Physical activity in England

[mtbc]

NHS Digital today published their latest Statistics on Obesity, Physical Activity and Diet for England. Regarding adult physical activity it includes the interesting finding,

People who are long term unemployed or have never worked were most likely to be inactive (37%). Those in managerial, administrative and professional occupations were the least likely to be inactive (17%).

I would not have expected this: depending on professional those kinds of occupations tend to be time-consuming and sedentary. Whereas, I might think that the unemployed would have found time for habitual recreational exercise.

I do not know if the explanation is that these unemployed are actually busy parents and suchlike or if they are simply broadly unmotivated in many spheres of life, perhaps not unconnectedly: depression over unemployment could spread to general lack of purposeful activity? I may be missing the obvious.

Comments

[aldabra]

There's depression, and there's exclusion. Those professionals and managers are driving to warm gyms. Quizzes tend to ask whether you exercise for half an hour three times a week; yoga ticks that box, but carrying shopping home from the supermarket probably doesn't, because nobody does that *for exercise*.

And there may be low energy levels causing both inactivity and unemployment. It seems to me that most people I know have higher energy than I do.