# Physical Activity: An Important Adaptative Mechanism for Body-Weight Control

Authors: Carmine Finelli; Saverio Gioia; Nicolina La Sala
Journal: ISRN Obesity
 (2012)

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## Abstract

We review the current concepts about energy expenditure and evaluate the physical activity (PhA) in the context of this knowledge and the available literature. Regular PhA is correlated with low body weight and low body fat mass. The negative fat balance is probably secondary to this negative energy balance. Nonexercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) and physical activity, that is crucial for weight control, may be important in the physiology of weight change. An intriguing doubt that remains unresolved is whether changes in nutrient intake or body composition secondarily affect the spontaneous physical activity.


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## Body

## 1. Introduction

Exercise physiology and the salutatory effects on weight loss, fat reduction, and insulin sensitivity have been described in great detail. These beneficial effects are now considered to reflect, at least in part, the effect of exercise on the activation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). In obese non-diabetics, exercise has been shown to reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by up to 46% [1].Physical training, consisting of 20 min cycling or running, 20 min swimming at submaximal heart rate, followed by 20 min of warm up/cool down three times per week for 4 wk, resulted in a significant reduction in body weight and percentage body fat, and this was associated with improved whole-body glucose uptake, decreased fasting insulin concentrations, and increased circulating adiponectin and mRNA expression in muscle. Among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, increasing exercise led to a reduction in fasting plasma glucose [2].Energy expenditure has been extensively studied in lean and obese individuals. The 24-hour energy expenditure, whether measured in a respiratory chamber [3] or by using doubly labelled water [4], increases linearly with increasing body weight. Multivariate analysis shows that fat-free mass is the major determinant of energy expenditure, with minor influences of fat mass, age, and gender [5]. Nevertheless, the considerable interindividual variation is currently unexplained.There is at the present time little evidence for major adaptations of energy expenditure during overfeeding, and changes in body weight and body composition appear to be the major factors that, by increasing energy expenditure, allow energy balance to be restored. The body-weight gain may therefore be seen as an adaptative change to overfeeding [6, 7].Total energy expenditure can be subdivided into three main components: basal metabolic rate (BMR); the thermic effect of food, or diet-induced thermogenesis; energy expended in physical activity (PhA). The first two components can be measured opportunely with reasonable accuracy and have been fully studied in lean and obese subjects. There is actually no clear evidence that a low BMR is a factor in the development of obesity, even if the issue continues to be debated [8, 9]. The thermic effect of food, and more specifically the thermic effect of carbohydrate, has been shown to decrease in obese subjects [10, 11].This decrease may, nevertheless, be secondary to obesity-related insulin resistance and is of too small magnitude to account for a major weight gain [12].Nonexercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)—the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating, or sports-like exercise—and PhA, that is crucial for weight control, may be important in the physiology of weight change.We review the current concepts about energy expenditure and evaluate the PhA in the context of this knowledge and the available literature.


## 2. Physical Activity and Body Weight

During PhA, mechanical work associated with muscle contractions clearly requires energy. As a result of the associated loss of energy as heat during ATP synthesis in the mitochondria and ATP hydrolysis during muscular contraction, the energetic capacity of working muscles is about 25%. [13]. Therefore, physical exercise will increase energy expenditure above the basal energy expenditure.PhA may thus have a major impact on the total 24-hour energy expenditure and energy balance. Based on the possible means by which alterations in PhA can impact on 24-hour energy expenditure and energy balance, the following hypotheses can be formulated. First, the energy efficiency of PhA might be increased in some individuals. This response would induce to a lower energy expenditure for any given work load and would probably contribute to the realization of a positive energy balance in affected subjects. There are actually no data to support this hypothesis. The energy efficiency of PhA shows a few interindividual variations. It was further shown to be similar in both lean and post-obese women [14]. There is then little reason to suppose that this factor might be involved in body-weight gain. Buemann et al., nevertheless, showed that a common polymorphism of uncoupling protein 2, a protein with close homology to the uncoupling protein of brown adipose tissue ubiquitously expressed in man, was associated with a lower energetic efficiency of muscle contractions [15]. Therefore, brown adipose tissue, where Uncoupling Protein 1 (UCP1) activity uncouples mitochondrial respiration, is an important site of facultative energy expenditure [16]. UCP1 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) could represent “thrifty” factors that promote energy storage in prone subjects [16]. These observations and the relationship between this polymorphism and body weight remain to be further evaluated.Second, PhA may increase the BMR or the thermic effect of food. BMR is higher in trained subjects than in sedentary subjects of the same weight [17], but the difference can be principally ascribed to changes in body composition, with a lower fat mass and a higher fat-free mass, metabolically active body mass in trained athletes. When exercise training is associated with a substantial negative energy balance, BMR may better still decrease [18]. The increase in energy expenditure induced by a β-adrenergic stimulation, derived by mental stress, was also found to be unchanged in obese subjects after a 6-week period of physical training [19]. Third, the total energy expended in PhA, that is, the period of time devoted daily to PhA, may play an important role in determining energy balance. Nevertheless, this component of daily energy expenditure is actually very difficult to assess accurately.Respiratory chambers inherently restrain PhA and therefore are unsuitable for the assessment of PhA. The doubly labelled water method permits evaluation of total energy expenditure under conditions of everyday life over several days and, therefore, is likely to include habitual PhA. The difference between the total energy expenditure and the basal energy expenditure, the suprabasal energy expenditure (SEE), comprises both the thermic effect of food and PhA. This SEE was observed to be low in obese subjects [20]. This finding strongly suggests that the amount of energy expended in PhA is low in obese subjects. Whether a low PhA exists before obesity, or is merely a consequence of it, remains an open question at the present time.


