According to the World Health Organization, in 2016, there were more than 1.9 billion adults who were overweight. Of these, over 650 million were obese. Physical inactivity is one of the major risk factors for several non-communicable diseases. Healthcare workers who have direct contact with patients often influence their behaviors. However, health care workers who educate their patients but they themselves do not practice what they recommend, may be one of the barriers that can affect patient education and influence.

This research paper aimed to investigate the motivation to participate in physical activity among healthcare workers and to determine the association between the profile of respondents with the different types of motivation.

There was a total of 250 randomly selected respondents who were included in the study. Data were gathered through a self-administered questionnaire utilizing the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ-SF) and the Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire (BREQ-2). Descriptive statistics was used to summarize sociodemographic information, physical activity levels and BREQ-2 profiles. T-test was used to analyze differences in gender while analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for levels of physical activity and professional category.

Female healthcare professionals have a higher average in amotivation (mean=0.56) while males have a higher average in intrinsic (mean=2.82) motivation. Nurses and ancillary services have higher average amotivation scores than physicians.

Health care workers who have high classification in physical activity have the highest average scores in terms of relative autonomy index, introjected, identified, and intrinsic scores. This demonstrates a positive association between motivation from internal regulation and increased physical activity.