Summary

The article suggests that incorporating inefficiencies into daily routines can lead to increased physical activity and improved lifelong fitness.

Abstract

The article "The Key to Lifelong Fitness is Inefficiency" argues that small, deliberate inefficiencies in daily life can significantly contribute to one's fitness. The author uses personal anecdotes, such as their mother's fitness maintained through daily chores and their dog's constant need to go in and out, to illustrate how simple actions like carrying groceries, walking further to a car, or avoiding modern conveniences can accumulate to beneficial exercise. The piece contrasts the current trend of maximizing efficiency and minimizing physical effort with the evolutionary history of humans, where life was physically demanding. It suggests that our modern, convenience-driven lifestyle may contribute to health issues like obesity, heart disease, and hypertension, and that by embracing more physically involved daily tasks, individuals can improve their health without significantly altering their schedules.

Opinions

The author's mother exemplifies lifelong fitness without traditional exercise routines by integrating physical activity into daily chores.
Modern conveniences, while time-saving, are seen as contributing to a sedentary lifestyle and potential health problems.
The author reflects on the absurdity of colleagues' outrage over having to walk an extra thirty paces to park, highlighting an aversion to physical exertion.
There is a call to reconsider the pursuit of efficiency at the expense of physical activity, suggesting that small changes

The Key to Lifelong Fitness is Inefficiency

A few steps here, a heavy bag there. Carrying your own groceries and actually going to the bank. These inconveniences may save your life.

My dog is perpetually dissatisfied. When he is inside, something out a window will catch his eye, and he scratches at the door to go out. Then realizing that it’s chilly, he wants to come back in after three minutes. Repeat.

I was lamenting this fact while my parents were visiting and I had to jump out of my deep, cozy position on the couch to let him in and out and in and out.

My mom disagreed.

“I think it’s great,” she argued. “All that extra exercise you’ll get over the years of letting him in and out. You should hope he never changes!”

This is the attitude my mom has about exercise. She has never joined a gym or played in an adult softball league. She’s never done a 5k or been to physical therapy. And yet she is one of the fittest 70 year old moms I know. When my friends meet her, they often comment that she is in ‘great shape.’

When I was growing up, we heated our house with a wood stove. Our basement was layered with stacks of firewood that we would have to carry up each morning to stay warm through the long winters. As kids, we complained at the punishing difficulty of this task.

My mom’s approach was different. Instead of loading up her arms with as many pieces as she could carry, she would take one log in each hand and pump her arms up and down over her head as she marched up the stairs. She’d repeat this until the woodbox was full. In her L.L. Bean slippers and mock turtleneck, she hardly looked like a gym rat, but the exercise was as punishing as some of the things my cross-fit friends do.

I got an email at my job last week about parking. Due to some scheduling changes, I and about fifteen of my colleagues were being asked to park in a different place, about thirty paces away from where we used to park. The outrage about this situation was absurd and it made me question our constant desire to make our lives easier.

We’ll drive around looking for the closest parking spot, wait in line for the drive-thru instead of parking and going inside, and boss around Alexa or Siri instead of getting up to check the weather or change the channel.

Last week, at the recommendation of a friend, I tried Amazon’s grocery delivery service through Whole Foods. It was a Sunday morning, and I was low on food, but my kids were playing nicely and it was very cold. Log on, click on avocados, grapes, snow peas and peppers. Check out, pay a few bucks for delivery and next thing I knew, some dude in a grey sedan was carrying five bags of produce to my door.

Trust me, it was pretty great. But it also made me feel pretty lazy. Instead of packing up the kids, making multiple trips to my car, pushing a cart around the store and then carrying my bags in, I sat on the sofa and shopped for new running shoes.

We strive to reach the pinnacle of efficiency as if true happiness will come when we have to do absolutely nothing. We used to have to stand up and walk to the TV to change the channel. Then we at least had to pick our arm up and push a button to do it. Now with voice control, a task that used to take at least a small amount of coordination and strength, can be done without burning a fraction of a calorie.

We have remote car starters, Door Dash delivery services, online banking, and an unbelievable number of apps that save us time and effort. While they are convenient, they come at the cost of not walking out to the car, walking in and out of the bank, and trying on a dozen pairs of shoes at the shoe store instead of just ordering four pairs online because there are free returns.

There might be a select few of us who use all the time made available by these conveniences to exercise, but the wild popularity of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu suggest something different.

Speaking of exercise, consider this. There are 168 hours in a week. If you make it to the gym five times a week for a 1 hour workout, you’re spending 3% of your week exercising. That leaves 97% of the week for swiping, scrolling, searching and sleeping.

Since my mom’s comment about my dog, I’ve been thinking a lot about adding inefficiencies into my life in order to squeeze in little bits of added fitness. I’ve started choosing parking spots that are further away. I carry my laundry baskets down to the washing machine when they are half full, even though it means I’ll need to take more trips.

All of these tasks are simple, but they are hard to remember. Without thinking, my car slides into the closest spot.

It makes sense though, because throughout most of human evolution, life was hard and looking for shortcuts and efficiencies was a definite survival advantage. Our desire to do things in the quickest, easiest way possible is buried deep in our DNA.

But we may have outsmarted ourselves because obesity, heart disease and hypertension have reached alarming levels and are still on the rise in the U.S. There’s never a panacea, but what if a first step in fighting these deadly conditions is just to walk a little more, stand up a few extra times and to carry your own groceries?

Isn’t it worth a shot?

Your dog will thank you.