain” generally won’t prompt us to go and spend precious calories unless it gets us something.
Latest Answers