The Source of Struggle
When we need to lose some excess weight, many of us will automatically think of exercising. Burning those extra stored calories with workouts is an established convention, but, little do we realize, it goes against the principles of nature – don’t be wasteful, and preserve valuable resources that are vital for your survival.
You won’t see an animal in the wild galloping for hours without a reason. Not only does it not make sense, it also could be very detrimental to its survival. To put it plainly, there’s no such thing as excess or unwanted energy in the wild, so energy must be preserved and managed well.
There are plenty of animals that spend many hours on the prowl, scouring their environment in search of food. If you think about it, most of the time, when animals move, it’s to get more food (which is energy), with the goal of storing some of it in the form of glycogen or body fat. They are driven by strong survival instincts, and they reinforce them with positive results, such as getting a nice dinner. Losing weight as a result of their activities would be failure for them. I also want to emphasize that there is no room for boredom when you are surviving.
On the other hand, as we work out, our goal is to be physically active with the intent of burning calories – another way of saying “wasting some energy.” At the end of the activity, we don’t get rewarded with a nice dinner or even a snack. In fact, we will probably even tighten our dietary regimens. We silently suffer on a stationary treadmill, then suffocate in improvised sauna suits. It’s no wonder we are bored out of our minds when we’re muscling through repetitive and exhaustive workout routines. There’s no natural instinct that could drive or support this behavior, so we look for replacements.
We hire personal trainers who try to devise elaborate plans to keep us motivated. We rely on our instinctual tendencies to be competitive, playing sports and accepting challenges and bets. We want things to be measurable: counting steps, getting points, badges, and trophies. Our brains need to rationalize why we’re pouring out all this energy, needing to know that you somehow benefit from it. Otherwise, your brain may make an executive decision to stop you from being wasteful.
The aforementioned external sources of motivation may work for some of us, but they also tend to be quite perishable. You can’t trick your brains forever!
So, what do we do then?