Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1186/s12889-026-28339-4

Publication Title

BMC Public Health

Volume

Advance online publication

Pages

28 pp.

Abstract

Background

To examine physical activity (PA) among US military servicemembers (SM) with overweight and obesity (OW/OB) and if they meet Physical Activity Guidelines (PAG). To assess differences in PA by sex and associations between PA and body composition.

Methods

PA duration and intensity were objectively collected via accelerometers and self-reported daily average via self-report International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) among US active-duty SM (n=113, 58% female, Mean BMI = 33.3 ± 3.9 kg/m2). Sex, body mass index (BMI), and body fat % (BF% via circumference and an equation) were measured. Accelerometer PA and sedentary time were computed for IPAQ categories who met PAG. PA sex differences were assessed with t-tests and chi-square. Pearson correlations examined associations between PA, BMI, and BF%.

Results

Accelerometry showed SM engaged in a daily average of 93 minutes of moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA), 145.2 minutes of light, and 307 minutes of sedentary activity. The IPAQ showed SM engaged in 91 minutes of MVPA, 121.1 minutes of walking, and 423 minutes sitting. Males engaged in more accelerometer-derived MVPA (p = 0.04) than females. Accelerometry showed 100% of SM met the PAG while the IPAQ showed 90% met the PAG. The IPAQ and accelerometer MVPA metrics were correlated (r = 0.26; p < 0.01). Sedentary time was correlated with BMI (r = 0.25; p < 0.01). Sitting was correlated with BF % (r = -0.26; p = 0.02).

Conclusions

Overall, SM with OW/OB meet PAG. PA levels among SM are related to sex, BMI, and BF%.

Rights

© The Authors 2026.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Data Availability

Article states: "The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to the sensitivity of the personal data, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request."

Original Publication Citation

Yarish, N. M., Morse, J. L., Wooldridge, J. S., Dooley, E. E., & Afari, N. (2026). Physical activity among active-duty US military servicemembers with overweight and obesity. BMC Public Health. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-28339-4

ORCID

0000-0003-3524-0285 (Yarish)

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