With the new year here, many people make the resolution to go to the gym more. In the month of January, gym memberships increase and tend to be pretty crowded with people trying to uphold their goals. But with many resolutions, as the months go by, people can slowly start to slip into old habits. Exercising might be a good weight loss tool for some, but fitness experts mention that people often overestimate how many calories they are burning in a session. Glenn Gaesser, a professor of exercise physiology at the College of Health Solutions at Arizona University in Phonix explains, “we can undo with eating in a matter of minutes what it took us to burn that many calories over the course of many, many minutes, sometimes hours.” He continues, “Research shows that exercise affects pretty much every cell in the body, not just our heart, not just our muscles, but it also affects all the other organs, as well. Exercise is something that is vital for good health.”

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention list many benefits to exercising, such as sharper thinking, decreased depression and anxiety, better sleep, stronger bones and muscles, decreased risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and breast cancers. The federal health guidelines suggest performing 150 to 300 minutes of moderate to intense physical activity a week. Exercise isn’t purely about weight loss but improves one’s health as a whole. According to Gaesser, research shows that intentional weight loss is linked to a lower mortality risk of 10 to 15 percent. He says, “The major take-home message is that just being physically active and trying to improve your fitness seems to provide better prospects for longevity than just trying to lose weight.”

A further study found that walking, even less than 10,000 steps a day, is associated with longevity. The study’s author, Amanda Paluch, an assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusets Amherst explains, “Physical activity works on multiple mechanisms within the body, and that’s how it could potentially help prevent chronic conditions and therefore also prevent early deaths.” Many people assume they have to do the most when it comes to exercise, but the truth is, even doing a little provides huge benefits. Sallis, a clinical professor of family medicine at the University of California, Riverside, School of Medicine said that the first thing they notice with exercise is “mental health. That is almost the first thing people notice — I feel better, I have more energy, I sleep better. But then you could just go down the list of chronic diseases. I couldn’t tell you a disease that isn’t helped by it, from diabetes to heart disease to blood pressure to cholesterol to cancer, on and on.”