PDF Summary:The Comfort Crisis, by Michael Easter

Humans evolved to seek comfort, but has modern society made us too comfortable? In The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter argues that the cozy conveniences of the Western world harm our health and happiness by depriving us of challenges that our ancestors regularly faced. He explains that crucial discomforts like spending time in nature, fasting, and regularly exercising are becoming increasingly obsolete in our temperature-controlled, indoor world—where all of our slightest desires can be remedied with the click of a finger.

Michael Easter is an author, science journalist, and professor. After personally experiencing the life-changing benefits of embracing discomfort during his journey to sobriety, he began researching how physical and mental challenges can counteract the negative effects of modern-day comforts. In this guide, we’ll discuss the comforts that Easter says are most problematic and share his tips to make discomfort your friend. We’ll also compare his research to that of other experts and offer additional advice to quell the harmful comforts in your life.

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• Don’t share your challenging adventure on social media. Easter says that sharing your challenge on social media can make the challenge about obtaining attention rather than personal perseverance.

What Does It Mean to Push Yourself?

In Rule 7 of 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson says the best way to ensure you’re challenging yourself enough to grow and live meaningfully is to live on the edge of order and chaos. He describes order as the familiar, comfortable parts of your life and chaos as any experience that’s unpredictable and stressful. By living on the edge of order and chaos, you’ll have enough order to feel confident, but enough chaos to challenge yourself and grow. If we apply this concept to Easter’s prescription of an uncomfortable adventure challenge, this might look like taking some familiar gear (order) along with you as you try to run further than you ever have before (chaos).

Like Easter, Peterson also thinks you should push yourself for the purpose of self-improvement. For Peterson, this means growing to be a more capable person, which will ultimately help you act in ways that reduce unnecessary suffering. To him, this is the most meaningful pursuit in life.

Sedentary Lifestyles Lead to Physical Weakness and Injury

In this section, we’ll discuss the negative effects of sedentary lifestyles and how to get your body moving the way it’s meant to. We’ll explain how low-activity lifestyles cause problems such as back pain. After that, we'll examine the benefits of exercising and provide some context about the types of movement humans evolved to perform.

Modern Life Doesn’t Get Us Moving Enough

Our exercise levels have progressively decreased as innovations such as farming, industrialization, and digital technology have made movement increasingly obsolete for our survival. Easter says that three-quarters of American jobs today involve sitting for most of the day. Further, only 20% of Americans meet the national guidelines for exercise (150 minutes per week) and 27% percent of Americans don’t get any exercise. When we don’t use our muscles, they become weaker and more susceptible to injury.

According to Easter, one of the most significant consequences of our sedentary lifestyles is back pain. 80% of Americans suffer from back pain at some point in their life. This is the most common type of pain that people visit doctors for and it’s the number one reason people miss work. Back pain medication is also a leading cause of opioid addiction.

(Shortform note: Although sedentary lifestyles lead to a variety of negative health outcomes, labor-intensive work can also be damaging. In fact, one study found that manual laborers had an 18% higher mortality rate than the general population. They explained that this is likely because labor-intensive jobs typically demand long days of strenuous activity without much rest between shifts. They also tend to involve repetitive movements that overwork certain muscle groups without exercising others. All of this can lead to injury and chronic inflammation. In contrast, healthy exercise routines engage all of your muscles, elevate your heart rate for roughly 20-60 minutes per day, and include rest periods to allow your muscles to recover.)

Comfort Remedy: Exercise Like Your Ancestors

Exercise prevents back pain and significantly reduces your chances of all major causes of death in the US, including heart disease and cancer. This is because your body evolved to move. To demonstrate the lifestyle of our ancestors, Easter points to the modern-day Hadza tribe of Northern Tanzania, who live similarly to ancestral hunter-gatherers. According to him, the people of this tribe move 14 times more than modern Americans and burn an average of 40% more calories per pound each day. Easter says the athletic stamina of ancestral hunter-gatherers equaled that of modern, elite, college-level cross-country runners. These ancestors weren’t gifted with unique athletic abilities. They had the same bodies we have, but they were living in an environment with different demands.

