Nowadays, to have a healthy life became a very important goal to achieve for every person. Everybody talks about healthier ways to eat, sports that provide you wellbeing and a lot of ways of how can you live longer and happy. But not all the persons have a healthy behaviour; a lot of them have problems with smoking, drinking alcohol or having eating disorders. For those persons to come back on the right road, a behaviour change should be made. It wouldn’t be easy at the beginning but for definitely will be worth in the end.
- Target Behaviour
I want to talk about a behaviour change for healthy eating and stop eating unhealthy food in periods of a lot of stress or anxiety. After changing this behaviour, I could experience four potential benefits. The first one will be losing weight; I want to be thinner, I have a few extra pounds that I should get rid of it. The second benefit it will be confidence, after I’ll see that I can finish what I intended to do, I rich to my goal, I will have more confidence in myself that I can do everything I intend to do. The third benefit it will be health; each person was an ideal weight, extra pounds only disrupts the internal organs and heart, fat depositing around them and tired them. The fourth one will be related to clothes, after losing weight I could wear anything without seeming disgraceful.
- Observation
Day 1: 24 September:
- woke up at 7:30 and already thought of what I will eat. Dreaming about chocolate at breakfast but already felt bed and eat a bowl of cereals with milk and went to school. I had still thinking of chocolate at 11:00 so I’ve bought one in the break. Because I was craving, I ate it desperately and didn’t have time to enjoy it. After I finished I felt sorry that I ate it so fast.
- finish classes and then I went home and ate my lunch prepared from my mother. After one hour of watching TV, a started to do my homework. It was very hard, and I had trouble concentrating on it, so I started eating pretzels. I didn’t notice when I finished the bag of pretzels. I was focus on resolving the problem and just grab one pretzel after another from the bag. I was eating to releasing my stress.
- eat dinner with my family and took a plate of cookies that my mother made and saw a movie while I was eating them.
-went to bed, still wanting to crunch something
Day 2: 25 September
- woke up at 7:30 a.m., didn’t felt so well after eating the hole plate of cookies late at night and promise me that I will never do it again. Eat a little for breakfast and went to school.
- 12:00 p.m. starting to be hungry because of my incomplete breakfast, but I didn’t have time to eat then. At 1 when a finished school I was starving so I went to the first McDonalds, which was in my way home and ate a big menu. I arrived home, and my mother schooled me for eating fast-food in town, when I had food at home.
- 2:00 p.m. a started to do my homework and then I went in the city with my friends for a drink.
- 8:00 p.m. arrived home, ate dinner and then watch a movie without eating anything but feeling the need to crunch something
Day 3: 26 September
- woke up at 7:30 a.m. and my mother was doing cookies. They were already in the oven and smelled delicious. I can’t help myself and waited for the cookies to be ready and then eat a whole plate of it. I can’t stop it until in have finish it. After that, I went to school, on the road I started to have stomach pain for eating only sweets.
- 2 p.m. arrived home an eaten lunch then went to my friends to play basketball. After the game, I was feeling proud of myself for doing some sport in a fun way and promised me to repeat the experience.
- went home at 8:00 p.m., ate lunch and watched a movie and didn’t eat anything during the film.
Day 4: 27 September
-woke up at 11:00 a.m.; it was a weekend, so I didn’t need to get up early. I was feeling tired and lazy and all I wanted to do was to stay in bed and eat all day so I went with my mother at the supermarket to help her buy the needed for home and I’ve bought for me all the unhealthy food that I found: chips, jelly and chocolate; it were my favorites. After that, I stayed in bed all day and watched a lot of movies and ate sweet after salted and salted after sweet and didn’t eat any healthy food. I was feeling so good when I was eating them, a variety of tastes and flavors but in the evening I was started to have stomach pain again, so I’ve made a tea and went to bed. I felt bad about myself, and I was thinking how much weight I will gain after this day.
Day 5: 28 September
-woke up at 10:30 a.m. and even now I wasn’t feeling good, but I ate a salad and drank orange juice and went to see my friends at the mall.
- 3:00 p.m. went back home and ate lunched and started to do my homework. I had a lot of problems trying to solve it, so I started to crunch chips.
Day 6: 29 September
-woke up at 7:30 a.m., dressed but can’t managed to button up pants. I felt angry and disappointed, and I didn’t eat until lunch. I arrived home and ate a healthy lunch and then I started to do my homework. I was feeling anxious, and I was feeling the need to crunch something but I chewed only gum. I had a salad at dinner and went to bed.
