Question:  Who burns more calories per day:  your average person with an office job and couch potato lifestyle or a member of the Hadza tribe in Tanzania who hunts for their food all day, every day?  

Easy answer right?  

The average person’s day:  Wake up, have breakfast, get kids ready for school, go to work in an office, have lunch, go back to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed. Maybe, if they are in the 10% of people who do sufficient exercise per week, they will fit some training time in. 

The average Hadza tribe persons day:  The men set out with a bow and poison-tipped arrows, covering miles and miles to track prey, such as giraffes, impalas and zebras. They walk all day, breaking into running at times.  The women, with a child strapped on their back, would spend the day picking berries and digging through the land for other food.  

Here’s what the study found.  The average man, with little physical activity, would burn 2,500 calories.  The average Hadza tribe man, who was active all day would burn 2,500 calories.  Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?! 

How the heck does this happen:  How on earth does a person who is sedentary burn the same amount of calories per day as a super active one?  Well, the body is remarkably smart.  Today if we are hungry, we can sit on the couch, open an app and order a meal which will brought to our door for us.  That hasn’t always been the case.  For most of humanities existence, we have had to hunt and forage for our food.  So our bodies got really good at becoming efficient with food, especially if it is scarce.  In the case of the Hadza tribe, there bodies got really good at minimising calorie burning as a matter of survival. 

What does this tell us:  It tells us two key things: 

1.  Nutrition is a key part of losing weight:  You need to burn more calories than you consume if you want to lose weight.  Eat well, keep your calories at your recommended daily amount and exercise on top of it. 

2.  Cardio alone won’t do it for you:  Clients often come to us with this problem.  I do a lot of cardio.  Initially, I lost a lot of weight but then the weight loss stopped.  So I added more cardio on top.  I lost some weight but plateaued again.  I haven’t got the time or energy to add more cardio in, help! 

3.  Resistance training is the way:  If you do proper resistance training, you are continuously asking your body to adapt.  The adaptation that you’re asking of the body, the prioritized adaptation, is improved strength.  The side effect of that is a metabolism that burns more calories even when you are at rest.  

So, there you have it.  Cool study, hey! 

P.S  Are you a standard person looking to lose weight or indeed a Hamza Tribe member looking to optimise your hunting performance?  Contact us today for your FREE consultation!