Understanding My Own Behavior Sometime

Explain how each of the “stages of behavior change” from the transtheoretical model of change can be applied to the health behavior.

The Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change (TTM) was created by Prochaska and DiClemente. It is based on “(1) the stages of change, (2) the decisional balance scale, (3) the strong and weak principle, (4) self-efficacy, and (5) the processes of change” (Kelly, 2008, p. 149). A person’s progression through the stages depends on their perception of the advantages of adopting a healthy lifestyle (Kelly, 2008).

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 “Seniors’ on a Path to Fitness” program would use the behavioral or lifestyle approach. The Lalonde Report was the first time the national government made a significant statement in relation to the importance of health promotion as a key strategy for improving the health of a population (Stamler & Yiu, 2012). Health promotion encourages the adoption of behaviours or lifestyles that promote functional ability and well-being; undoubtedly in line with the goal and objectives of the proposed program. There is a clear focus on disease and disability prevention with behavioral or lifestyle risk factors.

One particular barrier that has been found to have an indirect effect on physical activity is self-efficacy and self-motivation. Self-efficacy allows humans to overcome barriers such as feeling tired to exercise; because of social norms, it is harder for females to have high self-efficacy and in turn, harder to overcome barriers to motivation (Louw, Van Biljon, & Mugandani, 2012).

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.

Thirdly, physical exercise itself could re-shape our body, make body stronger and looks healthier. It hence can improve individual’s attractiveness and confidence and hence can enable a positive life attitude. Fourthly, since the physical exercise normally would enable individual to interact with others, socialising with participants and friends in a such low-stress way might meet human’s belonging needs. It therefore could make people have a good mood and recharge themselves to fight against stress (Elizabeth, 2011).

There are several interventions that correlate with increased physical activity, goal-setting, self-monitoring, and feedback. Several studies have examined the

Changes in behaviour and lifestyle of the people in the last century, especially in industrialized countries caused that it is needed for many people to participate in PA. Quality of life and physical inactivity are related to long-life and diseases (Bouchard, C., Blair, S. N., and Haskell, W. L. 2012). Nowadays people are spending long time sitting in one place; it is related to our work (call centre, bank, reception etc.) and lifestyle, so it is important to get the people being active to stay well, both mentally and physically.

Exercise behavior is the study of theories which work to explain actions and phenomenon’s that occur when looking at peoples perspectives of exercise. One overall theory called The Transtheoretical model (TTM), includes elements from “across a variety of theories and models behavior, some of which are social-cognitive in nature and some of which are not” (79). The TTM describes five stages of behavior change: Precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. By using TTM as the base of multiple theories, a greater picture of exercise behavior is created to understand how individuals become interested and continue to make a life style that involves normal exercise.

This study included 143 individuals of low socioeconomic status and 67 of high SES (Hardcastle et al., 2012). The study participants chose how often they would like to participate in motivational interviewing sessions (Hardcastle et al., 2012). Results demonstrated that those who were involved with more motivational interviewing sessions demonstrated higher levels of physical activity than those with low participation (Hardcastle et al., 2012). Those of low SES demonstrated a higher state of change than those of high SES (Hardcastle et al., 2012). Authors Hardcastle et al. (2012) concluded that motivational interviewing is an effective intervention to promote physical activity in those of low SES.

After looking back at my behavior for the past three days I noticed that I have the mentality of wanting to do physical exercise, but lack the motivation and the discipline. I realized that I was stuck in the contemplation phase of as the transtheoretical model of behavior change explains. In order to to improve my behavior as emphasized in class, I needed more to work on the pros and cons that come with the behavior change and set a specific goal. The goal I decided to place for myself is to engage in some sort of physical activity for at least 30 minutes every other day. I included some self-reinforcements as in the book titled Health Psychology introduced in page 52, in order to keep the health behavior steady and not lose focus on the goal

Those against mandatory exercise say that if students feel it is important to exercise they will create a program of physical activity on their own and it does not need to be a part of the school. The problem with this theory is that the majority of people would stop the program if left on their own without any sort of accountability. For example, a study was done on several different exercise plans to see what results would happen over time. First the theoretical approach of self-monitoring was used. This program left individuals to attend exercise sessions on their own without any intervention from others. The overall observation was that interest in attending and exercising was lost after about four weeks. Next the approach of stages of change was used. This program used four different groups. One group received weekly calls with structured inquiry to see how and when the subjects were personally exercising. The second group received weekly calls with general inquiries about their exercise habits. The third group received a call every three weeks with general inquiries of exercise, and the last group received calls every three weeks with structured inquiries. The results were, that 63% of the subjects who were called more frequently were regularly exercising as opposed to only the 22% exercising success rate of those that were called less frequently. Also those called with the structured

Psychological research may be undertaken on a subset of society; however the importance of the results may have an effect way beyond the group tested. The value of psychological research varies and the same results can be used in different ways by different groups of society.

Using the model down the page, Catania and colleagues have described the procedure of behavioural transformation and just how every step influences the general method of the person. The model verifies all the measures which have been mentioned in previous studies and demonstrate the way the achievement of every stage has been essential for not just its completion but the suitable start of the subsequent stage (Catania et al, 1990). The labelling means the acknowledgement of the issue; the persistence to the phase of planning to take care of the issue; as well as, the enactment towards the action applied.