Physical activity will help you lose weight, lose fat, lose inches, and feel good.

• Physical activity uses up calories. Your body needs a certain number of calories to stay healthy and to function normally. If you eat more calories than your body uses, it stores the extra calories as fat. Physical activity burns calories. If you do enough activity, your body will start burning some of its extra fat to get the calories it needs to function, and you lose weight.

• Physical activity helps you lose fat and inches. When you diet without exercising, you lose muscle as well as fat, but you do not want to lose muscle. The muscle in your body burns more calories than fat. If you lose muscle, you reduce your ability to burn fat. When you exercise (with or without dieting), almost all the weight you lose is fat. Fat is less dense than muscle and thus takes up more space. When you lose fat, you lose inches.

• Regular physical activity may help control your appetite so that the calories you take in are balanced against the calories you burn. The impact of exercise on appetite is not yet clear. Exercise which is vigorous enough to increase body temperature does seem to reduce appetite immediately after the activity. Some research suggests a more important effect. Exercise seems to help the body regulate appetite, so the amount of food you take in is balanced against the number of calories you burn. It's possible that, below a certain minimum level of activity, the body's ability to adjust food intake becomes less precise, resulting in weight gain.

• Exercise reduces stress and increases well-being. Regular physical activity can help relieve depression and anxiety, providing a greater sense of well-being. Research has shown that people who exercise tend to have a more positive self-concept, and they feel more confident about achieving goals and managing their eating behaviors.