Examination of the Estimated Resting Metabolic Equivalent (MET) in Overweight and Obesity.
The metabolic equivalent task (MET) is a measure of resting oxygen consumption that has the
benefit of providing a common descriptor of workload or metabolic intensity. The MET is considered to be a universal measure of expressing energy expenditure as a multiple of the resting
or reference level in relation to body weight. Based on work conducted in 1941 that involved
heat exchange in a neutral environment under resting conditions, Gagge at el3 are credited with
coining the MET terminology, which most closely mirrors the current use of the MET with
regard to energy expenditure.
The resting MET is commonly defined as 3.5 ml/kg/min or 0.250 L/min of oxygen consumption. Multiples of a resting MET are commonly used to estimate the energy expenditure and work performed during various activity tasks. Therefore, it is important that the estimate of the resting MET be accurate to minimize the likelihood of under- or over-estimation of energy expenditure. Moreover, this study examined whether this varied by gender (male or female) or by grade of overweight or obesity.
Currently, VO2rest is used to represent the resting MET, and multiples of this resting value are universally used to express energy expenditure of various forms of physical activity. The origins of the MET to express energy expenditure during different forms of physical activity relative to resting energy expenditure appears to date back to approximately 1890, which was followed by similar observations made decades later. Thus, the findings of the current study, which are similar to the
finding of others, may suggest that the energy cost of a variety of physical activities may be over-estimated when using common reference-MET values.
Obes Res Open J. 2016; 3(1): 6-9. doi: 10.17140/OROJ-3-121
