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

Developing and standardising novel data sources will improve their usefulness In 2017–18, 2,670 people were hospitalised for a watercraft-related injury There were 199 hospitalisations involving injuries sustained on passenger ships and fishing boats Novel data sources can be used to complement traditional food and nutrition data sources Males were twice as likely to be hospitalised due to a watercraft-related injury compared with females Monitoring food and nutrition is important, however data are collected infrequently Novel sources of data for food and nutrition monitoring have not been collected or extensively used for those purposes There were 933 hospitalisations caused by injuries sustained while surfing or boogie boarding

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