The benefit of exercise is not really the fact that you are physically better off. Yes, that exists. No, the real benefit is in the mindset that causes you to exercise. Seneca, as usual, has something to say:
For when I don suitable attire, or walk as I should, or dine as I ought to dine, it is not my dinner, or my walk, or my dress that are goods, but the deliberate choice which I show in regard to them, as I observe, in each thing I do, a mean that conforms with reason.
Letters, 92.11.
The “deliberate choice”. That is where the value exists.
The pursuit of happiness/peace is in the choices I make, not in the fancy clothes I wear or how buff I am or the elaborate steak dinners I eat.
When I set “I am a savage, a beast, an animal” as my objective, I am setting myself on a disciplined course. I am making choices, simple choices based on simple and eternal principles.
Choices that create known results. Choices that are known to create peace.
The new me just does. Beasts do not think, debate, analyze. They just do. Peace does not require analysis, intellectualizing. Peace requires deliberate action and choices.
Those actions and choices must be aligned with higher principles.
[I]f I have the choice, I shall choose health and strength, but that the good involved will be my judgment regarding these things, and not the things themselves.
Letters, 92.13.
Strive to understand the eternal principles. Make choices consistent with them.