Well of course with diligent practice, stress relief and sensory acuity and other desirable things may manifest in varying degrees. But they are only byproducts. Do not dwell on them. To do meditation while having them lurking in the background of your attention is not the proper frame of mind to start the practice. It is a tempted state of mind, which is rendered unfree to study its fundamental nature.
Meditation is an act of life.
The validation of this act is not something later or outside of it, but its own experience. Once such an untempted state of mind is cultivated, it is all right for the byproducts to come riding the coattail of practice. Once you do meditation on and for its own, and learn of its powers, bit by bit, like the slow passage of the moon over a brightened landscape of your soul, you'll then find meditation secretly seductive, just as feeling alive is rousingly so. While in meditation you live. You live in such a way that you want to repeat the experience, again and again.