Introduction: Health-related behaviours of Canadian adolescents are generally
suboptimal. Studies have assessed effectiveness of exercise interventions primarily from
an energy balance perspective, but not from a health promotion standpoint. This study
assessed the effect of an 8-week aerobic exercise program on dietary intake parameters
and eating behaviours of adolescents with a normal weight and excess body weight.
Methods: This quasi-experimental study involved 13 male and 13 female adolescents
between the age of 14-18 years old (17 normal weight, 9 with excess weight). The
intervention consisted of an 8-week aerobic exercise program on cycle ergometers,
aiming for 50-75% of heart rate reserve. Diet was assessed in pre- and post-intervention
via 24-hour dietary recalls. Two recalls were collected for each condition: pre-
intervention, post-intervention on exercise days and post-intervention on non-exercise
days. Diet was assessed for the following dietary intake parameters: food quantity, diet
quality and eating patterns.
Results: The 8-week exercise program led to a decrease in meal size at lunch and dinner,
energy density at breakfast, carbohydrate intake as well as a slight shift in eating pattern
of participants. At baseline, participants with excess weight had greater number of daily
eating occurrences and portion sizes at evening snacks but consumed a smaller
percentage of daily energy intake before school, compared to those with a normal weight.
Participants with excess weight decreased their total number of eating occurrences, but
not those with normal weight. The exercise program did not influence cognitive restraint,
uncontrolled eating or emotional eating scores of participants.
Conclusion: Significant changes in food quantity and eating pattern parameters, but not
in diet quality, were observed following the exercise program. Differences in pre-
intervention and in response to the exercise program were observed based on weight
status. Future studies with greater sample size are needed to confirm these findings.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/38101 |
| Date | 12 September 2018 |
| Creators | Pouliot, Catherine |
| Contributors | Prud'homme, Denis, Giroux, Isabelle |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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