Dietary Preparation Before Rest and Exercise Testing

Abstract To compare the effectiveness of four dietary preparations for stabilizing resting and exercise measurements, seven male recreational exercisers (27 ± 4 y) participated in four dietary preparations, each repeated in successive weeks: (1) 24-h random diet including an overnight fast (RAN); (2) 24-h random diet, including fast, followed by a standard meal 3 h before testing (RANM); (3) 24-h prescribed diet including an overnight fast (PRES); and (4) 24-h prescribed diet, including fast, followed by a standard meal (PRESM). After each preparation, metabolic rate (VO 2 ) and respiratory exchange ratio (RER) were measured at rest and in association with moderate treadmill exercise. Plasma was analyzed for glucose, cholesterol, and high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol. Repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) followed by Tukey posthoc tests indicated that resting VO 2 , RER, and blood parameters were not different between the two trials on the same diet. Exercise RER, however, was slightly different in trial 1 than in trial 2 for all preparations except PRESM. Combining both trials, resting VO 2 and exercise RER were higher when a pretesting meal was administered. Plasma values were not different for the four dietary preparations. These results suggest that a standard overnight fast appears to be adequate for establishing representative and reproducible rest and exercise values for the parameters measured, except possibly for exercise RER reliability.