Health Behavior Theory Stages Of Change Model

For the health behavior change interview assignment, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jackie B. After spending a summer abroad, Jackie’s primary desire is to get into the habit of going to the gym at least three times per week. Jackie lives a pretty active lifestyle, however, between going to school and working, life can become a bit overwhelming. Working out is the mechanism that helps Jackie manage her stress.

This theory applies to my specific health change because it helps me identify how prepared I am to change. It relates to perfectly to the situation because it helps determine what actions need to be implemented to change. In the beginning of this change I was in the contemplation stage. This stage is someone who is serious about making a change within the next 6 months (Edelman, Kudzma, & Mandle, 2013). By reviewing all the pros and cons of implementing this behavior change, it led me for the preparation stage.

The Transtheoretical Model of Change has become popular over the past few decades in explaining health behaviors like substance and alcohol abuse, dieting, and smoking cessation. It has four parts to it, the first being the stages of change. The Stages of Change Model gives explanations for different points on the path to intentional behavioral change (Vilela, Jungerman, Laranjeira, & Callaghan, 2009). Intentional behavioral changes are changes in the habitual patterns of behavior that are related to issues such as substance or alcohol abuse. There are six steps in the Stages of Change Model: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and

Explain two models of behaviour change that have been used in recent national health education campaigns.

This behavior change project has become a huge part of my everyday life. I lost sight of how important staying in shape affects my overall mental state along with my physical well-being. Having a life that consists of so many activities such as going to school, working, and maintaining a full and happy relationship with the people I care about is hard to balance with just making time for myself. That is why keeping this three day a week workout regime over the past five weeks has been so important; it made me realize that I can make time to focus on just working on myself, and in turn, improve all other aspects of my life. Realizing of course that there are many people in this world that have real life health problems that they seek professional help for. These changes in their lives require a system or a theory that must be applied to develop a strategic an organized way to regulate or change their behavior.

In approving healthy behaviors or removing unhealthy ones, people progress through five levels linked to their readiness to changes. These five stages are in the Transtheoretical Model of Change are pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. At each stage, different intervention strategies will help people progress to the next stage. The Transtheoretical Model of Change draws from a number of different theories. It was first used in psychotherapy by Prochaska in 1979.

The Transtheoretical Model is a theory of health behavior that suggests that behavior change is a process, not an event. There are five stages of change someone can go through while attempting to engage in positive behavior: precontemplation, no intention to act within six months; contemplation, intention to act within six months; preparation, intention to act within the next thirty days along with some behavioral steps; action, changed behavior for less than six months, maintenance, changed behavior for more than six months; termination, end of the behavior. These stages are not linear, so an individual can move up and down the stages of change indiscriminately.

The Trans theoretical Model (TTM), or Stages of Change Model, formulated by Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente, is a bio-psychosocial model used to conceptualize the process of behavioral change in an individual. It evolved from studies comparing the experiences and outcomes of individuals who quit smoking due to individual decisions and actions, to those who required further treatment and program attendance to quit smoking (Lamorte, W., 2016). This highly credible, and useful model seeks to incorporate key constructs from various theories into an understandable theory of change, which is applied in Public Health to multiple populations, behaviors, and situations where individuals seek to better their physical, emotional, and or even social health.

Secondly, the behavior change theory I followed was the TTM (Transtheoretical Model). This model has the following stages: Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, Maintenance and Termination.

. I struggled with the urge to abstain naturally, but as the week went on the length of the cravings became lesser. By week two although I still remained abstinent but it is apparent that I am getting frustrated and losing hope. By week three I have broken abstention by consuming four out of the seven days. Week four I have now become fed up with having to quit energy drinks but I only consumed one out of the seven days. As learned in class, this is how the stages of change model works; it is a cycle that keeps going around until one day there is epiphany. Just like in the stages of change, once there is an action, then comes maintaining abstinence, and if there is a relapse then the person starts over again. This is exactly what I did.

The behavior I have chosen to do my modification program on is increasing the amount of time I work out every time I go to the gym until I reach my target goal. My target goal is to work out for an hour and half every time I go to the gym in the morning. When I go to the gym I will be taking a stop watch to time the amount of time I work out to verify that I reached my goal as well as mark my calendar every day that I go stating how long I worked out for. To make sure I was committed to the goal I wrote down six reasons/benefits of making this behavior change that are both short term and long term. They are feeling better about myself throughout the day, getting to wear the dress I want to be able to fit by my birthday on July 24th, increasing my endurance for marathons, improving my mood, sleeping better, also something to enjoy doing with my husband. There are many more but these are the ones I placed on my bathroom mirror, on my desk lamp at work, on my dashboard in my car, the table next to my front door that holds my gym bag and shoes, on my fridge and in my husband’s truck in case he drives. I also let my husband know my goal and also invited him to come with me so he could monitor that I am actually sticking with my plan daily. I also had stated the table next to the door holds my gym bag and shoes so if I was to walk outside I automatically see them there taunting me to take them and go to the gym. I also put a reminder on my phone each day of my goal and why it

Over the course of my behavior change project, I ran into several obstacles and the outcome was not quite what I had expected. There ae a few things that I learned during this project from the outrageous cost of healthy food, to what I really struggle with in terms of heathy eating. I started with the intention of eating healthy, but towards the end of the first month, I realized just how costly that can be because I am but a poor college student on a tight budget and sadly I burned a lot of my food budget on fruits and veggies. That was quite an eye opener for me. I also learned that it was not always the content of my meals, but also the size. My wife is much smaller than me and I really started to watch how she eats as opposed to how I eat. Her serving sizes were always much smaller. This taught me a thing or two about what I should be putting on my plate. I also know now that pizza is literally my kryptonite. I know I am doing this BCP, I know I want to lose weight, I know that I want to be healthy, but when I get around pizza I am like a drug addict that can only focus on my drug (pizza). I need to format my lifestyle to stay away from pizza places as much as humanly possible because I will it until it hurts.

This theory is one of the first theory that emerged in solving health related behaviour. It attempts to anticipate and explain the behavioural effects on an individual’s health. The theory is driven by the attitude and the beliefs of the individuals. HBM is a good model to for informing people about the negative consequences of health related behaviour.

My overall experience with the behavior change project was positive, as I was able to successfully change my sleeping habits. Although there were times when sticking to my behavior change plan was extremely difficult, I was able to stay on track and change my sleeping habits. As a result of my behavior change, I now feel healthier and less fatigued. Because of these physical improvements, important areas of my life, such as school and sports, have improved also. My performance in the classroom and on the basketball court has noticeably become better after making this behavior change.

This week I wanted to look at self-directed behavior in students. I feel like this is something that students are not taught to do enough of. Any time that I have changed my behavior, it wasn’t because I wanted to change. Many times it was because my parents got tired of the way that I behaved. Every time that I would attempt to change, making pointless, vague New Year’s Resolutions, I failed. Even right now, while we are working on our behavior projects, I am rethinking what my goal should be because I am having a very difficult time committing to my goal of running thirty minutes a week. I have never been an athlete, and it appears that I was not meant to be. Anyways, this relates to the reading this week, as the reading was entirely about self-directed behavior.