The Exercise Paradox

Contrary to common assumptions, research shows that the average Western adult burns about the same number of calories each day as even the most active people—including the Hadza tribe that Easter references. If you’ve tried exercising vigorously to lose weight without success, it’s because exercise doesn’t significantly alter our daily energy expenditure. This flat-rate calorie cost seems to defy the laws of physics, but experts explain that our bodies likely distribute a consistent amount of energy where it’s needed depending on our activity level. For example, if you run a marathon, your body will pull energy from your immune system and other regulatory operations to provide more energy to your cardiovascular system and leg muscles.

One major implication of this finding is that sedentary lifestyles aren’t the culprit of obesity—excess calorie consumption is. Of course, sedentary lifestyles lead to other problems (as Easter explains) and exercise is still essential for innumerable reasons, including strength gain and cardiovascular health. But if you want to lose weight, focus on eating less.

Easter goes on to explain that we’re built to run long distances and carry objects more efficiently than any other animal on Earth. Our running capabilities developed to help us “endurance hunt,” which essentially means we’d persistently jog down our prey in hot conditions until it collapsed from heat exhaustion. We’re not stronger or faster than most mammals, but we can outlast them all in a long-distance chase. We have several physical features that help keep us cool and run long distances in the heat, such as our ability to produce more sweat than other animals and the bouncy arches in our feet.

(Shortform note: Experts say that persistence hunts were likely performed midday when temperatures were hottest. Although this would’ve been the most uncomfortable time of day to catch food, it would also allow ancient humans to capitalize on their ability to endure heat more effectively than our prey animals. Studies observing modern persistence hunters in the Kalahari desert show that persistence hunts for kudu last 2-5 hours on average. Research shows that ancient humans could jog down prey in scorching heat for as long as 5 hours and 40 minutes before needing to rehydrate.)

More often than they ran, our ancestors carried things. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors mostly hauled around tools and animal parts weighing between 10 and 20 pounds, which we in the modern world could probably carry for a few miles. But our ancestors also sometimes carried heavier loads such as large animal parts from a hunted and butchered carcass. For example, a zebra hindquarter—which would’ve been a common prey animal for ancient hunter-gatherers—weighs roughly 80 pounds. That load of groceries you carried from your car to your home doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?

To exercise in a way that complements our natural strengths, Easter suggests rucking. Rucking is the act of carrying a heavy pack on your back for long distances. It offers a wide variety of benefits:

• Rucking promotes overall fitness by developing both your cardiovascular endurance and strength. Easter says research shows that rucking burns 2 to 3 times the calories of walking, which is equal to the cardio workout you’d get from running.
• Rucking leads to far fewer injuries than running does (for loads of 50 pounds or less). Easter says running has 3 times the impact on your knees as rucking does and causes 6 times more injuries to special forces soldiers. Rucking actually prevents back pain by strengthening your core and glute muscles, which supports healthy posture and stability.
• Rucking is a great exercise to do with others because it allows you to walk at the same speed while you each bear a weight that’s personally challenging for you. This is important because Easter says social exercises are shown to be more sustainable.
• It’s easy to make rucking part of your daily routine. Because it only requires you to walk with a heavy backpack, you can ruck just about anywhere that you normally walk throughout your normal day.

(Shortform note: To help you integrate this ancient human exercise into your daily life, some companies, such as GORUCK, make special rucking packs that are compatible with weight plates and still allow you to store your daily carry items. They have a variety of sizes and look sleek and compact enough to wear to the store or office. Another way to integrate carrying into your daily life is to take advantage of opportunities to carry things you normally wouldn’t. For example, carry your groceries home rather than push them in a cart and load them into a car.)

