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.
Featured summary
Being physically active is important across all ages and contributes to health, growth, and development in children and adolescents (WHO 2018). Low levels of physical activity are a major risk factor for chronic conditions. People who are not active enough have a greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and dementia.
Regular physical activity improves mental and musculoskeletal health and reduces other risk factors such as overweight and obesity, high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol.
Physical activity includes any movements that results in energy expenditure (WHO 2022). It can be taken as part of deliberate exercise or sport (such as swimming, running, going to the gym), incidental movement (such as walking to work or household chores) or work-related activities (such as lifting). Muscle-strengthening activities are activities that improve the strength, power, endurance and size of skeletal muscles, and also have specific health benefits such as reducing the risk of osteoporosis and sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass and strength) in older Australians (Seguin and Nelson 2003). Examples of muscle-strengthening activities include lifting weights, body weight exercises (for example, push-ups), some types of yoga and Pilates.
Being physically inactive is different to being 'sedentary'. A sedentary behaviour is performed sitting or lying down (excluding sleeping) and requires little energy expenditure. Sedentary behaviours include sitting at a desk for work or sitting on the couch to watch TV. Long periods of sitting can offset the benefits of being physically active so it is important to reduce the time spent being sedentary or break up long periods of sitting (Department of Health and Aged Care 2021).
Australia has national guidelines that outline the minimum amount of physical activity required to achieve optimal health outcomes at all stages of life.
For further information, see Physical activity and exercise guidelines for all Australians.
References
Department of Health and Aged Care (2021) Physical activity and exercise guidelines for all Australians, Department of Health and Aged Care, Australian Government, accessed 28 May 2024.
Seguin R and Nelson ME (2003) ‘The benefits of strength training for older adults’, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 25(3):41–149, doi:10.1016/s0749-3797(03)00177-6.
WHO (World Health Organization) (2018) Global action plan on physical activity 2018–2030: more active people for a healthier world, WHO, accessed 28 May 2024.
WHO (2022) Physical activity, WHO, accessed 28 May 2024.
Featured reports
Latest findings
A 1-unit BMI reduction could reduce disease burden attributable to overweight (including obesity) by 11% in 2030
An extra hour of weekly activity could reduce disease burden attributable to physical inactivity by 16% in 2030
13,400 deaths could be prevented if the obese population reduced their BMI to a healthy range
$2.4 billion was spent on diseases caused by physical inactivity, the fourth highest spending risk factor in 2018-19
$1.7 billion in disease spending was prevented by physical activity, including sport, in Australia in 2018-19
$149 million was spent on osteoarthritis following sport and physical activity injuries in 2018-19
More reports and statistics on physical activity can be found under Food & nutrition and Overweight & obesity.