Theses (MSc. Public Health)

Introduction: Overweight and obesity are pandemic public health concern, where more than a billion people worldwide are estimated to be overweight or obese. Reports have shown that Malaysia is now the fattest nation in the Southeast Asia region, where almost half of its population are either overweight or obese. Many public health interventions have been introduced to modify behaviour associated with weight management, but with low success rate. This has been attributed to failures in identifying the perception about health and obesity from the overweight and obese individuals themselves. Objective: To determine the factors associated with attempts to lose weight among overweight and obese adults. Methodology: This was a cross sectional study conducted in a public health clinic at Klang District from 12 December 2018 to 28 January 2019. A self-administered questionnaire, incorporating Health Belief Model constructs, was used to collect data from 300 randomly selected overweight and obese respondents, aged 18 to 59 years. Data was analysed to generate descriptive statistics and binary logistic regressions were used to determine the factors associated with attempts to lose weight. Results: It was found that 33.7% of the respondents were overweight with BMI between 24.0kg/m2-29.9kg/m2, and 66.3% were obese with BMI 30kg/m2 or more. About one third of them claimed to have attempted to lose their body weight in the last 12 months. The multivariate binary logistic regressions found that females are 2.4 times more likely to attempt to lose weight compared to males (OR=2.4, 95% CI=1.4-4.1), those with absence of associated medical conditions are 3.8 times more likely to attempt to lose weight compared to those with associated medical conditions (OR=3.8, 95% CI=2.1-6.7), those who currently satisfied with weight status are 6.2 times more likely to attempt to lose weight compared to those not satisfied with their weight status (OR=6.2, 95% CI=2.7-14.2), and those who have a higher mean score in the perception of benefits gained from healthy eating and exercise habits are 2.2 times more likely to attempt to lose weight (OR=2.2, 95% CI=1.4-3.3). Conclusion and recommendation: This study identified gender, associated medical condition, weight satisfaction, and perceived benefits as the predictors to attempts to lose weight. The predictors should be optimally used in the design of interventional activities to support overweight and obese adults to manage their weight. Keywords: Adults, Overweight, Obese, Health Belief Model, predictors, attempts to lose weight.