The Association of the Body Composition of Children with 24-Hour Activity Composition.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate how the reallocation of time between sleep, sedentary time, light, and moderate-vigorous activities is associated with children's body composition.

STUDY DESIGN: Population-based cross-sectional Child Health CheckPoint within the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 938 11-12 year-olds, 50% boys). Twenty-four hour activity composition via accelerometry (minutes/day of sleep, sedentary time, light, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity [MVPA]) and 3-part body composition (percentage truncal fat, percentage nontruncal fat, and percentage fat-free mass) via bioelectrical impedance analysis were measured. We estimated differences in 3-part body composition associated with the incremental reallocation of time between activities, using dual-compositional regression models adjusted for sex, age, puberty, and socioeconomic position.

RESULTS: Reallocation of time between MVPA and any other activity was strongly associated with differences in body composition. Adverse body composition differences were larger for a given MVPA decrease than were the beneficial differences for an equivalent MVPA increase. For example, 15 minutes less MVPA (relative to remaining activities) was associated with absolute percentage differences of +1.7% (95% CI 1.2; 2.4) for truncal fat, +0.8% (0.6; 1.2) for nontruncal fat, and -2.6% (-3.5; -1.9) for fat-free mass, and a 15-minute increase was associated with -0.7% (-0.9; -0.5) truncal fat, -0.4% (-0.5; -0.3) nontruncal fat, and +1.1% (0.9; 1.5) fat-free mass. Reallocations between sleep, sedentary time, and light physical activity were not associated with differences in body composition.

CONCLUSIONS: Preventing declines in MVPA during inactive periods (eg, holidays) may be an important intervention goal. More MVPA, instead of other activities, may benefit body composition.