The Effect of Changing Personal Health Behavior on the Weight Loss Activities in the Workplace

• Main Authors: LIU,HSIEN-TING, 劉仙婷
• Other Authors: LEE, SU-HSING
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/38sj44

碩士 === 長榮大學 === 職業安全與衛生學系碩士在職專班 === 106 === Nowadays, the average life expectancy of the nationals has increased, the number of employed nationals has increased, as well as the number of years of labor has prolonged. As a result, people spend more and more time in the workplace within which chronic diseases will become the biggest factor affecting their health status. Therefore, the promotion of health is an urgent task. The health promotion in workplace is easier to introduce health beliefs to workers in a gradual and long lasting manner, allowing workers to detect their own problems and then to change their personal health behaviors, so that the good health condition can be expected. This study, based on a health promotion program in a nationwide company, aimed at assessments of the effectiveness of changes in the individual health behaviors by regularly collecting competition results through various interventions for health promotion. A 16-week health promotion activity was conducted and provided health, nutrition and exercise interventions to the volunteer company employees. The items and content of the implementation included: questionnaires, muscle strength training, health education, healthy diet education, healthy sports education, competition activities, knowledge contest activities, exercise instruction and plans, seminars of disease and health, and stage awards, etc. Workstations from various branch locations were established for intervention where nurses from each branch provided direct assistants for the participant groups (up to 25 persons in a group). In all, 270 employees participated in this health promotion program. The total weight before and after the health promotion program was 20,181 kilograms and 19,533 kilograms, respectively, which showed a total of 628 kilograms reduction and an average of 2.33 kilograms reduction per person. The reduction reached the goal of this health promotion plan, a target of 2 kg per person. Eighty one percent of the participants lost weight after the intervention, including 43% lost more than 2 kilograms, 1.5% lost more than 10 kilograms (about 15.6 kilograms the most), and 36.7% lost 0.1 to 2 kilograms. Comparing the data before and after the intervention, it was found that participants were different in: knowledge and information about BMI (6.6% and 58.6%, respectively; p<0.001); understanding the importance of weight loss and health (23% and 75.7%, respectively; p<0.001); taking weight measurement once a week (34.9% and 79%, respectively; p<0.001); eating two meals per day increasing from 5.9% to 18.4%, while eating irregularities and arbitrarily decreasing from 21.7% to 12.5% (p=0.003); satiated proportion decreasing from 21.7% to 2.6%, and leaving off with an appetite increasing from 0.7% to 49.3% (p<0.001); preference of meat cooked with deep fried, fried or stir fried reducing from 39.5% to 13.2% (p<0.001); while preference of high fiber and low fat foods increasing from 3.3% to 36.2% (p<0.001); frequency of drinking sugary drinks more than 4 cups per week decreasing from 28.3% to 15.2% (p<0.001); preference of low-sugar or sugar free beverage increasing from 42.7% to 61.9% (p<0.001). This study found that there were significant changes in exercise habits, weight perception, dietary habits, and food preferences following the interventions, which indicated that the study interventions were effective and acceptable to the employees.