The Goldilocks Day for healthy adiposity measures among children and adolescents

BACKGROUND: The optimal balance of time spent on daily movement behaviors (“The Goldilocks Day”) associated with childhood obesity remains unknown. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the optimal durations of sleep, sedentary behavior (SB), light physical activity (LPA), and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MPVA) associated with excess adiposity in a paediatric population. METHODS: Accelerometer-measured 24-h movement behaviors were obtained from 659 Czech children and adolescents (8-18-year-olds). Adiposity indicators were body mass index z-score, fat mass percentage, fat-free mass index, and visceral adipose tissue. Excess adiposity was defined as exceeding the 85th percentile for an adiposity indicator. Compositional regression analyses were used investigate the associations between movement behaviors and adiposity indicators and estimating “The Goldilocks Day.” RESULTS: The movement behavior composition was associated with visceral adipose tissue (F(df1 = 3,df2 = 317) = 3.672, p = 0.013) and fat mass percentage (F(df1 = 3,df2 = 289) = 2.733, p = 0.044) among children and adolescents. The Goldilocks Day consisted of 8.5 h of sleep, 10.8 h of SB, 3.9 h of LPA, and 0.8 h of MVPA among children and 7.5 h of sleep, 12.4 h of SB, 3.6 h of LPA, and 0.5 h of MVPA among adolescents. CONCLUSION: Optimizing the time spent sleeping, and in sedentary and physical activities appears to be important in the prevention of excess adiposity.