The associations of “weekend warrior” and regularly active physical activity with abdominal and general adiposity in US adults

Abstract Objective This study examined the association between physical activity patterns and abdominal and general adiposity. Methods Data were extracted among 20‐ to 59‐year‐old participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2011 to 2018. Abdominal and general adiposity was assessed by dual‐energy x‐ray absorptiometry (DXA) and anthropometric measures. DXA‐measured indicators were further normalized into z scores. Physical activity levels were collected by questionnaire and classified as inactive, “weekend warrior” (WW), and regularly active (RA). Survey linear regression models were used to assess associations between physical activity patterns and adiposity indicators. Results Among 9629 participants, 772 (8.2%) reported the WW pattern and 3277 (36.9%) reported the RA pattern. Compared with inactive, both WW and RA had lower DXA‐measured abdominal adiposity (WW: β: −0.24, 95% CI: −0.38 to −0.10; RA: −0.18, 95% CI: −0.29 to −0.07), waist circumference (WW: β: −1.94, 95% CI: −3.16 to −0.73; RA: −1.31, 95% CI: −2.32 to −0.29), whole‐body fat mass (WW: β: −0.16, 95% CI: −0.25 to −0.08; RA: −0.11, 95% CI: −0.18 to −0.04), and BMI (WW: β: −0.78, 95% CI: −1.27 to −0.28; RA: −0.47, 95% CI: −0.89 to −0.04). Conclusions The WW pattern was associated with similarly lower abdominal and general adiposity to the RA pattern versus the inactive pattern.