Exercise could help to make your fat tissue healthier, which, hear me out, is a good thing.

According to a timely new study, a single session of exercise may change the molecular workings of fat tissue in ways that, over time, should improve metabolic health.

This finding has particular relevance during the holidays, when, despite our best intentions, so many of us add to our fat stores. Exercise might make these annual bacchanals less metabolically damaging than otherwise.

Most of us probably think of our fat tissue as inert and undesirable. But our fat is, in fact, a busy and necessary tissue, producing and sending out multiple biochemical signals that affect biological operations throughout the body.

Fat tissue’s most important responsibility, however, is to securely store fat, and we should hope that it performs this function well. Provocative recent research in both animals and people has found that, if a person’s or animal’s fat tissue is relatively leaky, allowing fatty acids to ooze into the bloodstream, those roving fat blobs can accumulate in other tissues, particularly the muscles and liver. Once there, they contribute to the development of insulin resistance, a serious metabolic condition that often leads to diabetes.