Recently, I imagined a dialogue with a personal trainer at the gym (I do not remember when I was there last time) who asked me how many calories I supply to my body each day.
My response would be that I have no idea how many calories I supply to my body daily. I would ask a personal trainer whether our cave-dwelling ancestors, whose body structure and function are no different from ours (200,000 years on the evolutionary scale is nothing) but who were undoubtedly more vigorous and more robust than modern man, counted calories. The answer is obvious. They certainly did not know what calories were. Nevertheless, they certainly could not provide their bodies with food from morning to evening, 365 days a year. They did not have supermarkets, processed food, and refrigerators. They had to be more resilient to famine and drought.
Whether they wanted or not, they had to fast and spend many hours without food or water.
That’s why I consciously do intermittent dry fasting (since the 6th of July, 2024, I have not eaten or drank anything for an extended period of the day). Our primordial ancestors were more likely to be exposed to the cold (e.g., they could fall into cold water in pursuit of a game they wanted to hunt or flee from predators that tried to devour cavemen). Still, they survived the most extreme hazards occurring in nature. That’s why I take cold showers or walk around in summer clothes during freezing weather.
Despite all these inconveniences, the lack of constant access to food, coldness, and not knowing what “calories” are, our species has survived and is doing quite well today.
After all, we, not monkeys, are the ones who send rockets into space, have been to the Moon, or dream of colonizing Mars. How would a personal trainer respond to all this? Perhaps he would tell me I should count calories for the sake of counting it. But I believe in questioning the norms, especially when it comes to our health and well-being.
