001), while differences in television viewing time between healthy and unhealthy obese groups were

not statistically significant (p = 0.252). The role of physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness in contributing to metabolically healthy obesity has been explored (Ortega et al., 2013 and Wildman et al., 2008), but whether sedentary behaviour helps explain differences in metabolic health within the obese population has not been previously investigated. GW786034 molecular weight Our results suggest that levels of sedentary behaviour, as indicated by self-reported television viewing, vary across metabolic and obesity phenotypes; however healthy obese adults did not demonstrate significantly different television viewing time than their unhealthy counterparts after adjusting for socioeconomic, health, and behavioural covariates including physical activity. Significant differences in television viewing time between metabolically healthy and unhealthy non-obese groups were observed. Television viewing was utilised here as the only marker of sedentary

behaviour as past research has found associations between sitting and metabolic risk to be most pronounced in this context. Indeed, one study observed associations when sitting while viewing television but not while working (Pereira et al., 2012), while another observed associations during television viewing but not during Protein Tyrosine Kinase inhibitor other sedentary leisure activities (Stamatakis et al., 2011). The proportion of obese individuals who are metabolically healthy tends to decrease with increasing age (Wildman et al., 2008), and thus associations observed in present analyses may be underestimated for the obese population as a whole. Indeed, less than one quarter (20.9%) of our sample of obese older adults was considered metabolically healthy, while this proportion is nearly one-third considering all adults collectively when using similar criteria (Wildman et al., 2008). Results may also be complicated in

older populations since lower body mass index in older people often relates to prevalent chronic disease (Mazza et al., 2006). Older adults who have retired may also spend a larger proportion of their day viewing television than younger adults. to Future studies should examine associations in other age groups and across different domains of leisure and occupational sitting. While this study accounted for a range of covariates relevant to older adults including chronic illness and functional limitations, snacking behaviour was not considered, although it is known to occur while viewing television (Gore et al., 2003). Previous work has shown associations between television viewing and metabolic abnormalities to persist after controlling for frequency of unhealthy food consumption (Stamatakis et al., 2011), but this behaviour may indeed confound associations if under-reported.