Effects Of Acute High-Intensity Interval Training On Food Decision-Making In Overweight Obese And Healthy Weight Youth

Objective:Modern societies are replete with palatable food cues.A growing body of evidence suggests that food cue exposure activates conditioned appetitive physiological and psychological responses that may override current metabolic needs and existing eating goals,such as the desire to maintain a healthy diet.This conditioned response results in unhealthy dietary choices and is a contributing factor in the current obesity epidemic..Strengthening the control of eating behaviors is a promising method to treat and prevent obesity.Studies have shown that acute moderate-intensity aerobic exercise can enhance inhibitory control and support cross disciplinary transfer,thus affecting people’s self-control of diet.In the existing studies on the effectiveness of exercise intervention strategies on diet self-control,researchers mainly used self-report and indirect transfer methods.There is increasing evidence that high-intensity interval training(HIIT)can effectively replace the traditional moderate aerobic sustained training(MCT).At present,it is not known whether HIIT can change individuals use of self-control in food decision-making,and the potential mechanism of the change is lack of scientific evidence.Therefore,the objective of this study was to explore the effect of acute high-intensity interval training on food decision-making self-control and its potential mechanism in overweight and obese youth and healthy youth.Methods: In this study,a total of 14 overweight and obese youth and 14 healthy youth were selected for an acute high-intensity interval exercise and rest treatment respectively,and then food decision-making paradigm combined with fNIRS technology was used to synchronously record the signals of 20 channels in the prefrontal cortex of the subjects.To explore the effects of acute high-intensity interval exercise on self-control of food decision-making in individuals of different body weights.The food decision-making paradigm needs to complete two tasks: food health and taste assessment and food decision-making.According to the behavioral results of the two evaluation tasks of food health and taste,the types of food decision-making self-control were distinguished,and the differences and brain mechanisms of food decision-making self-control in overweight,obese and healthy people with acute high-intensity interval training were explored.Results: Behavioral results showed that there was no significant difference between overweight and obese youth and healthy youth before and after acute high-intensity interval exercise in terms of food health and taste.Overweight,obese and healthy weight individuals showed stronger self-control ability after acute high-intensity interval training,which was reflected in the increase of the proportion of healthy to unpalatable food and the decrease of the proportion of tasty to unhealthy food.The success rate of self-control increased,while the failure rate decreased.But they are still low.FNIRS results showed that in the task of food health scoring,the orbitofrontal cortex(OFC)activation was significantly higher than that of healthy food scoring when all subjects rated unhealthy food.In the task of food taste rating,OFC of all subjects for delicious food was significantly higher than that for non-delicious food.In the task of food health and taste rating,the activation of the dorsilateral prefrontal cortex(DLPFC)in acute high-intensity interval exercise was significantly higher than that in the rest processing state.On the food decision-making task: when the food decision-making self-control was successful,the activation of DLPFC and the right frontal pole(FPA)was significantly higher than the failure condition of self-control.Under the condition of rest treatment,DLPFC activation of the healthy youth was significantly higher than that of the overweight and obese youth when the food decision-making self-control was successful.Under the condition of acute high-intensity interval exercise,the activation of DLPFC in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of all subjects’ food decision-making self-control was significantly higher than that under the condition of rest.Conclusion:At the stage of health and taste evaluation,there was no difference in the initial cognition of food health and taste attributes among different weight groups,nor did the cognition of food health and taste attributes change after the intervention of acute high-intensity interval training.OFC plays an important role in the evaluation of unhealthy and delicious food.Acute HIIT induces DLPFC to enhance cognitive function.In the food decision-making stage,DLPFC and FPA play an important role in the self-control of food decision-making.Food decision-making self-control is related to weight.Compared with healthy weight youth,overweight and obese youth have a lower activationlevel of the DLPFC region related to self-control,indicating that overweight and obese youth have a lower ability of implementing dietary self-control.Acute high-intensity interval training improved the eating self-control ability of all participants,and individuals showed stronger self-control ability.Acute high-intensity interval training did not have different effects on dietary self-control in different weight groups.Acute high-intensity interval training can enhance dietary self-control,possibly mediated by optimizing the DLPFC cortex related to cognitive control.This study explores the impact of acute high-intensity interval training on dietary self-control and confirms that high-intensity interval training may provide a new way to prevent and treat weight loss by controlling excessive energy intake and unhealthy diet and reducing the rising obesity rate.