## 3. Physical Activity and Fat Oxidation

PhA leads to an increased substrate oxidation by the working muscle. The nature of the fuel mix oxidized is determined by several factors. The conclusion from the substantial literature on this topic is that during an acute bout of exercise in untrained fed subjects, carbohydrate oxidation replaces the major portion of the extra energy expended. In endurance-trained subjects the oxidative capacity of muscle increases [21, 22]. Consequently, there is an increased ability to oxidize lipids, due to the upregulation of the enzyme AMP-activated protein kinase in skeletal muscle [23]. The outcomes are increased maximal O2 consumption and a higher proportion of fat oxidized during the exercise of low-to-moderate intensity. At high intensity, however, the reliance on carbohydrate increases [21, 22].There is evidence that endurance-trained athletes consume a diet containing a high proportion of carbohydrate. Due to the hierarchy in substrate oxidation mentioned earlier, these dietary habits perhaps impact on substrate oxidation in everyday conditions. It can be expected, therefore, that athletes who conserve a stable body composition while consuming such a diet will have a high 24-hour oxidation of carbohydrates.In healthy lean untrained subjects studied in a respiratory chamber, moderate PhA increased total energy expenditure, essentially by increasing carbohydrate oxidation when the exercise took place after a meal.Nevertheless, the same exercise performed in the fasting state, before breakfast, led to a marked increase in lipid oxidation [24]. In fact, since the subjects were fed the same isoenergetic diet under both conditions, exercising before breakfast versus after breakfast led to a negative lipid balance and to a positive carbohydrate balance. It might, therefore, be hypothesized that exercise in the fasting state may preferably promote lipid utilization and favourably affect body composition by decreasing fat stores. This hypothetical scheme appears unlikely, nevertheless, if the diet consumed is not changed, since the positive carbohydrate balance will probably increase carbohydrate oxidation.Is there an effect of food intake on PhA? It has been recognized for several decades that severe underfeeding leads to behavioural adaptations that result in a decreased spontaneous PhA [25]. More recently, there have been reports suggesting that overfeeding increases energy expenditure more than would be predicted on the basis of body weight and lean body mass changes [26, 27]. Furthermore, this increase in energy expenditure showed marked interindividual variations and was inversely correlated with body-weight gain [27]. In fact, since changes in BMR and in the thermic effect of food were mainly accounted for by alterations in body composition and dietary intakes, this increase in “suprabasal” energy expenditure was attributed to a stimulation of spontaneous PhA.Such PhA was unrelated to exercise and hence was termed “nonexercise activity thermogenesis” (NEAT) [28].NEAT is the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating, or sports-like exercise. It includes the energy expended walking to work, typing, performing yard work, undertaking agricultural tasks, and fidgeting [28]. NEAT can be measured by one of two approaches [28]. The first approach is to measure or estimate total NEAT. Here, total daily energy expenditure is measured and from it, the BMR plus thermic effect of food is subtracted. The second approach is the factorial approach whereby the components of NEAT are quantified and total NEAT calculated by summing these components. The amount of NEAT that humans perform represents the product of the amount and types of physical activities and the thermogenic cost of each activity [28, 29]. The factors that impact a human’s NEAT are readily divisible in biological factors such as weight, gender, body composition, and environmental factors such occupation.The impact of these factors combined explains the substantial variance in human NEAT. The variability in NEAT might be viewed as random and unprogrammed but human data contradict this thesis. It appears that changes in NEAT accompany experimentally induced changes in energy balance and may be important in the physiology of weight change.It then becomes intriguing to dissect mechanistic studies that delineate how NEAT is regulated by neural, peripheral, and humoral factors [29]. NEAT may be a carefully regulated “tank” of physical activity that is crucial for weight control [28].There is no much understanding of the mechanisms that may probably be responsible for the stimulation of NEAT during overfeeding at the present time.Calorimetric studies show that 24-hour energy expenditure increases in healthy subjects after short-term carbohydrate, but not fat, overfeeding [30, 31]. This effect was not correlated to the increase in plasma leptin concentrations observed after carbohydrate overfeeding. Several animal studies show that the stimulation of the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) is associated with an increase in spontaneous PhA [32, 33]. Buono et al. showed that new MC4R mutations in a large number of severely obese adults living in southern Italy [34]. These mutations, not present in normal-weight individuals, are further evidence that defects in the melanocortin pathway are related to severe obesity [34]. How the intake of specific macronutrients impact on this pathway and the mechanisms involved remains to be clarified.


