As a cancer researcher, I often get asked to talk about how our choices (to exercise or not, to eat vegetables or Twinkies) influence our health.  And what most people expect me to talk about, and I do, are the benefits of those choices on disease and mortality endpoints.  But I also always talk about the QUALITY of life benefits – not just the QUANTITY of life benefits.

The quality of life benefits are real.  I should know, as one of my earliest published research articles was on the benefit of exercise for quality of life.

It is great to see the dialog about exercise starting to change – to get people to focus on the immediate benefits of exercise.  You feel better.  You sleep better.  Kudos to Jane Brody for highlighting it this week in the NY Times.

If you need some more reasons to exercise today, hop over to Twitter and check out the #reasontoexercise tag from my colleague Dr. Sherry Pagoto.