According to new figures people in the U. K. are not serious about figures as only 5 per cent do enough exercise according to the levels recommended by the government. The NHS Information Centre said only one in 20 adults was active enough.

Few people actually meet the government's recommendations for weekly physical activity and there are many more who say they do but they actually don’t.

A third of us believe we hit Government exercise targets but one in 20 falls short of the recommended 30 minutes a day on five days a week.

Health Survey for England, 2008, made efforts to find out how much exercise people admit they do, but also how much they actually do.

During the survey 15,102 adults were asked how much physical activity they did over the previous four weeks. Those surveyed then wore an accelerometer to measure their physical activity.

According to the results 38 per cent of men and 29 per cent of women thought they had hit the target.

Only 10 per cent of men and 8 per cent of women actually met the set targets researchers from the National Centre for Social Research and University College London stated.

NHS Information Centre's chief executive Tim Straughan said, “It is clear that there is a stark mismatch between how much adults say they are doing and what they are really doing.”