Nature designed us to walk

In the next three lessons, I will introduce you to the first important health interventions within three key components of the longevity protocol — physical activity, sleep, and diet.

Go through them carefully, because at the end of this level they will become your first challenges to implement in your own longevity protocol.

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When I began my journey toward health and longevity, the biggest problem for me was lack of time.

I assumed that since I had so little of it, I could compensate with intensity — especially when it came to physical activity.

So instead of dedicating enough time each day to movement, I did brutal (almost entirely in Zone 5), short, intense workouts thinking that maybe I spent less time doing them — but the end result would be just as good.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Despite initially impressive results — rapidly improving body composition, strength, and endurance — after a few months I suddenly experienced a painful collapse in recovery. Although I hadn’t changed anything in my protocol or lifestyle, almost overnight I began sleeping worse, my energy dropped dramatically, and my training results deteriorated significantly. It was a painful and confusing setback that took me months to recover from.

While analyzing my health data with experts, I learned a crucial lesson about our biology — specialized gym sessions, aerobic workouts, or high-intensity intervals, although incredibly beneficial, cannot replace the essential hours of diverse, low-intensity daily movement such as walking, cleaning, or doing laundry.

Many people believe that the key to health is regular training: an hour at the gym, 30 minutes of running, a quick HIIT session. It’s important and beneficial — but it’s not the whole story. Increasingly, research shows that even if we train intensely several times a week, a sedentary lifestyle for the rest of the day can seriously harm our health.

This is one of the great paradoxes of modern fitness:
training is necessary, but insufficient if the remaining 23 hours are spent sitting.

To understand why, we must start with what NEAT actually is.

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NEAT — the missing link of modern lifestyle

NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) is all the energy we burn through non-exercise activity. It is spontaneous and natural movement:

• walking and steps,
• standing,
• getting up from a chair,
• cleaning and household chores,
• carrying groceries,
• moving between rooms,
• gesturing, fidgeting,
• light physical work.

Historically, NEAT made up most daily human activity. Today — it often drops to the absolute minimum.

This is a huge problem, because the difference in NEAT between sedentary individuals and those who move a lot can reach 500–2000 kcal per day — and without any formal exercise.

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What anthropology teaches us — insights from Daniel E. Lieberman’s “Exercised”

Movement anthropology — especially the work of Harvard’s Daniel E. Lieberman — provides some of the most compelling explanations for why the modern pattern:
sitting most of the day → short workout → sitting again
is entirely foreign to what we are biologically adapted to.

Our ancestors didn’t “exercise” — they lived actively

In hunter-gatherer cultures biologically closest to our ancestral patterns (e.g., Hadza in Tanzania, Tsimane in Bolivia, San in Botswana), movement is not a separate category of life. It is a consequence of living.

Their activity looks nothing like the Western “organized” fitness model:

• 4–10 hours of low-intensity movement daily (walking, gathering, carrying, transporting wood or water).
• Hundreds of posture changes (squatting, standing, shifting weight).
• Moderate effort, not intense — long, slow movement.
• No long passive sitting — they sit in positions requiring muscle activation (e.g., squatting).
• Occasional intense effort — mostly during hunting or danger, short and unplanned.

As a result, their total daily activity is greater than that of most people who work out regularly.
Lieberman states clearly: human bodies evolved under conditions of constant, multi-hour low-intensity movement.

Evolution did not design us for “training” — it never needed to

Evolution is not a personal trainer — its goal is not our longevity, high performance past age 50, or prevention of osteoporosis.

From the perspective of natural selection, only one thing matters:

That means two things:

1. Evolution did not “plan” gyms, intervals, or formal workouts.
   They didn’t exist in ancestral environments, so they couldn't shape biological adaptations.

2. Evolution did not ensure our health after 40 or 50.
   It doesn’t matter to evolution whether we live 40, 70, or 110 years — as long as we reproduced earlier.

Therefore:

• modern exercise, although “unnatural”,
• is one of the most effective longevity tools
  because it allows us to maintain strength, muscle, bone, and metabolism far beyond what evolution expected.

