Personal Narrative: How I Learned To Change My Health Behavior

At the age of nine, I watched my uncles lowering my father into the ground and what took his life was addiction. All my life I have watched addiction take over the lives of people, I love. My father's side of the family, besides my grandparents, has always faced addiction. Although, addiction runs through my blood, I will not take the same path I have watched people take all my life. I will be the one to end the cycle. Watching the majority of my family waste their life has motivated me to change the direction and better myself from living a life of addiction and misery.

I've experienced a lot of events which had great impact on me since I was young. Thinking of life changing events, the one I would like to share is when I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. It was a very devastating day for me. A day that changed my life. I never thought Id get through but today I can say that Diabetes has changed me for the better.

The majority of people will decide to change their health behavior throughout their lifetime. The reasons for the change might be quite different from individual to individual. Some may be motivated to take action after experiencing a life threatening illness, while others are proactive and change their health behavior to decrease the risks of developing a potential disease. However, even if the reasons for the change are valid and well understood, there is a great possibility that one will not follow set goals long term. Stacy Carter, an assistant of professor and an author of the Social Validity Manual, expresses her opinion about people implementing a scientifically proven health behavior change treatment in their routine, “if it's something that is going to cause them a lot of effort, or is difficult to implement, then they probably are not going to use it for long” (Cranford, 2011). Use number superscript 1

The behavior change that I chose was to drink more water every day. Furthermore, my more specific goal was to drink eight glasses per day. My long-term goal by the end of the behavior change project was to drink eight glasses a day, because that is the recommended amount that a healthy human being should drink. I set short-term goals to help make my behavior change easier to accomplish. My short-term goals were to drink two glasses of water per day by the end of week one, four glasses of water per day by the end of week two, and six glasses of water per day by the end of week three. When going through this behavior change project, I personally discovered that there are not only many benefits from this behavior change, but also many barriers.

Noreen and Janevic (2013) believe that the success of patients’ preventive and curative interventions depends on the individual’s willingness to take responsibility for and maintain the necessary behaviors. Sadly, studies have shown that there is poor adherence to recommended changes in lifestyle and behaviors including attending scheduled appointments for treatments (which are missed 35% of the time) and compliance prescribed medication. Due to the evidence of subpar participation in preventive care such as screening and immunization efforts, behavioral scientist have dedicated more research to studying and identifying what determines individual’s health behaviors. This is how individual theories of health behavioral change were developed.

For the very first time in my life, I had executed a series of behavior changes in order to lose fifteen pounds by this semester. I am pleased and more than grateful to see that my customized plan is successful, and took effect in different aspects of my well-being. “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become”, I believe this quote by Carl Jung encapsulated why my health improvement plan would work – determination incorporated into a personalized plan. Hereinafter, I would like to discuss in details what and why had my behavior changes improved both my short-term and long-term health.

Week two has been a bit of a rough week for my behavioral change project. I became sick and was stuck at home for three days this week. This caused me to have a bit of a relapse because when I am not feeling well I turn to things that comfort me. A big comfort for me is technology and I hate to admit it but I binge watched a lot of television this week and I used social media quite often. The worst part is that now that the binge has started I am having a difficult time stopping again. I am so stressed now because I missed a great deal of class and as a result I feel extremely far behind and anxious about if I can make it up successfully. Yet, all I want to do is watch Netflix and in all honesty that is all I have been doing this week. After the first week, I felt so strong (naively so) but now I only feel defeated by my own mind. That is a hard concept for me to grasp because how is it that something that feels so good, relaxing, and happy is so detrimental to my life in the areas of education, work, and relationships? I suppose though that part of the reason we do this project is to see what will make us relapse. For me and

This model represents a gradual process toward behavior change by which the individual enters through various stages toward behavior stage (National Cancer Institute, 2005). For example a person who is overweight may not be interested at all in changing their dietary habits, therefore the strategy would be to increase this person’s awareness of the risks for not doing so, and the benefits of doing so. As the person contemplates making a change, they may say that they will change their diet in the next 6 months or so. This is where a motivational strategy may be put into plan (National Cancer Institute,

I think in real terms the complexities of an individual’s life and feelings are often overlooked when trying to change an individual’s behavior, especially self-care behavior. I have performed vascular diagnostic studies on patients with reattached limbs, who said they were “warned” never to smoke again, or they would be jeopardy of losing a limb. I have listened to Doctors tell hip replacement patients, to lose weight (obesity is the number one reason for joint appliance failure) while observing the majority of patients over time do not change their habits. Typically patients when reminded would say, “I am working on it”, or “it’s really hard for me

Change or Die by Alan Deutschman explored the complexities involved with changing an individual’s behavior. Initially, the article touches on changing behavior in regards to an individual’s health; stating that a relatively small percentage of population utilize the majority of healthcare resources and cite the major cause for usage is in the treatment of disease processes resulting from excessive behaviors such as smoking, drinking, over-eating and lack of exercise.

The transtheoretical model posits that health behavior change involves progress through six stages of change: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and termination. Ten processes of change have been identified for producing progress along with decisional balance, self-efficacy, and temptations. Basic research has generated a rule of thumb for at-risk populations: 40% in precontemplation, 40% in contemplation, and 20% in preparation. Across 12 health behaviors, consistent patterns have been found between the pros and cons of changing and the stages of change. Applied research has demonstrated dramatic improvements in recruitment, retention, and progress using stage-matched interventions and proactive recruitment

Boskey (2014) concludes that a person’s willingness to change their health behaviors includes perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived barriers, and cues to action and self-efficacy. For example, Carpenter (2010) report the Health Belief Model stipulates that a change may occur if individuals see an adverse health outcome to be severe and perceive them to be vulnerable to it. Other perceptions include benefits of behaviors that reduce the likelihood of that outcome to be high, and the barriers to adopting those behaviors low (Carter, 2010). Furthermore, the HBM addresses the relationship between a person’s beliefs and behaviors. It provides a way of understanding and predicting how clients will behave about their health and how they will comply with healthcare therapies (Boskey, 2014).

Moreover, it evaluates an individual’s willingness to achieve new healthier behavior. The transtheoretical model provides phases and strategies for changing practices, and it guides people through stages of alteration. The stages of changing begin with an inactive phase, into getting ready, then determination phase, follows by actual change, and end with maintenance. The combination of these components should have a high probability of producing positive outcomes relative to alter harmful behaviors to healthy

An individual's attitude towards his health influences his capacity to maintain an optimum level of health, prevent illness or recover from a disease. Understanding patient's attitude towards his condition is the key to establishing an effective health-related program for health promotion, disease prevention and disease management. Hence, different health behavior theories have emerged. All of these are designed to help the patient and his family to facilitate learning, adjustment and behavior change to improve his quality of life. ( Butts & Rich, 2011)

Out of the many theories,only some have been mentioned below which are cognitive and non