What If Everything You Were Taught About Exercise Is Wrong

We don’t move to subtract… we move to adapt

We’ve been sold a deeply flawed story for over a century. We’ve been sold a simplistic formula.

That health is just math. Calories in vs calories out.
That longevity comes down to a tidy little equation: eat less, move more.
That your body is a ledger, and the goal is to cancel out last night’s dessert with a workout today.

But humans aren’t spreadsheets. We’re complex biological machines.
And biology doesn’t run on neat equations.

This narrative has reduced movement to punishment for many of you.

It’s turned exercise into penance.
It’s distracted us from what movement really does—for our muscles, our brain, our immune system, our metabolism.

We were told that calories were the point.
But what if calories were just a footnote?

That story has failed.

We were told: Eat less, move more, as if humans are spreadsheets. As if biology follows formulas.

As a physician with decades of experience, I can tell you: it doesn’t. Our bodies are not calorie calculators. They are dynamic, adaptive, living systems. And movement is far more than a tool to offset eating. It’s how we signal the body to thrive.

Movement, Energy, and the Biology of Complexity

Your body isn’t a simple machine. It’s a complex, adaptive biological system that constantly exchanges energy and information with its environment. The Law of Dissipative Structures, introduced by Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine, describes how living systems respond to stress and energy. In simple terms:

Stress + energy → adaptation → resilience
Stress without adaptation → dysfunction → disease

When you move, you create small, intentional disruptions: a rise in temperature, a spike in lactate, a flood of signaling molecules. These stressors push your system away from equilibrium. In response, your biology reorganizes itself at a higher, more resilient level. Mitochondria multiply. Muscles grow stronger. Vessels remodel. Even your brain builds new connections. You become more adapted and more capable.

This is what makes exercise powerful: it’s not punishment for what you ate; it’s an invitation for your biology to evolve.

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Movement as a Signal, Not a Transaction

We’ve been taught to think of exercise as caloric accounting — “burn off what you consumed.” But your body doesn’t work that way. It listens to signals, not spreadsheets. Every bout of movement tells your cells: “Be ready for more.”

• Resistance training signals your muscles to synthesize more protein and your bones to lay down more density.

• Aerobic work drives mitochondrial biogenesis, creating more efficient energy-generating engines.

• High-intensity efforts spike growth factors that improve brain plasticity and metabolic flexibility.

These are survival mechanisms built into our design. Exercise is how we activate them. Without movement, the system stagnates. Entropy takes over, and capacity slowly declines.

The why behind movement isn’t weight loss, vanity, or even performance — it’s preserving the complex, adaptive dance that keeps you healthy and capable. When you understand this, exercise stops being a punishment and starts becoming a part of your own biology.

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Movement Is Not About the Burn

Let’s start with the myth that exercise is about burning calories. The body adapts to loss of calories and protects that loss very aggressively. And we really don’t burn that many calories being active. I can run for an hour and a half, burning only 700-800 kcal. I could eat a bagel and a donut after the run to replenish those calories. We don’t do ourselves any favors when we frame exercise as a punishment or anything more than maintaining physical capacity and independence.

Herman Pontzer’s research on the Hadza hunter-gatherers in Tanzania revealed that, despite their extremely active lifestyles, their total daily energy expenditure was nearly identical to that of sedentary Westerners. The Hadza walk miles every day, hunt, gather, squat, climb, and carry. Yet their bodies compensate for this activity by conserving energy elsewhere, thereby reducing the energy spent on fighting inflammation, stress reactivity, and other internal processes. The body protects itself from an energy deficit.

So yes, the total number of calories burned each day plateaus. Otherwise, you start sacrificing other very important processes associated with life. You can’t outrun your fork. But that doesn’t mean exercise is pointless. It means we’ve been asking the wrong questions. And yes, I know that TdF riders burn 9,000kcal/day during the event… but have you seen how they look after 21 days? They pay a very heavy price for this. And it’s not sustainable like the lifestyles of the Hadza.

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Exercise doesn’t work by subtracting calories. It works by rewriting your metabolic code. Movement keeps the machinery functioning efficiently. It builds more factories to create the machinery we need to enable the processes that keep us humming.

Every time you move, you send a cascade of signals throughout the body. Contracting muscle tissue improves insulin sensitivity, clears blood sugar, and reduces visceral fat. It shifts mitochondrial function—your body’s energy plants—toward greater efficiency. More energy, less cellular waste. That translates to better cognition, improved cardiovascular health, and slower aging. It doesn’t allow your world to shrink. It gives you a better chance to live the life you want.

Even light movement triggers the release of potent anti-inflammatory molecules, such as IL-10. And muscle, as it turns out, is an endocrine organ. It communicates with the brain, liver, fat cells, and immune system by secreting myokines that regulate mood, metabolism, and immune balance.

This is not about calories. This is about biology.

Movement is neuroprotective. Physical activity upregulates Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), which helps form new neurons, strengthens existing ones, and enhances memory and learning. BDNF is fertilizer for your brain.

Exercise also modulates neurotransmitters—dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine—all of which are crucial for regulating mood, focus, and resilience to stress. In fact, in many studies, moderate exercise performs as well as antidepressants for mild-to-moderate depression.

Moving your body changes your brain. It makes you more focused, adaptable, and resilient.

Why We Break Down

So, if movement is so good for us, why do so many people get hurt when they start out?

Because we live in a world designed for stillness. We’ve engineered movement out of our lives. We sit in chairs, stare at screens, and outsource physical effort to machines. Then we try to cram all our movement into 45-minute bursts a few times a week.

This is like eating only once a week and calling it a balanced diet. Most people are malnourished, not from lack of food, but from a lack of diverse, nutrient-dense movement.

Our bodies aren’t breaking because we’re using them too much. They’re breaking because we’re not using them enough in the ways they were built to move. Movement leads to strain, which over time leads to adaptation. Again, the Law of Dissipative Structures is at work.

Exercise is the risk you take to avoid the consequences of being still

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Exercise/Movement Snacks

Just like your diet needs protein, fiber, fats, and micronutrients, your body needs a wide array of movement inputs:

• Walking – restores, regulates, and integrates the entire system

• Squatting and standing – maintain lower-body strength and flexibility

• Crawling, kneeling, ground transitions – preserve mobility and coordination

• Hanging and pulling – develop grip strength and shoulder health

• Carrying – improve core stability and balance

• Throwing and sprinting – train power and agility

• Dancing and playing – joy, adaptability, and community

These are not just exercises. They are inputs your biology expects.

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The Hadza don’t "exercise" in the Western sense. They don’t track calories or wear fitness watches. But they move constantly. They squat to rest. Sit on the ground. Carry water, firewood, and children. They’re not pain-free because they stretch more—they’re pain-free because they’ve never stopped moving the way humans were meant to.

Similarly, in the Blue Zones (yes, I know it’s been largely disproven, but go with it)—regions of the world with the highest life expectancy—movement is an integral part of daily life. People garden, walk to visit friends, cook from scratch, and dance in the evening. There are no gyms, but there is a daily rhythm of physical engagement. That movement supports strength, balance, and mental clarity well into old age.

Movement Is Not Optional

We’ve reduced exercise to punishment. A way to atone for eating. That’s a cultural failing.

Movement is not a luxury or a lifestyle choice. It is a biological necessity. Your cells expect it. Your joints, heart, brain, and immune system need it.

Not for weight loss. Not for vanity. But for vitality.

We don’t move to subtract. We move to adapt.

To signal growth. To heal. To stay capable. To stay human.

Your body is listening to everything you do. Every step, every squat, every transition off the floor is a vote for function.