Strength training, intervals, or running are therefore, in a sense, acts against evolution: investments into health that nature never intended to sustain.

Despite this — our ancestors were shaped for long, low-intensity effort

What is evolutionarily “programmed” into us is:

• long-distance walking,
• constant posture variability,
• high volume of low-intensity movement,
• short episodes of intense effort, but rarely and without planning.

We see this even today in traditional societies:

• Hadza walk 10–15 km daily, often carrying loads.
• Tsimane women perform hundreds of squats while gathering water, wood, and food.
• Elders in hunter-gatherer cultures remain physically active for hours — movement does not decline with age.

These observations are some of the strongest evidence that:

Why training cannot replace daily movement (and vice versa)

This is one of Lieberman’s most important conclusions and a foundational principle of modern lifestyle medicine:

• The gym cannot replace 10,000 steps.
  Strength training cannot protect you from the effects of 10 hours of sitting: insulin resistance, cardiovascular issues, reduced muscle sensitivity.
• Steps cannot replace the gym.
  No amount of walking can prevent sarcopenia, loss of strength, or reduction in bone density — those require mechanical load and intensity.

This is why a modern health system should rely on two pillars:

• daily movement (NEAT) — the foundation of metabolic and cardiovascular health,
• training — the foundation of muscle, bone, and cardiorespiratory fitness,

We cannot rely solely on training — or solely on NEAT.

Evolution’s lesson: health requires two parallel strategies

Lieberman summarizes it this way:

– Our ancestors didn’t train,
– but they moved almost constantly.

We often train — but barely move outside of training.

As a result, we are missing half of the puzzle — and training, which should be medicine, becomes just an addition to a sedentary lifestyle.

This is not an opinion — it is one of the most consistent findings in scientific literature over the last 15 years.
We now have meta-analyses including hundreds of thousands of people, accelerometer data, observations of hunter-gatherer populations, and mechanistic studies. All point to one conclusion:

Below are the key research areas.

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Research on steps and overall activity

New accelerometer-based analyses (more reliable than surveys) show:

• Even ~4,000 steps a day are associated with significantly lower mortality.
• Each additional 1,000 steps reduces mortality by 8–15% depending on the population.
• The effect is independent of training — meaning people who train and those who don’t receive similar relative benefits from walking.

Why?
Because walking activates:

• a large muscle mass (calves, quads, glutes),
• the venous pump,
• low-intensity aerobic metabolism,
• continuous glucose modulation.

These are forms of activity that happen “in the background”, and no intense workout can match their volume.

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Research on metabolism and insulin

This is one of the best-understood mechanisms of harm from sitting.

Just 60–120 minutes of uninterrupted sitting:

• reduces activity of LPL (lipoprotein lipase) in muscles by up to 90% — a key enzyme for fat metabolism,
• reduces glucose uptake by muscles by 30–50%,
• worsens insulin sensitivity for several hours.

In practice:

• post-meal glucose spikes are higher,
• insulin levels rise,
• VAT (visceral fat) accumulates faster,
• metabolic inflammation increases (IL-6, TNF-α).

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Research on cardiovascular health

Epidemiology is clear: sitting ≥ 8 hours per day increases the risk of:

• coronary artery disease by 15–20%,
• stroke,
• deep vein thrombosis,
• hypertension,
• endothelial dysfunction.

Interestingly — in Harvard studies, people who sat for long periods but took breaks every 30 minutes had:

• lower CRP,
• lower triglycerides,
• better vascular parameters.

This means it’s not only about “how much you sit”, but also about how continuously you sit.

If someone trains for an hour but then sits for 8–10 hours without breaks — the benefits of training cannot reverse the microvascular damage.

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Research on mortality and long-term health outcomes

Large cohorts (Nurses’ Health Study, UK Biobank, CANHEART, NHANES) show:

• Training reduces mortality risk, but not completely.
• Sitting increases mortality risk — independent of training.

The most famous equation from Ekelund’s research:

• If you sit >8 hours a day, you need 60–75 minutes of vigorous activity to partially offset the risk.
• Even then, you do not reach the health outcomes of people who sit less.

