A lot of thought goes into losing weight. Thinking about your weight loss plans can help you make smarter choices, learn new strategies and stay on track with your health and wellness goals. That being said, thinking itself isn’t going to do much for your waistline.

Though reading a book or clacking away on your keyboard all day at the office will be mentally exhausting, activities like these are sedentary—they won’t help you burn calories in the way a jog around the block would. After getting your JSAPA Weight Loss Surgery, you’ll need to engage in physical activities that are going to enhance your weight loss efforts, which means spending some time on your feet.

Sitting and thinking may not help with your fitness goals, but as it turns out, your exercise routine can help you improve the way you think. As you dedicate more time to building your fitness level after weight loss surgery, you may experience a boost in mental functioning, particularly in your memory and ability to solve problems.

The Muscle-Mental Connection

Our brains use something that scientists refer to as “motor memory.” Motor memory, more commonly referred to as muscle memory, is our ability to learn a repetitive action and engage in it without thinking too much about it. This is why after living in one home for so long you might mistakenly make a wrong turn on your way home following a recent move. You didn’t forget you don’t live there anymore, but without directly thinking about it you turned by force of habit.

This same motor memory helps athletes master plays and helps every average Jane or Joe ride a bike just fine despite 20 years away from the pedals. This is also why the more often you exercise, the more natural exercising will become.

Engaging in activity helps our bodies to master motor memories, but can they help us to master other thoughts? What about vocabulary words or a newly learned task? Researchers in Copenhagen put this question to the test by challenging a sample of young, healthy men to a series of cognitive and physical tests. One group of the men engaged in moderate activity like riding a stationary bike for 15 minutes while others remained sedentary. Both were given memory games and other cognitive tasks to perform.

Those who engaged in exercise performed significantly better on the cognitive tasks than those who remained sedentary.

This is good news for anyone using exercise to get into shape, especially after weight loss surgery. There is a lot to learn about living with your surgery. Your diet, lifestyle habits and exercise goals are going to be different. You’ll find yourself actively seeking out information on nutrients that you probably never thought much about before. Regular exercise can keep the cognitive juices flowing while also helping to keep stress levels at bay.

The next time you are feeling stressed or are spending time learning a new task at work, take a quick fitness break. As it turns out, a brief walk around the block might give you the mental boost you are looking for.