Assessment of energy expenditure in overweight women.

PURPOSE

To compare field measures of average daily energy expenditure (ADEE) against criterion data by the doubly labeled water method (DLW) in overweight women.

METHODS

The subject were 20 overweight (BMI 29.9 +a- 3.0 kg.m-2) premenopausal women. Energy expenditure was measured by DLW and by the factorial method (activity diary, two techniques differing by method to obtain resting energy expenditure, REE), heart-rate monitoring (HR, two techniques differing by the FLEX-point to discriminate sedentary and activity HR), accelerometer, and pedometer.

RESULTS

The ADEE(DLW) was 10.26 +a- 1.1 MJ.d-1. The mean bias (ADEE by the alternative minus ADEE(DLW) was smallest for the accelerometer (+ 0.08 +a- 1.63 MJ) and HR-FLEX10 (+ 0.11 +a- 1.67 MJ). The HR-FLEX(0) technique (lower FLEX-point) overestimated ADEE by + 1.18 (+a- 1.97 MJ). However, the random error (SD of bias) was smaller for both factorial techniques (REE measured: -0.48 +2- 0.81 MJ; REE calculated from the WHO equation: -0.22 +2- 0.88 MJ).

CONCLUSION

The results show that simple factorial methods may assess ADEE with small random errors in population with a rather narrow range of physical activity. The accelerometer and HR with the higher FLEX-point have comparable results with smaller bias but larger random error compared with the factorial techniques.