Influence of Physical Activity Participation on the Associations between Eating Behaviour Traits and Body Mass Index in Healthy Postmenopausal Women

Evaluating hours of sleep and perceived stress on dietary cognitive restraint in a survey of college students

The objective of this study was to examine associations of sleep quality and quantity, food security, and physical activity with eating behaviors that may be associated with college weight gain. Participants: College students enrolled in multiple sections of a general education class completed an online survey in January 2016 (n = 153; 18-52 years of age). Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted. Outcome variables included emotional eating (EE), uncontrolled eating (UE), and cognitive restraint (CR) as measured by The Three Factor Eating Questionnaire Revised. Bivariate analyses, ANOVA, and multiple linear regression were completed with significance at p≤.05. Results: Higher EE was associated with higher stress levels and female sex (p <.001 and p=.02) and higher UE scores were associated with higher perceived stress (p<.001) while lower UE scores were associated with tobacco use (p=.03 regression, p=.098, bivariate). Higher CR was associated with higher parental education and use of relaxation methods. Higher CR also was associated with perceived stress, but this relationship differed depending upon freshmen status and amount of physical activity, and a relationship with sleep was observed that differed depending upon freshmen status. Conclusion: Interventions to help college students reduce stress and improve sleep may improve eating behaviors.

Energy Compensation Following a Supervised Exercise Intervention in Women Living With Overweight/Obesity Is Accompanied by an Early and Sustained Decrease in Non-structured Physical Activity

Background/Objectives

Body composition (BC) does not always vary as a function of exercise induced energy expenditure (exercise EE – resting EE). Energy balance variables were measured to understand energy compensation (EC) in response to an exercise intervention performed at low (LOW) or moderate (MOD) intensity.

Subjects/Methods

Twenty-one women with overweight/obesity (33 ± 5 kg/m²; 29 ± 10 yrs; 31 ± 4 ml O₂/kg/min) were randomized to a 3-month LOW or MOD (40 or 60% of VȮ_2reserve, respectively) matched to expend 1500 kcal/week (compliance = 97 ± 5%). Body energy stores (DXA), energy intake (EI) (food menu and food diaries), resting EE (indirect calorimetry), total EE (doubly-labeled water), time spent in different activities (accelerometers), appetite (visual analog scale), eating behavior traits and food reward (liking and wanting) were assessed at baseline, after weeks 1 and 2 and at the end of the 3-month exercise intervention.

Results

EC based on BC changes (fat mass and fat-free mass) was 49 ± 79% and 161 ± 88% in LOW and MOD groups, respectively (p = 0.010). EI did not change significantly during the intervention. However, eating behavior traits and food reward had changed by the end of the 3-month supervised exercise. Non-structured physical activity (NSPA) decreased across the intervention (p < 0.002), independent of the intensity of the exercise training.

Conclusion

Women with overweight/obesity training at LOW presented lower EC for a given energy cost of exercise. Our results strongly suggest that NSPA plays a major role in mediating the effects of exercise on energy balance and ultimately on changes in BC.

Clinical Trial Registration

www.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier ISRCTN31641049.

Intrinsic brain subsystem associated with dietary restraint, disinhibition and hunger: an fMRI study

Eating behaviors are closely related to body weight, and eating traits are depicted in three dimensions: dietary restraint, disinhibition, and hunger. The current study aims to explore whether these aspects of eating behaviors are related to intrinsic brain activation, and to further investigate the relationship between the brain activation relating to these eating traits and body weight, as well as the link between function connectivity (FC) of the correlative brain regions and body weight. Our results demonstrated positive associations between dietary restraint and baseline activation of the frontal and the temporal regions (i.e., food reward encoding) and the limbic regions (i.e., homeostatic control, including the hypothalamus). Disinhibition was positively associated with the activation of the frontal motivational system (i.e., OFC) and the premotor cortex. Hunger was positively related to extensive activations in the prefrontal, temporal, and limbic, as well as in the cerebellum. Within the brain regions relating to dietary restraint, weight status was negatively correlated with FC of the left middle temporal gyrus and left inferior temporal gyrus, and was positively associated with the FC of regions in the anterior temporal gyrus and fusiform visual cortex. Weight status was positively associated with the FC within regions in the prefrontal motor cortex and the right ACC serving inhibition, and was negatively related with the FC of regions in the frontal cortical-basal ganglia-thalamic circuits responding to hunger control. Our data depicted an association between intrinsic brain activation and dietary restraint, disinhibition, and hunger, and presented the links of their activations and FCs with weight status.

Sleep and eating behavior in adults at risk for type 2 diabetes

Insufficient quantity and quality of sleep may modulate eating behavior, everyday physical activity, overall energy balance, and individual risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. We examined the association of habitual sleep quantity and quality with the self-reported pattern of eating behavior in 53 healthy urban adults with parental history of type 2 diabetes (30 F/23 M; mean (s.d.) age: 27 (4) years; BMI: 23.9 (2.3) kg/m(2)) while taking into consideration the amount of their everyday physical activity. Participants completed 13 (3) days of sleep and physical activity monitoring by wrist actigraphy and waist accelerometry while following their usual lifestyle at home. Overnight laboratory polysomnography was used to screen for sleep disorders. Subjective sleep quality was measured with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Eating behavior was assessed using the original 51-item and the revised 18-item version of the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire including measures of cognitive restraint, disinhibition, hunger, and uncontrolled and emotional eating. In multivariable regression analyses adjusted for age, BMI, gender, race/ethnicity, level of education, habitual sleep time measured by wrist actigraphy and physical activity measured by waist accelerometry, lower subjective sleep quality was associated with increased hunger, more disinhibited, uncontrolled and emotional eating, and higher cognitive restraint. There was no significant association between the amount of sleep measured by wrist actigraphy and any of these eating behavior factors. Our findings indicate that small decrements in self-reported sleep quality can be a sensitive indicator for the presence of potentially problematic eating patterns in healthy urban adults with familial risk for type 2 diabetes.