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 subjects were 20 overweight (BMI 29.2 +/- 3.0 kg . m(-2)) premenopausal women. Energy expenditure was measured by DLW rind 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 +/- 1.1 MJ . d(-1). The mean bias (ADEE by the alternative minus ADEE(DLW)) was smallest for the accelerometer (+0.08 +/- 1.63 MJ) and HR-FLEX10 (+0.11 +/- 1.67 MJ). The HR-FLEX0 technique (lower FLEX-point) overestimated ADEE by + 1.18 (+/- 1.97 MJ). However, the random error (SD of bias) was smallest for both factorial techniques (REE measured: -0.48 +/- 0.81 MJ; REE calculated from the WHO equation: -0.22 +/- 0.88 MJ). Conclusions: The results show that simple factorial methods may assess ADEE with small random errors in populations with a rather narrow range of physical activity. The accelerometer and HR with the higher FLEX-point gave comparable results with smaller bias but larger random error compared with the factorial techniques.