The Comfort Crisis: Physical Activity
Alarming stats on the death of human movement.
Post summary
Humans are now anywhere from 2.3 to 14 times less active than we were in the past.
We’ve engineered the world for ease and comfort, and it’s hurting our physical and mental health.
You’ll learn about this drop in activity, how it affects us, and my best advice for reclaiming movement.
Housekeeping
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Audio/podcast version
The post
I recently had a fun Twitter interaction with Two Percent reader Amanda Orson. Amanda is a leader in the startup space, but she also lives on and runs a farm in Amish country.
Another Twitter account had posted about how doing hard things is good for us, so Amanda tagged me, noting that my book, The Comfort Crisis, covers similar themes.
I, of course, agree with the idea that doing hard things can be good for us. But the author of the Tweet used doing the dishes before bed as an example of a “hard thing.” I jokingly replied:
Amanda says farm life has made her the fittest she’s been in years and wrote, “Now all of my hobbies involve manual labor.”
Our exchange got me thinking about human activity levels—how they’ve changed and why.
Today’s post covers:
How much less active humans are now compared to the past.
The impact of our drop in activity.
The best tip I have for combatting our drop in activity.
How much less active we are
Section summary: Modern humans are anywhere from 2.3 to 14 times less physically active than our ancestors.
Ten. That’s roughly the number of daily miles humans walked before the Industrial Revolution. Today the average American walks about 2.5 miles daily.
One of my favorite studies on this topic was conducted in Australia in the early 2000s. The study isn’t particularly strong—it only included 14 people. Yet I love the study because it’s particularly weird.
The scientists paid seven male actors to live like Australian settlers from the 1700s and 1800s. They did this at a placed called “Old Sydney Town,” an open-air museum and theme park designed to be like Australia during its settlement. The author Robert Hughes called Old Sydney Town, “The only theme park in the world devoted to punishment and repression.” 😍 ☠️
The scientists asked the actors to use as little technology as possible and even dressed them up in period-appropriate clothes—because punishment and repression, obviously.
The participants wore gold-standard hip-based activity trackers for one week. Meanwhile, seven modern workers like a taxi cab driver and IT worker also wore the same movement trackers.
The results: The people living like early settlers were about 2.3 times more active. They walked roughly 10 miles a day.
Other research suggests our activity drop has been even more extreme.
For example, the researcher David Raichlen studied the Hadza hunter-gatherer tribe in Tanzania. They’re a strong model for how humans lived until about 10,000 years ago.
He wrote: “The Hadza engage in over 14 times as much (physical activity) as subjects participating in large epidemiological studies in the United States.”
Beyond walking
Section summary: It’s not just walking—we’ve removed all sorts of lifting, carrying, and other forms of manual labor from our lives.
Raichlen’s study has critical lessons for living today.
We haven’t just removed steps from our days. We took many of those steps during physical labor, which adds many other challenges to the equation.
Let’s return to my interaction with Amanda. She replied to my line, “Live like Amanda Orson on the farm” with:
The science indeed suggests our past steps had purpose. The author and researcher Stephan Guyenet, Ph.D., makes a striking point: