Simulation analysis on the consequences of behavioural change towards combating obesity: System dynamics approach

Obesity is a medical condition where an individual has an excessive amount of body fat. rapid development in industrialization and urbanization has brought changes to malaysia’s socioeconomic,especially on the diet and lifestyles of malaysians. with this transformation,one of the impacts can be seen on weight. thus,the aim of this paper is to simulate the effect of behavioral changes of eating and sedentary behavior on the population reversion trends of average weight. the model combines different strands of sub-models comprises of information from nutrition,physical activity and body metabolism and gathers into a weight behavior model system. comparing the effect between improved diet or reduced sedentary behavior,this study reported that changing to healthy food consumption is a better prevention since it has been tested in the model. as a summary,this study highlighted the importance of focusing on both healthy diet and lifestyle as the best behavioral change strategy in developing guidelines to prevent obesity. � 2016 penerbit utm press. all rights reserved.