Speaker:
Jessica McNeil
Title:
Examining the acute effects of exercise and sleep on energy balance and food reward
Bio:
Jessica is a 4th year PhD candidate in Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa. Her master’s and doctorate studies have been primarily focused on physical activity, sleep, eating behavior and energy balance. Moving forward, she is interested in expanding on this experience by conducting exercise interventions in cancer patients during treatment, and/or cancer survivors by working as a post-doctoral fellow in Dr Friedenreich’s laboratory.
Synopsis:
Jessica’s PhD research aims to investigate the potential effects of sleep, as well as exercise modality on food reward, satiety efficiency and the energy balance. Some of her initial PhD work has shown that exercise, independently of modality, decreases the relative preference for high vs. low fat foods. Furthermore, shorter sleep durations and earlier wake-times, measured under free-living conditions in this same cohort, were associated with an increased “wanting” for food. These results led to the elaboration of new research questions, which are currently being tested in an experimental study. The primary aim of this study is to assess whether an imposed partial sleep restriction combined with changes in sleep timing (i.e. 50% reduction in sleep duration with an habitual bedtime or wake-time) may affect food intake, food reward and physical activity energy expenditure differently. Results, both published and preliminary, will be presented during this presentation.