Food consumption pattern and intention to practice healthy sleep among Malay obese women in Melaka, Malaysia

Obesity management should be extended beyond the conventional manner that solely emphasizes on diet and exercise. Nevertheless, the increasing prevalence of obesity despite the current strategies needs to improvise and consider healthy sleep as one of the strategy as sleep has been an emerging issue in obesity yet it has been absent in Malaysia. The objective of the present study is to examine the current food consumption pattern and the intention to practice healthy sleep among obese Malay women in the state of Melaka. This study adopted the Theory of Planned Behavior to investigate the effect of Healthy Sleep Awareness on the intention to practice healthy sleep in an attempt to lose weight. The one-time program was conducted among 368 obese Malay women aged between 18 and 55 years old in the state of Melaka, in which they were asked to complete a survey form. This step appeared to be integral in measuring the current food pattern and healthy sleep as well as to measure whether the knowledge gained from the program is capable of influencing their intentions to practice healthy sleep in achieving weight loss. The analysis was conducted using the Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) for both the measurement and structural models. Overall results on the current food consumption pattern and healthy sleep showed that majority of the respondents has similarity in consuming confectionary food with the highest percentage on snacking (84%) while at the same time practicing late time in bed (99%) most of the nights. There was no significant relationship between Attitude and Subjective Norms on the intention to practice healthy sleep, unlike Perceived Behavior Control that was found to be moderately significant. Nevertheless, Healthy Sleep Awareness was found to pose significant direct influence on all the predictors in the study and capable of moderating the relationship between the predictors in regards to the intention to practice healthy sleep. Age was found to positively influenced Attitude and Perceived Behavior Control on the intention to practice healthy sleep except for Subjective Norms. Nevertheless, the results of the study managed to present the important implications regarding the possible planning and implementation of Healthy Sleep Awareness in a structured manner alongside the lifestyle practices in managing obesity apart from only focusing on diet and exercising. Therefore, it is suggested for future research to conduct a study that measures explicitly behavioral changes concerning practice healthy sleep that is considered as a new weight loss factor as well as exploring the impacts of healthy sleep in managing obesity.

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