Exercise-snacks for Breaking the Sedentary Lifestyle and Improving the Physical Fitness of Obese Adolescents?

Exercise-snacks: an Effective Solution for Breaking the Sedentary Lifestyle and Improving the Physical Fitness of Obese Adolescents?

The management of a person with obesity involves long-term behavioral changes with a balanced diet in both quantity and quality, along with the adoption of a more active lifestyle: increasing physical activities and reducing sedentary behaviors. The school setting has been identified as a favorable environment for interventions aimed at reducing and interrupting the time adolescents spend sitting and preventing the associated negative health consequences.

Recently, very short (< 1 minute) and intense exercises, called 'exercise-snacks,' have been reported to be effective in adults for 1) improving physical fitness over 6 weeks, and 2) improving vascular function and lowering blood glucose levels over a single day. Additionally, in adolescents with diabetes, they have been shown to reduce body fat. This raises the question of whether adding 'exercise-snack' sessions to a multidimensional care program for hospitalized obese adolescents could further improve their physical fitness in the short and medium term.

The objective of this project is to compare the effects of a traditional multidimensional care program with the addition of 'exercise-snacks' to the same care program without 'exercise-snacks' on the physical fitness, body composition, vascular function, and physical activity and sedentary behaviors of obese children in the short and medium term. Forty-eight obese adolescents will be included. The 'exercise-snack' group will perform six exercise sessions per day for three weeks in addition to the standard care. The control group will receive only the standard care. Assessments of physical fitness, body composition, vascular health, and questionnaires on physical activity, sedentary behavior, and cognitive restraint will be conducted at the beginning and end of the three-week program, as well as 1 and 3 months after the end of the program.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Body mass index Z-score corresponding to stage 2 obesity,
• no weight loss of more than 5% of total body weight in the past 3 months,
• parental consent
• minor's acceptance

Exclusion Criteria:

• Contraindication to physical activity
• current participation in a clinical trial