AQA GCSE PE Health, fitness and wellbeing: a complete overview of wellbeing, diet and lifestyle
A deep-dive AQA GCSE PE guide to the Health, fitness and wellbeing topic. Covers physical, emotional and social wellbeing, diet and nutrition, and the consequences of a sedentary lifestyle, with the definitions and applications AQA repeats in Paper 2.
Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed
Health, fitness and wellbeing connects sport to a healthy life. It is assessed in Paper 2 and rewards clear definitions and the ability to apply them. This guide maps the three areas.
Wellbeing
You can be fit but not healthy, or healthy but not very fit, so keep the two ideas separate.
Diet and nutrition
A balanced diet contains carbohydrates (the main energy source), fats (a slow-release store), proteins (growth and repair), vitamins and minerals, fibre and water. Energy balance is when energy taken in equals energy used; eating more than you use leads to weight gain. Staying hydrated supports performance, and endurance athletes may carbo-load before a long event.
A sedentary lifestyle
A sedentary lifestyle involves little or no physical activity and raises the risk of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and poor self-esteem and depression. Overweight means weighing more than expected for your height; obesity is a severe excess of body fat; underweight means weighing less than expected. Being the wrong weight harms both health and performance.
How to revise this topic
- Learn the definitions of health, fitness, overweight and obesity.
- Sort the benefits of exercise into physical, emotional and social.
- Know each nutrient's role and the idea of energy balance.
- List the health risks of a sedentary lifestyle.
- Apply it to performance, explaining how diet and weight affect sport.
Sources & how we know this
- AQA GCSE Physical Education (8582) specification — AQA (2016)