Your brain can sabotage senior health and fitness efforts. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s true: You have a built-in genetic bias to relax, conserve energy, and overeat when food is plentiful.
Think about it: Cavemen never had to motivate themselves into action. Hunger motivated them. Dangerous prey motivated them. They never had to use self-control over eating. They ate as much as possible to hold them over during winters or famines so they would be ready for the next hunt.
We inherited those same brains. Biologically, we still depend on danger or high stress to get us into gear. Otherwise, we love to relax and conserve energy. The brain tells us we need to rest until the famine is over and the tiger has passed. When food is plentiful, we’re programmed to eat as much as we can.
Your Brain and Senior Health and Fitness
Like our ancestors, we prefer to rest until we absolutely must get out of danger. Rest and recovery led to a survival advantage for early tribal humans. We learned to conserve calories and store them as fat when food supplies were limited.
Our ancestors didn’t need to develop discipline, willpower, or self-control for this. Health and fitness meant staying alive. It was either feast or famine. There wasn’t an excess of readily available food like there is today.
Once we understand that we have the same caveman brain built to survive in more primitive times, we can use that information to our advantage. We can shift our thinking from “Why don’t I love exercising?” and start asking “How can I overcome the urge to vegetate?”
Don’t Sabotage Senior Health and Fitness
When I came to the full realization of these facts I felt liberated. Here was a challenge I could overcome. The problem wasn’t me. You see, when you don’t blame yourself for being inadequate, you have more energy available to figure out how you will motivate yourself, despite going against a human nature that’s outdated.
The enemy isn’t your laziness. You may be trapped by a genetic predisposition to being sedentary. Sedentary habits aren’t bad. We need to relax, restore, and repair. We need to sit to read books, be entertained by TV or computers, and to socialize and eat good meals with friends.
Yet too much time being sedentary will counteract all your good efforts at the gym and on the sports fields. It makes no sense to go out and play three hours of tennis and then sit the rest of the day. Yet that’s what our brains will tell us we need to do.
The senior caveman and woman of today need to override this genetic bias and not let it get in the way of senior health and fitness. Smart seniors know they can do a number of things to avoid the vegetative urges to watch TV and eat junk food. How will you overcome those urges?
Get Moving
Use exercise to generate energy, drive, and get into action. Yes, I know it may seem paradoxical, like telling a depressive to “just do it.” (Don’t feel like exercising? Then exercise.) But exercise does produce magical chemicals like endorphins, your body’s own opium. Once you get going, you can experience some intense pleasure. Just get started and let it happen.
Have Fun
Combine exercise with playful activities you naturally enjoy. Make sure your exercise program generates pleasure. This means sports, games, and a variety of physical movements like yoga, dance, kayaking, or something you’ve never done before.
Be Consistent
I may sound like a broken record, but…before you can get hooked on exercise, you must start doing it and keep at it. Somewhere down the line you will learn to love it. Give it a chance to take hold. Persist, insist, and resist giving up.
So, what are you doing to overcome those urges, and not let it get in the way of your health and fitness? Leave a comment or send us an email. We’d love to hear from you about your War on Aging.
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