It’s February. 2021. A Wednesday.
Picture this: you’re drowning in kale salads, dripping sweat from an intense cardio workout. Your dog-eared copy of a nonfiction book about medieval Europe, in all of its 800-pages, rests open, flanked by a pair of 30-pound dumbbells. As you munch down on a final leafy green, dizzy with esoteric knowledge of Julian the Apostate, you’re finally at peace. You’re doing just what you promised yourself you would do five weeks ago: growing your glutes and expanding your mind. This is you, new and improved for the New Year.
Or, it would be you, if you hadn’t given up on your resolutions mere hours after you settled on them, seduced by the siren-like calls of Trader Joe’s’ milk chocolate.
But don’t despair. 80% of the goal-setting population will suffer the same fate: watching as the elaborate plans they’d conceived for the new year flounder by mid-February. So, why do humans seem to be predisposed to this brand of failure? The answer may lie not in our willpower, but in the power of our genes.
Our brains have been shaped by thousands of years of evolution. For most of our species’ relatively short history, we functioned in hunter-gatherer societies, where food was scarce, threats were numerous, and survival (and reproduction) were top evolutionary priorities. In short, our brains are ill-fitted for the modern world, with its grocery stores and smartphones and comfortable couches.
The environment for which our brains evolved is at odds with modernity. Our ancestors spent hours each day foraging for sustenance, expending hundreds of calories in the process. They were propelled by an instinctual hunger and the implicit fear of sudden famine. When they ate, they really ate, storing that energy as fat. When food became scarce, as it inevitably did, those with fuel in their reserves survived. We are the descendents of these survivors; our insatiable appetites are a product of this innate mindset.
Therein lies the issue: when confronted with shelf upon shelf of prepackaged foods at the supermarket, or a platter of greasy pizza slices, our brains shout at us to give in to our cravings, just as they might have 100,000 years ago on the savannah. Our bodies didn’t evolve for the ease of Postmates, they evolved for lean times. Our instinct is to gobble up everything in sight, even if Chinese food is just a call away. Alas, this is what makes you, and the rippled abs you so covet, incompatible. Our ancestors just didn’t have any use for rippled abs. (And, in truth, neither do you.)
Our predecessors would scoff, too, at the notion that modern humans willingly deplete their energy in that never-ending struggle for a herculean build or a tinier waist. Energy, in the form of food, wasn’t always easy to come by for our forebears, certainly not something to be squandered through physical exertion, outside of that which was necessary to hunt or forage. Today, most of us aren’t hunting or foraging (Doritos don’t grow in the wild). But our genes are still supplying us with excuses to skip physical activity. Working up the motivation to exercise requires us to override our genes.
We’re handicapped by our genetics in other ways, too. We take risks (foolhardy teenagers are especially adept at this) because, as evolutionary biologist and UCLA professor Jay Phelan puts it, “we are terrible mathematicians….we can’t seem to calculate odds correctly.” Our risk analysis skills are severely lacking, and we pay the price again and again, from our romantic lives, to our personal physical safety, to our monetary habits.
Perhaps the most powerful evolutionary force, one that continually stands between us and our better selves, is the pursuit of cheap pleasures. We’re compelled by our genes to strive for short-term satisfaction rather than long-term fulfillment. Maybe you told yourself you’d read more this year, or start your homework before 1:00 am. But of course, scrolling through Youtube (and occasionally nervously eyeing the closed history textbook a few feet way) is endlessly more interesting. Because, it isn’t (completely) your fault that your brain favors instant gratification over the rewards of prolonged effort. You were hardwired this way. This is why you can’t change. You’re fighting an uphill battle--trying to divorce your instincts from the world in which they were shaped and situate them amongst the conveniences of life in the industrialized world.
Yes, it’s February. If you had a goal in mind, chances are it was abandoned weeks ago. So, godspeed to you few stragglers, still clinging to the futile hopes that self-improvement is possible. But for the rest of us? You heard it here first, folks. My New Year's resolution for 2022: no more New Year's resolutions.
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