Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Research Article

The Association between Change in Physical Activity and Weight during Adolescence

¹Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA

²Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

³Department of Health and Physical Activity, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Jill L Kaar
Department of Pediatrics – Section of Nutrition
University of Colorado School of Medicine
12631 E. 17th Avenue, Campus Box F561 Aurora, CO 80045, USA
Tel: 303-724-5745
E-mail: jill.kaar@ucdenver.edu

Received Date: July 15, 2015 Accepted Date: August 25, 2015 Published Date: September 1, 2015

Citation: Kaar JL, Sluijs EV, Sharp SJ, Nagle EF, Robertson RJ, et al. (2015) The Association between Change in Physical Activity and Weight during Adolescence. J Child Adolesc Behav 3:233. doi:10.4172/2375-4494.1000233

Copyright: © 2015 Kaar JL, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Objective: To investigate the association between annual change in physical activity and subsequent annual change in weight status in adolescents over a 4 year period. Design: Longitudinalstudy design with annualdata collection over 4 years. Setting: Suburban school district in Pittsburgh, PA. Participants: 1245 adolescents aged 11-16 years. Main outcome measures: Physical activity and body mass index (BMI) percentile. Analysis: Generalized estimating equation (GEE). Results: 994 participants (53% male) were included in the analyses. The longitudinal associations between changes in physical activity and BMI% were mostly small and non-significant. However, compared with those who did not change their physical activity, a large annual increase in physical activity (>10 hr/wk) was associated with a significant increase in BMI%. Results were broadly similar for total and vigorous physical activity, boys and girls and for healthy and unhealthy (>85th percentile) BMI%. Conclusions and Implications: The role of physical activity in the development of obesity during adolescence therefore remains unclear. Further work is needed to elucidate the role of physical activity in the preventionof obesity.

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