This symposium will explore the benefits of more precisely timed physical activity practices, emphasizing how to optimize daily living by applying evidence gathered in both controlled laboratory settings and real-world (free-living) environments. By highlighting the concept of chronoexercise, we will show if and how aligning exercise with natural circadian rhythms and meal-time can enhance outcomes related to nutrition, adiposity, and cardiometabolic health across the lifespan—from children and youth to adults. Discussions will address quantitative and qualitative aspects, highlighting the interplay between exercise timing, nutritional habits, and overall health. In addition, this symposium will illustrate how chronoexercise research can be integrated into clinical care, inform program development, and shape public health recommendations, thus offering valuable perspectives for practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers seeking to optimize health strategies through better-timed physical activity.
Marie-Eve Mathieu holds the Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity and Juvenile Obesity, is a full professor at the École des sciences de l'activité physique et de la kinésiologie de la Faculté de médecine de l'Université de Montréal and a researcher at the Centre hospitalier universitaire Sainte-Justine. She is renowned for her expertise in lifestyle and fitness assessment. She develops, evaluates, and implements numerous innovative lifestyle interventions in the laboratory and real-life situations. Her laboratory uses innovative methods and approaches, such as electroencephalographic gustatory and olfactory measurements, oculometric assessments, measurement of energy expenditure using indirect calorimetry, actigraphy, the intuitive approach, and the use of active desks, with a population ranging from pregnant women to young adults. Her work focuses, among other things, on chronoexercise, i.e., the timing of physical activity, as a modality of interest for optimizing the management of obesity, cardiometabolic health, and overall health. She is also interested in the impact of physical activity on the senses (taste, smell, and vision) to understand the effect of an active lifestyle and its link with healthy eating.