Energy expenditure of interruptions to sedentary behavior

Abstract

BackgroundAdvances in technology, social influences and environmental attributes have resulted in substan-tial portions of the day spent in sedentary pursuits. Sedentary behavior may be a cause of many chronic diseases including obesity, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. Research demonstrated that breaking up sedentary time was beneficially associated with markers of body composition, cardiovascular health and type 2 diabetes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to quantify the total energy expenditure of three different durations of physical activity within a 30-minute sedentary period and to examine the potential benefits of interrupting sedentary behavior with physical activity for weight control.MethodsParticipants completed four consecutive 30-minute bouts of sedentary behavior (reading, working on the computer, or doing other desk activities) with and without interruptions of walking at a self-selected pace. Bout one contained no walking interruptions. Bout two contained a 1-minute walking period. Bout three contained a 2-minute walking period. Bout four contained a 5-minute walking period. Body composition and resting metabolic rate were assessed.ResultTwenty males and females (18-39 years) completed this study. Results of the repeated measures analysis of variance with post-hoc testing showed that significantly more energy was expended during each 30 minute sedentary bout with a walking break than in the 30 minute sedentary bout (p < 0.05 for all comparisons). On average, participants expended an additional 3.0, 7.4, and 16.5 additional net or activity kilocalories during bouts 2, 3, and 4, respectively compared with bout 1. When extrapolated for a full eight-hour working day, this data shows that an individual would theoretically expend an additional 24, 59 or 132 kilocalories per day, if they stood up and walked at a normal, self selected pace for one, two or five minutes every hour, respectively, compared with sitting for the 8-hour period.ConclusionsThis study demonstrated that making small changes, such as taking a five minute walking break every hour could yield beneficial weight control or weight loss results. Therefore, taking breaks from sedentary time is a potential outlet to prevent obesity and the rise of obesity in developed countries.

A novel approach for measuring energy expenditure of a single sit-to-stand movement

“…For example, exercise intensity was 4.3METS and net EE was 19.2 kJ/min at 15 times/min. These values are very similar to those of preferred walking speed (Swartz et al 2011), with 11.8 of RPE (between fairly light and somewhat hard). Participants can maintain their STS exercise at this frequency for 20-30 min.…”

“…According to a previous study, 2-min walking in a 30-min period expended 7.4 kcal/h without other exercise, which reaches 59 kcal per a full 8-h working day (Swartz et al 2011). Adding such short periods of physical activity has been shown to have beneficial health results, and could be easier to introduce in daily life.…”

Associations of objectively measured sedentary behaviour and physical activity with markers of cardiometabolic health

“…Consequently, this study further suggests that breaks in sedentary time, rather than total sedentary time per se may be an important factor in the regulation of body weight. This is consistent with a small intervention study suggesting that regular variations in posture allocation may be an influential factor in the regulation of energy homeostasis [33]. The non-significant associations observed for FPG and HbA 1c across all measures of sedentary behaviour and physical activity are consistent with previous research [4,14,34] and reflect the different pathophysiological process underlying 2 h and FPG regulation, with 2 h glucose largely influenced by peripheral insulin resistance [34,35].…”

Standing economy: does the heterogeneity in the energy cost of posture maintenance reside in differential patterns of spontaneous weight-shifting?

“…However, such studies often require participants to stand motionless (Judice et al 2016; Levine et al 2005), thus imposing restriction on the lowlevel movements (e.g. spontaneous weight-shifting) that naturally occur during standing, or are focused on the energetic cost of the postural transition (Hatamoto et al 2016;Judice et al 2016) or a combination of postural transitions and low-level ambulation (Bailey et al 2016;Swartz et al 2011) rather than that of posture maintenance per se.…”