Investigating the effect of the body mass index (BMI) values on the behavior of human energy expenditure

Employee durability is a critical factor to improve a company performance. Company management must control employee health conditions. The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of office worker’s BMI variation on human energy expenditure behavior including the recovery process. This study started with literature reviews of BMI, human biology, energy expenditure, and physiology ergonomics. The data was collected randomly from 126 nonphysical office workers in productive ages from 20 to 40 years old. The BMI, resting heart rate, activity heart rate, and recovery heart rate of all respondents then recorded. The results shows that the respondents BMI scores are classified into underweight (BMI <18.5) with totaling = 4%, healthy weight (18.5 ≤ BMI ≤ 22.9) = 34.1%, light obesity (23 ≤ BMI ≤ 24.9) = 23%, medium obesity (25 ≤ BMI ≤ 29.9) = 29.4%, and weight obesity (BMI> 30) = 9.5%. The underweight class has the lowest average rest heart rate = 68.6 bpm and the overweight class has the highest average rest heart rate = 84.6 bpm. Consequently, heart rate during activity for each class from underweight to overweight is 88.4 bpm, 90.9 bpm, 93.3 bpm, 95.1 bpm, and 98.6 bpm. With the same order, the heart rate reduction percentage during the recovery phase is 4.6%, 11.0%, 13.1%, 16.0%, and 8.8%. In brief, the BMI variation strongly correlated with Time to Recovery (TTR) of nonphysical office workers.