Preventing Weight Gain through tackling sedentary behaviour: A system dynamics optimization approach

Abstract

Obesity is becoming a serious problem in Malaysia as it has been rated as the highest among Asian countries. Many factors have contributed to obesity and sedentary behavior is one of the cause. The objective of the research is to analyze the impact of sedentary behavior to prevent weight gain among adult population in Malaysia. The system dynamics (SD) approach of stockflow diagram was used to quantitatively model the impact of eating and activity behavior on the complex of human weight regulation system. The modeling stage involved with the experimentation process where the developed model was used to investigate the impacts of changes in duration and frequency of sedentary behaviour on weight and prevalence of obesity implications. In this paper, the baserun results is presented where it shows that with increase in energy intake along with increase in sedentary behavior, the results is on weight gain. This is because the excessive of positive balance energy which accumulate in daily process will results to the increase in a weight trend for a long period if the excess energy is not burning.This paper provides evidence on the usefulness of SD optimization to assist in decision making related to achievement in population weight target. SD applied in this research is relatively new in Malaysia and has a high potential to apply to any feedback models that address the behavior cause to obesity.