Influence of diet and exercise on skeletal muscle and visceral adipose tissue in men

Ross, Robert, John Rissanen, Heather Pedwell, JenniferClifford, and Peter Shragge. Influence of diet and exercise onskeletal muscle and visceral adipose tissue in men. J. Appl. Physiol. 81(6): 2445-2455, 1996.Theeffects of diet only (DO) and diet combined with either aerobic (DA) orresistance (DR) exercise on subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT), visceraladipose tissue (VAT), lean tissue (LT), and skeletal muscle (SM) tissue were evaluated in 33 obese men (DO, n = 11; DA, n = 11; DR,n = 11). All tissues were measured byusing a whole body multislice magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) model.Within each group, significant reductions were observed for bodyweight, SAT, and VAT (P < 0.05). Thereductions in body weight (~10%) and SAT (~25%) and VAT volume (~35%) were not different between groups(P > 0.05). For alltreatments, the relative reduction in VAT was greater than in SAT(P < 0.05). For the DA and DR groupsonly, the reduction in abdominal SAT (~27%) was greater(P < 0.05) than thatobserved for the gluteal-femoral region (~20%). Conversely, thereduction in VAT was uniform throughout the abdomen regardless oftreatment (P > 0.05). MRI-LT andMRI-SM decreased both in the upper and lower body regions for the DO group alone (P < 0.05). PeakO₂ uptake (liters) wassignificantly improved (~14%) in the DA group as was muscularstrength (~20%) in the DR group (P < 0.01). These findings indicate that DA and DR result in a greaterpreservation of MRI-SM, mobilization of SAT from the abdominal region,by comparison with the gluteal-femoral region, and improved functionalcapacity when compared with DO in obese men.