Comfortable Diets Are Deadly

Another consequence of our modern lifestyles is obesity. In this section, we’ll focus on the harmful effects that comfortable diets have on our health and how enduring the discomfort of hunger can help us counteract modern eating habits.

The Obesity Epidemic

Obesity is an epidemic in the United States. Easter says 38% of the US population is obese and 32% is overweight. This is a big problem because obesity is a major risk factor for conditions like heart disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes. In fact, obesity decreases your lifespan by an average of 5 to 20 years.

(Shortform note: Research shows that obesity is also one of the most common comorbidities for Covid-19. In some studies, obesity was found to be the leading comorbidity. This is because obesity weakens your immune system and compresses your lungs, which exacerbates the respiratory symptoms of Covid.)

Easter explains that our evolutionary instincts make us dangerously susceptible to obesity in modern America. This is because humans evolved to take advantage of opportunities to gorge on food and stockpile calories whenever it was possible. Hunting and gathering weren’t as surefire for producing food as our trips to the grocery store today, so it was important for ancient humans to capitalize on calories whenever they were available to build fat reserves as insurance for the uncertain future. The problem is, we’re now constantly surrounded by food, but we’re still programmed with the same evolutionary instinct to gorge.

(Shortform note: Experts say our instinct to gorge ourselves intensifies during the fall and winter seasons. One expert explains that day length seems to influence our calorie consumption. One study found that participants consumed 200 more calories each day when days began to shorten in the fall. Another explanation is that food opportunities increase during the fall and winter holidays. As Easter explains, we capitalize on food when it’s available, and there tend to be more feasts during the holiday season.)

On top of this, many of the processed foods available today are specially designed to be calorie dense and more delicious than anything found in nature. Our brains are wired to release dopamine, the feel-good chemical, when we consume anything sugary, salty, or fatty, because these tastes indicate that the food we’re eating is calorie dense. Today, foods such as pizza and ice cream present an unnatural, carb-fat combination that releases more dopamine than anything we can pluck off a tree, which amplifies our cravings.

(Shortform note: Additional addictive components of highly-processed foods include the fact that many foods are processed to digest and absorb into our bloodstream more quickly by removing their fiber and water content. This enhances the quickness and intensity of the feel-good response we experience when eating and keeps us coming back from more. Foods are also engineered for pleasurable texture. Experts say that when foods feel good in our mouths, their addictive quality increases.)

Another major cause of obesity is stress eating. As we discussed earlier, chronic stress is increasing in the developed world, and eating comfort foods to cope with it is a recipe for disaster. Easter cites one study that found that 40% of people overeat when they’re stressed and the quality of food consumed during stress eating tends to be poor. We reach for junk food when we’re stressed because it quickly releases dopamine, which improves our mood and gives us temporary relief from chronic stress. This is why we might feel tempted to overeat at lunch if we’re having a stressful day at work.

(Shortform note: Another reason we might overeat when we’re stressed is that our bodies crave extra calories to help fuel and replenish calories for our fight-or-flight response. Whether we stress eat to cope or to fuel our stress responses, overeating isn’t the only way stress contributes to obesity; one study found that elevated stress levels slow down our metabolism, which makes all of the extra food we stress eat harder to burn off.)

Comfort Remedy: Endure the Discomfort of Hunger

Fasting is a natural human behavior and can help curb obesity. While it’s currently common to snack throughout our day, ancient humans endured hunger most of the time and only ate one or two large meals per day.

Easter says fasting makes us healthier in several ways:

• If you fast for 12-16 hours, you’ll fully metabolize your last meal (convert food to energy) and your body will begin to use your fat cells for energy. When this happens, you’ll shed weight.
• As your body burns up stored fat for energy, it prioritizes old, dead, or dying cells. By burning these cells off, you prevent diseases and infections and make room for new, healthy cells to be created. Picture your body as a forest and your metabolism as a fire that clears dead branches from the forest floor and creates space for new growth.
• Fasting also gives you a surge of energy from adrenaline and cortisol, which can help you focus and perform better throughout your day. This is because whenever humans used to be hungry, it was important to perform our best in order to hunt down and secure food.