Day 7: 30 September
- woke up at 7:30 a.m. and ate a healthy breakfast and promise me that I won’t eat any more fast- food.
-after school I went with my colleges at McDonalds and ate a big menu. I couldn’t respect my promise and felt bad for that.
-5:00 p.m. started to work on my homework and ate a bag of pretzel and then went to bed earlier thinking of eating something sweet.
- Analysis
- In my observations I have notice that I have two patterns: the first pattern is related to a state of anxiety and stress when I need to resolve issue that are not comfortable or easy for me and it is manifested to crunching food. The second pattern that I notice is related to my discontinuity on having regular and healthy meals.
- My behavior looked like this the whole week of observation
- The predispositions factors that are influencing my behavior are self-efficacy and behaviour intents and existing skills.
- In changing my behaviour, the helpful enabling and reinforcing factors could be societal support for my friends and family that could include rewards encouragement and recognition for reaching my goal, programs for eating regular and conscientious on healthy food that can also include registration on a health and wellness course at my college, and developing skills on how anxiety and stress period should be threated without crunching but the most important of all is the internal commitment that needs to come from a my personal and permanent goal.
- The two potential obstacle of changing my behaviour could by the lack of ambition or motivation on going along with my goal and bad social environment.
- In the past, when a encountered a “slip”, I’ve tried to not make such a big deal of it, I’ve tried to understood which determined to proceeded like this and how could I keep away on repeating again.
- Goals
Long Term Goals
1. I am committed losing five pounds and remove anxiety and stress eating by November 4.
2. I am successfully continuing the smart solution which helped me to elaborate a healthy lifestyle program for the rest of my life.
Short Term Goals
1. I am changing the way on going home, to avoid fast-food temptations like McDonalds and to lose one pound, by Oct. 7.
2. I include more vegetables and fruits on my menu, instead of eating sweets and to lose one pound, by Oct. 14.
3. I am stress eating free while I’m learning by chewing gum or drink water instead crunching and to lose one pound, by Oct. 21.
4. I am incorporated the use of a stress ball for stress relief, instead of chewing gum or crunching and to lose one pound, by Oct. 28.
5. I am starting to do two hours per week sport in an organize environment and to lose one pound, by Nov. 4.
- Action plan
- I will start my action plan by making a schedule for each week of the five weeks, containing a meal program with three meals per day consisting of vegetable and fruits.
- I will search sports that I enjoy doing it and make a habit to go to that sport at least to times a week. For the start, I will go two times a week and then I will increase my sports hours to three or four times a week.
- I will weekly weight, no earlier than a week because if I don’t see the weight I wanted to be I’ll be disappointed, but no longer than a week because I need to see results. If I didn’t’ lose one pound a week, it is probably that I made a mistake, and I need to pay more attention at the program. In general weakening is gradual but can have moments of stagnation, yet naturally weakens on people with a healthy diet, average a pound a week.
- I will make a journal were I would write all my feelings regarding this new behavior change, what’s make me happy, what’s make me angry. The things I like at this change or the things I didn’t like, how hard it is and how much I will progress.
- I will count how often I need to crunch after week 2, after week 3, after week 4 and after week 5, and see how things changed and maybe if I need to make the program longer.
- I will talk with my family and my friends about this behaviour change I want to do and I will ask them to help me go true it with moral support when I need it social environment.
- I will go to nutritionist to make me a healthy program for the next five weeks which will be model on my needs and also I will go to a health and wellness course to learn more about the benefits on eating healthy food.
- I will visualize myself every day in a new form I want to be for keeping the motivation up.
- I will handle a “slip” by not making a big deal of it; I will try to understand what made me do it and try to not repeat.
I will start me healthy eating program and write in my journal how does changes affects me. For the first week, I won’t be so strict on my diet. At the end of the week, I will weight.
My two strengths are organization and social environment and I will use them on correct organizing the meals and in heaving the best place and a fresh vegetable and fruit I can found on the market or at home.
When I put my plan in action, I want to be determined and ambitious, and keep this feeling until the end of the program.
- Stage of change
On completion of “Behaviour Change Assignment 1” I will be in the fifth stage of change named Maintenance, were I will continue to work on my behaviour change, and I will try getting used to this change in my life, successfully adopting as well as I can. I will continue on doing exercise on the gym, two times a week and make this a lifetime behaviour. I will continue my new lifestyle program of eating three times a day regularly healthy food, but I will allow something sweet or unhealthy once a week for three months. Then I will gradually add sweets for not gathering a frustration on looking on others eating while I’m not aloud, but also maintaining balance between eating healthy and small pleasures.