## 4. Physical Activity and Spontaneous Food  Intake

The hypothesis that physical activity exerts beneficial effects on body-weight status by mechanisms not associated to an increase in energy expenditure should be considered. Few studies have addressed the effects of exercise on food intake. Nevertheless, data on energy expenditure and body composition do allow some conclusions to be drawn. If an endurance-trained athlete consistently expends a substantial amount of energy in PhA and at the same time maintains a constant weight and body composition, energy intake must have been increased appropriately, most probably spontaneously. The mechanisms responsible for this increase in energy intake have not been completely studied. As a result of the complex network in the central nervous system that regulates energy expenditure and the known effects of PhA on neuroendocrine regulations, it is very likely that the relationship between energy expended in PhA and food intake are is complex. Nevertheless, endurance-trained athletes are characterized by a low fat mass, which may be the result of previous periods of negative energy and fat balances. They have low plasma leptin levels too, which are mainly ascribable to the low fat mass, since comparable leptin levels are observed in very lean sedentary subjects. Several studies have searched for a direct inhibition of leptin release by acute or chronic exercise. Except for a decrease in plasma leptin levels following particularly intense exercises such as an ultra-marathon [35], these researches have failed to identify a long-lasting reduction in leptin levels after exercise [36–40]. This point may be very important to the effect of exercise on body weight. It may specify that a substantial decrease in fat-free mass induced by exercise is required to decrease leptin secretion before low plasma leptin in turn increases food intake. Intriguingly, this absence of effects of exercise contrasts with the effect of severe energy restriction, which quickly decreases plasma leptin levels before any marked changes in body composition occur [41]. It may specify that exercise is more efficient than severe energy restriction in the promotion of weight loss without excessive rebound hyperphagia.


## 5. Conclusive Remarks

The effects of PhA on energy metabolism and body-weight control remain incompletely understood.There is ample evidence that physical training is associated with low body weight and low fat mass. This relationship unequivocally suggests that negative energy and fat balances are correlated with physical training. The negative energy balance is perhaps to be at once secondary to the quantity of energy expended while exercising, so there is no evidence that exercise influences other components of energy expenditure.The negative fat balance is probably secondary to this negative energy balance. In obese individuals the amount of energy expended in PhA appears to be small, which certainly represents a factor that could prevent weight loss [42]. It appears useful to focus on obese patients also in general practice in order to recognize sedentary life styles and encourage PhA through individualized programs.Some studies [43, 44] show a mild and nonsignificant reduction of BMR in patients treated with an integrated dietetic plus physical exercise program and a significant reduction of BMR in surgically treated patients. It will be necessary to have a larger number of patients to confirm these findings.Our knowledge of the pathological consequences of the lack of adequate exercise on adipose tissue, skeletal muscle, and the liver is improving, and this will help establish more specific guidelines for the proper exercise regimens that will improve underlying metabolic pathways [45].NEAT and physical activity, that is crucial for weight control, may be important in the physiology of weight change.Two issues that remain to be resolved are whether pre-obese individuals have a low PhA level that contributes to weight gain and, if so, what are the biological determinants of this low PhA.



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