Estimating total versus resting energy expenditure: methodological considerations.

We thank Drs Avesani and Carrero for sharing their experience on the use of Sense Wear Armband (SWA). Themain reasonwhywe performed our study was that wewere surprised that an instrument designed to estimate activity energy expenditure (AEE) was reportedly able to predict resting energy expenditure (REE). However, we expected some association between indirect calorimetry (IC) and SWA because the predictors employed by this latter include anthropometric measurements. We tested whether this association was enough strong to be useful in clinical practice, i.e. at the individual level, and the answer was clearly not. As pointed out by Drs Avesani and Carrero, AEE is a better outcome measure for SWA because most of the predictors employed by this latter are meant to reflect physical activity. In the only high-quality study performed so far, St-Onge et al.1 calculated AEE as the difference between total energy expenditure (TEE) measured by doubly labeled water, resting energy expendituremeasured by IC, and the thermic effect of food (TEF), estimated as 10% of TEE: