Prior Exercise Training Protects Against Short-Term High Fat Feeding Induced Weight Gain and Glucose Intolerance

It has recently been shown that high fat diet induced metabolic changes such as impaired glucose tolerance and adipose tissue inflammation occur in as few as three days. We sought to determine whether these changes could be mitigated with prior exercise training. Male C57BL/6J mice (8 weeks old) were fed control diet (10% kcal from lard) and either treadmill trained or kept sedentary for four weeks. Twenty-four hours after the final bout of exercise, mice were provided with high fat diet (60% kcal from lard), ad libitum, for four days, with no further exercise. Prior training resulted in 68% less weight gain on the high fat diet and 20% (epididymal) and 33% (subcutaneous) smaller fat pad mass. This occurred despite similar food intake. Compared to control fed mice, high fat feeding resulted in increased total AUC following an intraperitoneal glucose tolerance test, which was significantly blunted with prior training. The improvement in high fat feeding induced impaired glucose tolerance following training...