Proposal of a Mathematical Model to Monitor Body Mass over Time in Subjects on a Diet

Abstract

Nowadays, slimming diet methodology works within a reduction of body mass using a decrease of dietary energy intake. However, there is no suitable method for understanding the dynamic process of body mass metabolic transformation over time. In the present paper, we have developed a biomathematic model to explain the temporal trend of body mass and its variations of people who have undergone a change in their diet using the solving equation of the model. Data relating to sex, age, body mass, and BMI were collected, and the compartmental model used to interpret the body mass trends was constructed by assuming that the mass results from the sum of the metabolic processes: catabolic, anabolic, distributive. The validation of the model was carried out by variance analysis both on the total and individual data sets. The results confirm that the trend of body mass and its variations over time depends on metabolic rates. These are specific to each individual and characterize the distribution of nutritional molecules in the various body districts and the processes catabolic, anabolic, distributive. Body mass and its variations are justified by the metabolic transformations of the nutritional quantities. This would explain why energetically equal diets can correspond to people of different body mass and that energy-different diets can correspond to people of body mass at all similar.