Have We Really Evolved to Fast?

Although fasting has several proven benefits, some experts say that our dietary behaviors may not be as slow-evolving and evolutionarily mismatched with our modern eating opportunities as Easter implies. In other words, our ancestral history of fasting may not mean we need to follow that same pattern today. This is because humans have demonstrated the ability to adapt to local food types and availability levels throughout human history. For example, Andean people of South America adapted to digesting starches after potatoes became a staple crop, and about a third of people can digest dairy products even though we’ve only been drinking milk for roughly 7,500 years.

Additionally, experts say that hunter-gatherers fasted not because it was their choice to do so, but because they simply didn’t have food to eat until they hunted or gathered it. In other words, it very likely wasn’t the diet of choice, it was their only choice. So, it’s best to decide what your personal health goals are and make a diet decision that’s best for you. If you decide that the benefits above are worth embracing the discomfort of hunger, then intermittent fasting may be for you.

Here are a few of Easter’s tips to fast effectively:

• Skip breakfast. This will make it easier to stretch out your fasting window to 12-16 hours, which will help you unlock the benefits of fasting we mentioned above.
• Schedule an occasional full-day fast. Easter says that fasting for 24 hours enhances the metabolic cell clean-out and also helps lower your general appetite.
• When you feel stressed, don’t eat—exercise. If your response to stress is a pint of ice cream, this can add up over time. So, exercise instead. Easter says walking is more stress relieving than eating is and it also helps you lose weight rather than put it on.

(Shortform note: Because fasting will take discipline to implement into your daily routine, consider this former Navy SEAL’s advice in Discipline Equals Freedom: Establish a reason for what you want to accomplish, set a specific goal, and incrementally improve toward your goal every day. In this case, you might establish your reason for fasting as wanting to lose weight so you can be more present for your kids. Your specific goal might be to establish a fasting routine that you can maintain long term. You could incrementally work up to that routine by starting with smaller fasting windows and ratcheting them up slowly until you reach a sustainable and healthy level.)

Internal Comforts Distract Us From What Matters Most

The comforts we live with today don’t just impact our bodies, they influence our minds as well. With so many distractions, it’s easy to numb our minds and avoid thinking about things that are uncomfortable to confront. However, Easter says letting your mind go to uncomfortable places is important for creativity, productivity, and happiness. In this section, we’ll discuss how materialism distracts us from boredom and thinking about death as well as the benefits these internal discomforts can offer.

The Comforts of Materialism Eliminate the Benefits of Boredom

Modern technology impedes boredom by tempting our attention whenever our mind starts to drift to uncomfortable territory. On average, we spend 11.6 hours with digital media each day. This includes time on our phones, in front of TVs, and on our computers. When we’re focused on social media and entertainment, we don’t have time for boredom.

Easter defines boredom as a state of unfocused mental rest and openness. Boredom is important for our mental health because it allows our minds to decompress. However, because the constant stream of virtual stimulation available today has our attention in a stranglehold, we rarely allow ourselves a chance to rest our minds. As a result, we burn out our brains. When our brains tire from too much time engaging with digital media, we feel more irritable, impatient, and upset. This can also lead to anxiety and depression, and it can lower our sense of meaning in life.

(Shortform note: Another way digital media disrupts our emotions is by weakening our ability to regulate our emotions through internal control and healthy relationships. Because we constantly scroll Instagram or watch YouTube when we feel something unpleasant, we miss out on opportunities to train ourselves to process difficult emotions on our own or with the assistance of close friends or family, which are more effective strategies for managing your emotions.)

