Prior Exercise Training Protects Against Short‐Term High Fat Feeding Induced Weight Gain and Glucose Intolerance

It has recently been shown that high fat diet induced metabolic changes such as impaired glucose tolerance and adipose tissue inflammation occur in as few as three days. We sought to determine whether these changes could be mitigated with prior exercise training. Male C57BL/6J mice (8 weeks old) were fed control diet (10% kcal from lard) and either treadmill trained or kept sedentary for four weeks. Twenty‐four hours after the final bout of exercise, mice were provided with high fat diet (60% kcal from lard), ad libitum , for four days, with no further exercise. Prior training resulted in 68% less weight gain on the high fat diet and 20% (epididymal) and 33% (subcutaneous) smaller fat pad mass. This occurred despite similar food intake. Compared to control fed mice, high fat feeding resulted in increased total AUC following an intraperitoneal glucose tolerance test, which was significantly blunted with prior training. The improvement in high fat feeding induced impaired glucose tolerance following training was mirrored by greater insulin‐induced increases in Akt phosphorylation in skeletal muscle and liver, but not adipose tissue. The blunted impairment in glucose homeostasis was not explained by differences in indices of adipose tissue inflammation and was lost after 6 days of high fat feeding. Further, when compared to sedentary high fat fed mice that were calorie restricted (‐30%) to match the weight gain of the trained high fat fed mice, the same attenuated impairments in glucose tolerance were observed. Taken together, our data suggest that prior exercise protects against high fat diet induced weight gain and glucose intolerance.