Want to be sharper at work? Feel less tired at home? Spend some quality time with your spouse? How about enjoying a cookie without guilt?

If you answered “yes” to all of these questions (and who wouldn’t?), exercise is the answer.

Being physically active offers benefits far beyond the obvious, improved physique and a clean bill of health would be the best.

If you’ve been looking for the motivation to begin an exercise program or get back into working out regularly, here are 10 fitness facts that may help inspire you to get off the couch.

1. Exercise boosts brainpower — Not only does exercise improve your body, it helps your mental function, and exercise increases energy levels and increases serotonin in the brain, which leads to improved mental clarity, all that makes for a more productive day.

It is clear that those who are active and who exercise are much more productive at work, which leads to improved productivity and better worker, it makes things better for everyone in the workplace. Companies see less wasted work hours and less sick time end up with lower health care costs.

2. Movement melts away stress — As much as it may stress you out just to think about exercising, once you actually start working out, you’ll experience less stress in every part of your life.

“Exercise produces a relaxation response that serves as a positive distraction,” says a chief exercise physiologist for the American Council on Exercise. He says it also helps elevate your mood and keep depression at bay.

You’re not the only person who will benefit from more happiness and less stress in your life. When you’re less stressed, you’re less irritable and that could improve relationships with your partner, kids, and co-workers.

3. Exercise gives you energy — You might be surprised at how, say, popping in a workout for 30 minutes in the morning can change your whole day. When endorphins are released into your bloodstream during exercise, you feel much more energized the rest of the day.

And when you improve your strength and stamina, it’s easier to accomplish everyday tasks like carrying groceries and climbing stairs. This also helps you feel more energetic over the course of the day.

A common excuse people have is that they’re too tired to exercise, while exercise may make you feel more tired at first, that won’t last too long.

The physical tiredness you feel after working out isn’t the same as everyday fatigue, once your body adjusts to exercise, you’ll have more energy than ever.

4. It’s not that hard to find time for fitness — The key is to use your time more wisely. Take your kids to the park or ride bikes together, and you’re getting physical activity while enjoying family time, he says. Beyond that, go for a hike, take the kids swimming, or play hide-and-seek, tag, softball, or horseshoes in the backyard.

At work, schedule a meeting on the jogging track or on the golf course. Hit the gym first thing in the morning before going to work or over your lunch hour so you are free to go home after work and spend time with your family.

You can work short spurts of physical activity into your day. Everyone has 20 minutes, so take 10 minutes to jump rope and then add in a set of lifting weights. Indeed, squeezing in two or three bouts of 15 or 20 minutes of activity is just as effective as doing it all at once.

Recent U.S. government guidelines say that to lose weight and keep it off, you should accumulate at least 60 minutes of exercise a day. But half an hour a day is all you need to reap the health and disease-fighting benefits of exercise.

5. Fitness can help build relationships — Think of what exercising with a partner can do for a relationship, whether it’s with a spouse, a sibling, or a friend you used to go to lunch with once a week. Not only that, exercise is always more fun when there’s someone to do it with. So plan to walk with your spouse after dinner every night or meet your sister or that friend for tennis, run or a fitness class instead of lunch.

A positive is people who have exercise partners stay with their programs and reach their goals more often than those who try to go it alone.

6. Exercise helps ward off disease — Research has shown that exercise can slow or help prevent heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis (bone loss), and loss of muscle mass.

It also helps ease some aspects of the aging process, because exercise strengthens the muscles and joints, it is going to reduce your odds of having some of those aches and pains and problems most adults have, mostly because of the inactive lives they lead.

Provided you don’t overdo it, exercise can even boost immune function — so you spend less time down with a cold or flu.

There isn’t a major health problem where exercise cannot have a positive effect.

7. Fitness pumps up your heart — Not only does exercise help fight disease, it creates a stronger heart — the most important muscle in the body. That helps makes exercise — and the activities of daily life — feel easier.

Your heart and cardiovascular system will function more effectively. The heart will build up less plaque. It will become a more efficient pump, pumping more blood per beat, so at rest, the heart rate is lower, it’s not going to have to beat as fast to expend the same amount of effort.

8. Exercise lets you eat more — Pound for pound; muscle burns more calories at rest than body fat. So the more muscle you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate. And, of course, you also burn calories while you’re actually exercising.

All this means that “cheating” with a cookie once in a while isn’t going to take you back 10 steps. Can you eat anything? No, but you can afford to enjoy some of the things you really like when you exercise regularly. You can better get away with those things in moderation than you can when you’re not working out.”

9. Exercise boosts performance — After a few weeks of consistent exercise, you may feel your clothes fitting differently and see that your muscle tone has improved; you may also notice your newly pumped-up muscles in other ways, especially if you’re a recreational golfer or tennis player, or like a friendly game of pick-up basketball. Exercising consistently will strengthen your muscles, increase flexibility, and improve your overall performance.

Your muscles will work much more efficiently and you’ll gain a greater sense of endurance, reaction time and your balance will improve.

10. Weight loss is not the most important goal — Weight loss is the reason many people exercise in the first place. But it’s certainly not the sole benefit of an exercise program.

The long-term goal of weight loss is sold too heavily to people starting fitness programs, and that can be discouraging. People have trouble sticking with something if they don’t see results quickly.

You really should think about the level of functioning in the activities of daily living that can serve as the motivation to keep you coming back for more.

Whatever weight loss goal you have when starting a fitness program, don’t make it your only goal. Strive to feel better, to have more energy, to be less stressed. Notice the small things that exercise does for you quickly, rather than getting hung up on the narrow goal of the number on a scale.

Remember that a goal of losing weight and enhancing health, exercise has to become a part of a person’s life.

• Sources: www.webmd.com/barbara-russi-sarnataro Barbara Russi Sarnataro; WebMD Weight Loss Clinic-Feature. Reviewed by www.webmd.com/kathleen-m-zelman” Kathleen M. Zelman, MPH, RD, LD