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Comment by redeux | Hacker News Reader

As endurance hunters our bodies are tuned for efficient use of energy during low/medium paced exercise. Walking is awesome, and I try to get out there and do an hour a day, but I agree - you get much better results from the gym because our bodies aren’t specifically tuned for those types of workouts. Lifting weights also has a lot of tangible benefits for both men and women in the short and long term.

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To get some idea of how efficient we can be look at studies of the Hadza, a tribe of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, described here [1]. The men spend the day walking around hunting, or if they can't find game climbing trees to get honey, yet burn about the same amount of calories as sedentary men in western industrialized societies. The women spend all day moving around foraging and the results are similar.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_paradox

One of those being not being an otherwise healthy middle aged person constantly complaining about their back, general body pain, etc. I see people in their 70s even at the gym who look and seemingly feel great because they’ve been doing some resistance training their whole adult lives. Better than some software devs I know who never move and are in their 30s.

> As endurance hunters

There's no evidence for this.

But everyone should walk a little bit if only for the mental health benefits.

There’s actually a good amount of evidence for this. Here’s a basic look but you can dig in to other sources that will expand on how we know this.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

Lol yes there is. You can find people alive today who still do it.

We used to do it as children on the ranch. Running down sheep and cows is easy. Deer just take more time.

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