Modest Effects of a Resistance Training Protocol Against Obesity and Changes in Glucose Metabolism Caused by High Carbohydrate Diet in Male Swiss Mice

Abstract Imbalanced feeding and reduced physical activity cause obesity and metabolic impairments. It was investigated whether an obese phenotype and alterations of glucose metabolism because of a high-carbohydrate diet (HCD) in mice could be prevented by a protocol of high-intensity interval resistance training (HIIRT). Male Swiss mice were distributed in groups: CoS (n=24) control, sedentary and fed with standard rodent chow; ObS (n=20) obese, sedentary, and ObT (n=20) obese, trained, both fed with HCD. The training sessions (group ObT) were made on vertical ladder with 90% of the maximal load of each animal corrected weekly. After eight weeks, in vivo glucose monitoring tests, tissue and blood analyses (n=10 animals per group) and in situ liver perfusion (n=10-14 animals per group) were carried out. HCD significantly increased food ingestion and adiposity; caused liver lipid accumulation, high blood glucose and glucose intolerance; and diminished the liver output of glucose, lactate, pyruvate and nitrogen. Despite the markedly improved training performance of the ObT mice, adiposity or liver fat were not significantly changed, and HIIRT was only mildly successful as a preventive agent against the changes of glucose metabolism (restoring glucose output only with glycerol and lactate, and pyruvate output with alanine) and lipid profile (such as triglycerides, HDL, VLDL and TyG index), suggesting an insufficient energy expenditure of the designed protocol. These observations indicate that excess adiposity does not compromise high-intensity resistance training, but training format, modality, intensity and frequency are important determinants of exercise efficacy against obesity and metabolic impairments.