Exercise-snacks for Breaking the Sedentary Lifestyle and Improving the Physical Fitness of Obese Adolescents? (SNACKEX)

Exercise-snacks: an Effective Solution for Breaking the Sedentary Lifestyle and Improving the Physical Fitness of Obese Adolescents?

The management of a person with obesity involves long-term behavioral changes with a balanced diet in both quantity and quality, along with the adoption of a more active lifestyle: increasing physical activities and reducing sedentary behaviors. The school setting has been identified as a favorable environment for interventions aimed at reducing and interrupting the time adolescents spend sitting and preventing the associated negative health consequences.

Recently, very short (< 1 minute) and intense exercises, called 'exercise-snacks,' have been reported to be effective in adults for 1) improving physical fitness over 6 weeks, and 2) improving vascular function and lowering blood glucose levels over a single day. Additionally, in adolescents with diabetes, they have been shown to reduce body fat. This raises the question of whether adding 'exercise-snack' sessions to a multidimensional care program for hospitalized obese adolescents could further improve their physical fitness in the short and medium term.

The objective of this project is to compare the effects of a traditional multidimensional care program with the addition of 'exercise-snacks' to the same care program without 'exercise-snacks' on the physical fitness, body composition, vascular function, and physical activity and sedentary behaviors of obese children in the short and medium term. Forty-eight obese adolescents will be included. The 'exercise-snack' group will perform six exercise sessions per day for three weeks in addition to the standard care. The control group will receive only the standard care. Assessments of physical fitness, body composition, vascular health, and questionnaires on physical activity, sedentary behavior, and cognitive restraint will be conducted at the beginning and end of the three-week program, as well as 1 and 3 months after the end of the program.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Exercise; Sedentary Time; Obese Adolescents
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: exercise-snack group

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Estimated): 48
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: VINET Agnès VINET Agnès; Phone Number: 33 4 13 95 13 44; Email: agnes.vinet@univ-avignon.fr

Study Locations

• France
  • Palavas-les-Flots, France
    • Not yet recruiting
    • Institut Saint Pierre
  • Palavas-les-Flots, France, 34250
    • Recruiting
    • Instiutut Saint Pierre
    • Contact: Dr Claire-Lise GAY, MD; Phone Number: 33 - 4 67 07 75 00; Email: gay.c@institut-st-pierre.fr

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child; Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Body mass index Z-score corresponding to stage 2 obesity,
• no weight loss of more than 5% of total body weight in the past 3 months,
• parental consent
• minor's acceptance

Exclusion Criteria:

• Contraindication to physical activity
• current participation in a clinical trial

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: exercise-snack group; Exercise program: Adolescents in the exercise-snacks group will perform 4 "exercise-snacks" sessions per day during 3 weeks in addition to multidimensional care program. These sessions will consist of 1-min various intense supervised exercises . They will also receive information about their attitudes to physical activity.	Other: exercise-snack group; Adolescents in the exercise-snacks group will perform 4 "exercise-snacks" sessions per day during 3 weeks in addition to multidimensional care program. These sessions will consist of 1-min various intense supervised exercises . They will also receive information about their attitudes to physical activity.
No Intervention: control group; only the multidimensional care program without 'exercise-snacks'

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Changes in aerobic fitness: predicted VO2max	Measured by the Spartacus 15-15 field test, an intermittent maximal running field test with prediction of VO2max: For girls: VO2max = last stage * 153.4433 + BMI * 58.64534 + âge * -2.701522-921.2878 For boys: VO2max = last stage * 153.4433 + 320.1583 + BMI * 58.64534 + âge * -2.701522-921.2878	at inclusion, at the end of the 3-weeks program and 1 and 3 month following the end of the program

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Changes in fat mass	measured by medical body composition analyzer mBCA SECA, in kg	from inclusion to the end of the 3-weeks program and 1 and 3 month following the end of the program
Changes in body mass index in kg/m²		at inclusion, at the end of the 3-weeks program and 1 and 3 month following the end of the program
change in carotid extra-media thickness	measured by echocardiography (Mylab, Esaote, Italie) and off-line analyses by CAROLAB, in mm	at inclusion, at the end of the 3-weeks program and 1 and 3 month following the end of the program
Changes in carotid intima-thickness	measured by echocardiography (Mylab, Esaote, Italie) and off-line analyses by CAROLAB, in mm	at inclusion, at the end of the 3-weeks program and 1 and 3 month following the end of the program
Change from baseline in carotid compliance (mm²/mmHg)	measured by echocardiography (Mylab, Esaote, Italie) according to the variations of systolic and diastolic arterial diameters and pulse pressure (measured on the left arm by an automated system Omron)	From inclusion to the end of the 3-weeks program and 1 and 3 month following the end of the program
Changes in eating behaviours traits	measured by the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire to assess three factors: the cognitive restraint scale (6 items), the emotional eating scale (6 items), and the uncontrolled eating scale (9 items) with a 4-point response scale. For the TFEQ scores, means are computed for each subscale and are transformed to correspond to a 0-100 scale score Higher scores indicate higher levels of restrained eating, disinhibited eating, and predisposition to hunger.	at inclusion, at the end of the 3-weeks program and 1 and 3 month following the end of the program
change in level of habitual physical activity	measured by accelerometric data using AX3, Axivity over 7-days consecutive period before inclusion and before the 1 and 3-month visit	before inclusion and before the 1 and 3-month visit
Changes in psychometric properties of physical activity and sedentary	measured by a 31 items self-administered questionnaire CAPAS-Q to assess the psychometric properties of the Children and Adolescents Physical Activity (PA) and Sedentar (SB) by-Questionnaire (Fillon et al 2022) Responses are quoted from 1 to 4 for PA and from 1 to 6 for SB. The sum of items 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 17 exploring PA duration, the sum of items 2, 4, 7, 11, 13, and 18 exploring PA intensity, within its different contexts of practice: school PA (i.e., the sum of items 1,2,3,4,5), non-school PA (the sum of items 6 to 14), and sports and leisure PA (the sum of items 15 to 18). The last 13 items designe to assess the SB dimension:, exploring screen ( the sum of items 2, 6, and 7) or non-screen non-screen ( the sum of items 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12 and 13) behaviors, the consecutive SB duration (the sum of items 3, 10 and 11) and the context of SB: school SB (the sum of items 1 to 3), non-school SB (the sum of items 4 to 11), SB during transportation (the sum of 12,13)	from inclusion to the end of the 3-weeks program and 1 and 3 month following the end of the program

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Avignon
• Collaborators: Institut Saint Pierre

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): September 9, 2024
• Primary Completion (Estimated): June 1, 2026
• Study Completion (Estimated): June 1, 2026

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: September 23, 2024
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 1, 2024
• First Posted (Actual): October 3, 2024

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): May 5, 2026
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 29, 2026
• Last Verified: April 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Behavior; Motor Activity; Sedentary Behavior
• Other Study ID Numbers: AU_ISP1_2024

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: No