Research

Energy balance

Whole-room indirect calorimetry provides highly reliable measurements of daily energy expenditure components (sleep, 24-hour, basal, and resting EE) with intraclass correlation coefficients exceeding 90%, and this reliability is maintained even after significant weight loss.

If you are designing a study on weight loss or metabolic adaptation, whole-room indirect calorimetry is a highly reliable tool for measuring energy expenditure. To maximize efficiency and reduce the number of participants needed, use at least two days of measurement in the calorimeter rather than one, as this significantly improves the precision of detecting changes in energy expenditure.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
The reliability of the daily components of EE is very high both prior to and after a weight- loss intervention.
Timothy D. Allerton et al. · Obesity · 2021

Why this rating

High-quality clinical trial data with rigorous statistical analysis (ICC, Bland-Altman) on a controlled population, though generalizability to older/obese populations is limited.

Source

Reliability of measurements of energy expenditure and substrate oxidation using whole‐room indirect calorimetry

Timothy D. Allerton et al. · Obesity · 2021

DOI 10.1002/oby.23226

crossover · n=35Cited 15×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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