Conclusions:

Why is sitting so harmful?
Because it affects the body on four levels: metabolic, vascular, hormonal, and neurological.

Below you will find detailed explanations with biological mechanisms.

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Metabolism

Long periods of inactivity cause:

• muscle insulin resistance — muscles do not take up glucose, glucose remains in the blood longer,
• increase in VAT (visceral fat), which is more inflammatory than subcutaneous fat,
• higher post-meal glucose spikes,
• greater energy fluctuations and post-meal sleepiness.

Muscles are the largest “glucose sink” in the body — when they are inactive, metabolism slows.

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Cardiovascular system

Sitting leads to:

• increased blood viscosity,
• blood pooling in the legs,
• weaker endothelial function (reduced nitric oxide production),
• higher oxidative stress,
• higher coagulability (risk of microclots).

Training improves vascular function, but after one hour at the gym, vessels again experience 8–10 hours of immobility.

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Brain and nervous system

Hours of sitting:

• reduce blood flow to the brain,
• worsen concentration, attention, working memory,
• increase cortisol levels,
• lower BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor),
• correlate with higher risk of depression and anxiety.

Low-intensity movement acts as continuous micro-neurological stimulation — something training does not provide for the rest of the day.

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Slower metabolism and weight control

With low NEAT:

• you burn 300–800 kcal less per day,
• metabolic adaptation increases (the body “learns” to function on less energy),
• fat accumulation becomes easier,
• weight loss becomes harder even with good training.

This is why people who do 10,000 steps can eat more and still maintain their weight — their metabolism “works”.

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Poorer recovery and reduced training effects

Low non-exercise activity:

• reduces MPS (muscle protein synthesis),
• worsens mitochondrial adaptations,
• increases DOMS (due to stagnation of blood and inflammation),
• reduces VO₂ max, because the cardiovascular system is stimulated less often,
• reduces weekly movement volume, affecting progress.

In short:
Daily movement increases the return on investment from training. Lack of it — reduces it.

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Bones, joints, and posture

Sitting:

• increases lumbar spine compression,
• shortens hip flexors,
• weakens glutes,
• disrupts gait patterns,
• reduces bone mineralization (lack of gravitational loading).

For musculoskeletal health, movement frequency matters more than intensity.

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Biological and epigenetic aging

In epigenetic studies:

• low daily movement correlates with faster aging (DunedinPACE),
• high NEAT correlates with slower metabolic and vascular decline,
• the most active individuals have younger biological age (GrimAge, PhenoAge).

This is one of the strongest signals that longevity requires movement continuously, not just intensely.

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Why training ≠ medicine for sitting

Training is important. But nothing replaces:

• continuous muscle activation,
• thousands of small movements,
• regular cardiovascular stimulation,
• light metabolic activity.

The body does not operate on a “1 hour of training fixes everything else” model.

Our biology works differently — it counts the sum of micro-movements across the entire day.

We achieve the best health outcomes when we combine:

1. specialized training (strength training, Zone 2 aerobic training, Zone 4–5 intervals)

2. high NEAT,

3. reduced sitting.

We need all three pillars.

1. Step goal: 6–8k as a minimum

For most people, this level significantly reduces disease risk.

2. Micro-breaks from sitting

Stand up every 30–45 minutes — literally 1 minute of movement.

3. Walk after each meal

Even 5–10 minutes meaningfully improves glycemia.

4. Walk during phone calls

7. Stairs as the default option

8. Short recovery walks between tasks

These 5-minute “bridges” can transform your entire day.

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My personal breakthrough

When I understood how crucial steps are for health, I set an ambitious goal to walk several thousand steps more each day.

Unfortunately, such walks mean several hours of walking daily — time I didn’t have available.

Then I came up with a simple yet brilliant idea — a standing desk with a small treadmill underneath.

I now spend 2–3 hours a day on it while working, walking at a slow pace. I don’t lose work time, and at the same time I do something highly beneficial for my health.

The modern world has separated training from daily movement — and this is a fundamental mistake.
Training is essential, but it cannot replace the hundreds of small movements that once were a natural part of life.

The best health results come not when we exercise for one hour a day, but when we move throughout the entire day.