Physical Activity Review (Mar 2015)
Relationship between diet and body fat percentage in femaleundergraduates
Abstract
At the turn of the millennium obesity has become the most common metabolic disease due tochanges in life conditions and lifestyle. The rise of overweight and obesity is the result of inadequateenergy intake relative to its expense. Only 2 to 5% of all cases of overweight or obesity have objectivemedical causes. In view of energy balance, equally important to the amount of calories consumed is theirdistribution throughout the day. Other cases are clearly the result of improper lifestyle. A basic remedyto this condition appears to be an increase in the volume of regular physical activities and theestablishment of an active healthy lifestyle. The aim of the research under the grant VEGA No.1/1343/12 "Selected risk factors of obesity and its physical prevention" was to determine therelationship between selected factors of diet and the amount of body fat in female undergraduates. Thestudy group consisted of female students at P.J. Šafarik University (n=620, average age=20.8 years).We examined the eating habits applying a non-standardized questionnaire compiled by ourselves. Wefollowed the frequency of meals and their regularity, (breakfast, dinner), the time and quantity of themeals consumed in the evening hours. We determined the percentage of body fat using an Omron BF51scale. We calculated the basic statistical characteristics (arithmetic mean, median). In order to detectstatistically significant differences between particular variables, we applied the non-parametric Kruskal- Valis analysis of variance (H - test) and the Man - Whitney U test. Statistically significant differencesin the percentage of fat was found in students divided into groups according to their responsesregarding the variable "Frequency of meals" (p = 0.023), "Dinner regularity " (p = 0.001) and "Dinnertime before bedtime" (p = 0.001). The research results show the importance of diet regularity and itsoptimal frequency. Especially important is the regularity of dinner, while the last meal should not beconsumed later than 2 hours before bedtime.
