Overview

Regular physical activity and a healthy diet are important factors in maintaining a healthy weight. Ensuring that you get enough exercise is also an important factor in preventing and managing chronic illnesses, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

More reports and statistics on physical activity can be found under Food & nutrition and Overweight & obesity.

Latest findings

15% of adults met both the physical activity and muscle strengthening activity guidelines in 2017–18 12% of children and 2% of adolescents met the physical activity and screen-based behaviour guidelines in 2011–12 Monitoring food and nutrition is important, however data are collected infrequently 1 in 2 adults (55%) did not meet the physical activity guidelines in 2017–18 Developing and standardising novel data sources will improve their usefulness Novel data sources can be used to complement traditional food and nutrition data sources Novel sources of data for food and nutrition monitoring have not been collected or extensively used for those purposes In 2017–18, 23% of adults met the muscle strengthening activity guidelines (22% of women and 25% of men) 17% of 2–5 year olds met the physical activity and screen-based behaviour guidelines on 7 days in 2011–12

Latest reports

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Highlights

1 in 2adults (55%) did not meet the physical activity guidelines in 2017–18
More Indigenous childrenaged 5–17 met the physical activity guideline than non-Indigenous children aged 5–17
1 in 10(12%) children aged 5–12 and only 2% of young people aged 13–17 met both the physical activity and sedentary screen-based behaviour guidelines
17%of adults met both the physical activity and muscle strengthening activity guidelines in 2017–18
2 in 3(70%) children aged 2–17 did not meet the physical activity guideline in 2011–12
Only 3 in 10pregnant women met the Australian physical activity guideline