Materialism Distracts Us From Our Mortality

Materialism not only distracts us from boredom, it also keeps us from deeply considering big-picture questions, such as death. In modern Western society, we typically hide from death because it’s uncomfortable to think about. 80% of Westerners feel uncomfortable with the idea of death and only half of people over the age of 65 have considered how they’d like to die.

Instead of recognizing the reality of our mortality, Easter explains that Westerners are commonly lost in the illusion of our permanence. When consulting a Bhutanese monk about this issue, the monk told Easter that our illusion of permanence causes us to distract ourselves with material pleasures and put off thinking about death.

For example, Americans work an average of 47 hours each week and take pride in acquiring material things like big houses and new cars. However, research shows that once our basic survival needs are met (a safe home, enough food to eat, and so on), material accumulation doesn’t make us any happier. In fact, being too materialistic can make us less satisfied with our lives. For example, Easter refers to an Australian study that shows the most common regrets people have on their deathbed include working too much and not enjoying the present moment enough.

(Shortform note: One expert argues that Americans’ materialistic philosophy that underlies a denial of death is partly based on expectations that modern technologies can extend our lifespans. For example, America is home to 28 of the world’s 38 anti-aging labs. Another reason that death and aging are pushed to the wayside in the US is that Americans don’t value their elders as much as other nations do. This is because Americans tend to associate old age with frailty and incompetence, whereas traditional Asian cultures typically respect the positive qualities that elderly people possess, such as more life experience and wisdom.)

Comfort Remedy: Embrace the Discomfort of Boredom

Boredom improves our creativity and motivates us to become more productive. One study found that participants who performed boring activities (such as reading a phone book for 15 minutes) demonstrated much stronger creativity than participants who didn’t endure a boring activity. This is because boredom puts your mind into an unfocused state that allows you to be open to more ideas.

The discomfort of boredom can also spur you to get stuff done. Until recently, humans didn’t have distractions like phones to numb our brains at the first inkling of discomfort. So, we’d have to find other ways to channel our boredom, such as improving a shelter or finding a more productive way to catch food.

(Shortform note: In Atomic Habits, James Clear points out that boredom can tempt us to stray from good habits that align with our goals. This is because we mistakenly perceive boredom as an indicator that we need to do something new, which can disrupt habits that might be helping us reach our greater goals. Clear emphasizes that everyone occasionally gets bored of their habits on the path to their goals, but successful people are able to push through boredom and perform consistently. In comparison, Easter embraces the impulsive detours that boredom might inspire because they can lead to more creativity and productivity. Regarding habits aimed at a goal, Easter might say to embrace these detours if they align with your goal.)

Bonus Remedy: Reconcile With the Reality of Death

By considering death, you’ll feel more happy, free, compassionate, and grateful. Easter says one study found that people on their deathbeds felt more satisfied with their lives when they were asked to regularly discuss their death during the days before they died.

Realizing that death can come at any moment orients you with whatever matters most to you. Thus, you become less consumed by the petty struggles of daily life and do more of what makes you truly happy. When you realize material gains will not matter in the end, you’ll also be less anxious or greedy and instead become more compassionate and generous with your time. Easter cites one study that found people who were asked to think about death were more likely to donate money, offer their time to others, and give blood at a blood bank.

Finally, thinking about death helps you realize how precious your life is. Gratitude has been shown to reduce anxiety and lower your risk of heart disease. To become sufficiently acquainted with death, Easter recommends reminding yourself of death in the morning, midday, and in the evening.

(Shortform note: To meditate on death more regularly, Ryan Holiday (author of The Obstacle Is the Way and other books on stoicism) suggests using a “Memento Mori Calendar” that displays the number of weeks in an 80-year life as boxes on one page. He checks these boxes as a visual reminder of the time he likely has left to live—a literal “dead”-line. Holiday also recommends carrying a reminder of your mortality with you throughout your day, like this coin that reads “memento mori,” Latin for “remember that you will die.”)