About this item
If exercise is healthy (so good for you!) , why do many people dislike or avoid it? If we are born to walk and run, why do most of us take it easy whenever possible? And how do we make sense of the conflicting, anxiety-inducing information about rest, physical activity, and exercise with which we are bombarded? Is sitting really the new smoking? Can you lose weight by walking? Does running ruin your knees? Should we do weights, cardio, or high-intensity training? In this myth-busting book, Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity, tells the story of how we never evolved to exercise - to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health.
About the Author
Daniel Lieberman is Edwin M. Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences and a professor of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He received degrees from Harvard and Cambridge, and taught at Rutgers University and George Washington University before joining Harvard University as a Professor in 2001. He is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lieberman studies and teaches how and why the human body is the way it is, and how our evolutionary history affects health and disease. In his research he combines experimental biomechanics, anatomy, and physiology both in the lab and in the field (primarily Kenya and Mexico) . He is best known for his work on the evolution of running and other kinds of physical activities such as walking and throwing, but is also well known for studying the evolution of the human head. Lieberman loves teaching and has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers, many in journals such as Nature, Science, and PNAS, as well as three popular books, The Evolution of the Human Head (2011) , The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease (2013) , and Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do is Healthy and Rewarding (2020) . In his spare time, he enjoys running - sometimes barefoot, earning him the nickname 'the Barefoot Professor'.
