JUST one in 20 adults in England get their recommended amount of exercise, a study suggests.
The NHS says people should do two-and-a-half hours of moderate-intensity physical exercise per week, such as brisk walking, cycling and pushing a lawn mower.
Adults should also do muscle-strengthening activities, like carrying heavy shopping bags, lifting weights and heavy gardening, at least two days a week.
But a study of a quarter of a million Britons found a ‘startlingly small’ five per cent are hitting these minimum thresholds.
It comes after the World Health Organization (WHO) warned Britons were on track to become the fattest nation in Europe in the next decade.
Researchers from the University of Essex studied the exercise habits of a quarter of a million people in England.
They found that while two-thirds did enough aerobic exercise, between five and 29 per cent did enough strength exercise, depending on how the latter is defined.
Researchers examined data on 249,614 Britons aged 18 to 65 who responded to the Active Lives Survey.
It quizzes a representative group of people across England on their exercise routine twice a year.
The findings, published in the journal PLoS ONE, show two-thirds of adults get their heart racing through aerobic exercise for the recommended two-and-a-half hours a week.
The rate is slightly higher for men (69 per cent) than women (65 per cent).
However, the researchers said this figure could be over-inflated because people tend to overestimate when self-reporting activity levels.