| Summary: | The body weight and fat content of young, growing rats were kept low by regularly performed endurance exercise by the rats or by restriction of their food intake over a period of 14 wk. The cellular character of epididymal fat pads was studied to determine if the reduction in fat was due to a decrease in the number of adipose cells, their size, or both. Compared with the sedentary freely eating control animals, both the exercisers and the sedentary paired-weight animals, which had their food intake restricted in order to maintain their body weights approximately the same as those of the exercisers, had significantly lighter epididymal fat pads (P < 0.001). This fat depot in the exercisers contained fewer (4.46 ± 0.48 × 106 vs. 6.89 ± 0.55 × 106 cells/pad; P < 0.001) and smaller (0.286 ± 0.041 vs. 0.462 ± 0.040 μg of lipid/cell; P < 0.001) cells than that in the sedentary freely eating animals. Food restriction also resulted in a significant reduction in adipose tissue cellularity (P < 0.05). Epididymal fat pads from the calorie-restricted rats had an average of 5.72 ± 0.33 #x000D7; 106 cells and they contained 0.319 ± 0.024 μg of lipid/cell. These results demonstrate that exercise in addition to food restriction in early life is effective in reducing the rate of accumulation of cells in epididymal fat pads of rats.
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