Daily energy expenditure and physical activity assessed by an activity diary in 374 randomly selected 15-year-old adolescents

Abstract

Objectives: To assess the average daily levels of physical activity, energy expenditure and the time and energy spent at different activities in two cohorts of Swedish adolescents. Design: Total energy expenditure (TEE) and physical activity level (PAL TEE/basal metabolic rate (BMR)) were estimated in 374 randomly selected healthy adolescents living in two different regions of Sweden on the basis of a seven-day activity diary (AD) and predicted BMR. A validation of the estimates from the AD with the doubly labelled water (DLW) method in a randomly selected subsample of 50 of these subjects is presented elsewhere. Setting: The Unit of Paediatric Physiology of the Department of Clinical Physiology, University Hospital, Uppsala and the Department of Paediatrics, Northern A È lvsborg Hospital, Trollha Èttan, Sweden. Results: No signi®cant differences in TEE and PAL were found between the adolescents of the two regions. High levels of TEE (14.2 and 10.9 MJ/d in boys and girls, respectively) and PAL (1.95 and 1.80) were observed. There was a close association between the PAL of the adolescents and their reported time spent sitting. Those with the lowest PAL values spent 3±6 h longer each day sitting compared to those with the highest PAL values. The results also indicate that everyday activities such as walking and bicycling have a crucial impact on the PAL values. Conclusions: In the 15 y old adolescents of the two studied regions of Sweden, high and concordant levels of energy expenditure and physical activity were found. Sponsorship: Swedish Medical Research Council (project no. 10379), Uppsala University, and the County Councils of Uppsala and Trollha Èttan. Descriptors: activity diary; basal metabolic rate; doubly labelled water method; energy expenditure; physical activity level; adolescents

Daily energy expenditure, activity patterns, and energy costs of the various activities in French 12–16-y-old adolescents in free living conditions

“…The mean calculated PAL (1.64) of girls was lower than that of boys, and similar to those obtained by Bandini et al (1990), Davies et al (1991) and Ekelund et al (2000). However, it was lower than the values obtained by Bratteby et al (1997aBratteby et al ( ,b 1998. In the latter studies, adolescents were generally more active than our subjects, since 80 vs 12% of them walked or bicycled to and from school, and 62% of them trained regularly.…”

“…The mean DEE of the 15-y-old boys (1.73) was lower than those obtained in the USA (Bandini et al, 1990), in the UK (Davies et al, 1991), and in Sweden (Bratteby et al, 1997a(Bratteby et al, ,b,1998Ekelund et al, 2000). However, the mean DEE expressed per kg BW or per kg FFM was intermediate between these values, and the differences were less than 6%.…”

“…However, sports activities sometimes increased, especially in adolescents performing competition sports. Thus, physical activity can be very variable among adolescents (Torun et al, 1996;Bratteby et al, 1997a). In the meantime, improvement of standard of living and availability of energy-dense foods resulted in frequent imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure (EE), which explains the prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents (Martinez, 2000).…”

“…However, this valuable method does not supply information on day-to-day variations in DEE of subjects, and EE devoted to physical activities. In addition, to our knowledge information on the time spent on different categories of physical activities has only been obtained from four studies carried out with 10 -15-y-old children from activity diaries (Armstrong et al, 1990;Bratteby et al, 1997a;Henry et al, 1999;Ekelund et al, 2000). Furthermore, approximate costs of activities in adolescents have been derived from measurements in adults, and adapted for a diary of activities (Bouchard et al, 1983) or the DLW method (Bratteby et al, 1997b).…”

Total daily energy expenditure and pattern of physical activity measured by minute-by-minute heart rate monitoring in 14–15 year old Swedish adolescents

“…Engstro Èm (1989) reported, based on questionnaire data, a gradual decline from 1968 to 1984 in participation in organized sports and leisure time spontaneous physical activity in 15 y old Swedish adolescents. On the other hand, Bratteby et al (1997) concluded, by using activity diary data, that Swedish 15 y olds have a high energy expenditure and a high physical activity level. To what extent Swedish adolescents achieve appropriate levels of physical activity in relation to existing physical activity recommendations is not known.…”