Combined effects of intermittent fasting with swimming-based high intensity intermittent exercise training in Wistar rats

High caloric intake and physical inactivity are known precursors to the development of several chronic metabolic diseases. For obesity and sedentarism, High Intensity Intermittent Exercise (HIIE) and Intermittent Fasting (IF) have emerged as individual strategies to attenuate their negative effects by improving metabolism. To study their combined effects, Wistar male rats (n = 74, 60 days old) were divided into four groups: Sedentary Control (C), swimming-based HIIE only (HIIE), Intermittent Fasting only (IF), and swimming-based HIIE associated with Intermittent Fasting (HIIE/IF). Over an eight-week period swimming performance, body composition, weight and feeding behavior were analyzed. The final morphology of white adipose tissue showed a significant reduction in adipocyte size consistent with a higher number of cells per area in exercised animals (vs C and IF, p < 0.05), which also displayed characteristics of browning through UCP-1 levels and CD31 staining. These results suggest that the increased performance in the HIIE/IF group is, in part, by modifications of WAT metabolism through the browning process.