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Comparison of energy expenditure in normal‐weight and overweight women using the Caltrac Personal Activity Computer®
Author(s) -
Rutterdegs Sandra
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
international journal of eating disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.785
H-Index - 138
eISSN - 1098-108X
pISSN - 0276-3478
DOI - 10.1002/1098-108x(199401)15:1<37::aid-eat2260150105>3.0.co;2-8
Subject(s) - overweight , energy expenditure , normal weight , psychology , physical activity , gerontology , developmental psychology , endocrinology , obesity , medicine , physical therapy
Researchers have been unable to discern the relationship between energy expenditure and obesity because there has been no reliable, unobtrusive method to capture daily activity. The Caltrac Personal Activity Computer® (Caltrac) is a small, portable acceler‐ometer that translates motion into activity counts when worn by human subjects. It has shown high test‐retest reliability during laboratory trials and has demonstrated a strong relationship to several measures of energy expenditure in some laboratory tests. In order to correlate activity with amount of body fat, 39 university women (mean age = 79.75 years, mean weight = 135 Ib, SD = 27.77, range = 100–220 Ib) wore Caltracs for either 3 (n = 39) or 6(n = 26) consecutive days. Pearson product‐moment correlation coefficients showed a moderate negative relationship between Caltrac counts and body mass index (BMI) (r = − .47, p ⩽ .01) for Days 4–6 in the subjects who wore the Caltrac for 6 days, but there was no correlation between Caltrac counts and any measures of body fat for the first 3‐day period. © 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.