Behavioral change are methods that change an individual’s personal habits and lifestyle to prevent diseases or injuries. People develop negative behavioral habits, such as unhealthy eating habits, smoking, drinking, substance abuse, and lack of physical fitness that negatively influences their health, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, injuries, respiratory and other chronic diseases. There are many factors that contribute to why the behavior is hard to change, such as lack of motivation, lack of knowledge, lack of resources, lack of healthcare access, socioeconomic status, spiritual and cultural factors, behavioral, social and environmental determinant (Glanz et al., 2015). For example, low-income families eat unhealthy foods because they are cheaper and are easily accessible, but results in obesity and cardiovascular diseases (Bouton, 2015). Another factor is having a negative supportive group and a negative environmental factor. For example, if a recovering alcoholic is surrounded by peers that continuously drink around them, then it will be hard for the recovering alcoholic to maintain abstinence from drinking and old habits will be triggered.
The health behavior that I struggle with is physical fitness and eating vegetables and healthy food. The contributing factors to my unhealthy behavior are lack of motivation and my mental state. I think I am allergic to exercise because my body breaks out in hives if I am exercising or partaking in physical activity that is suppose to improve my health. However, if I am doing physical activity for fun nothing happens to me. Therefore, I am not fit like I want to be in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Additionally, I hate vegetables and I do not eat them which combines with my lack of physical activity is bad for my health. To change this behavior, I try to incorporate the only two vegetables I eat which are cucumber and cooked carrots into my diet and I try to manipulate the taste of other vegetables I do not like by pouring gravy on them. Also, I make sure I eat healthy like only drinking water, no soda, limited sugar, limited salt, only eat red meat on special occasion, no drinking, no smoking, and reducing fat and oil intake. For physical fitness, I am in the process of getting a physical trainer to help me set up an exercise plan and get my body fit and healthy.
This personal struggle can help me to understand the point of view of why the individuals are facing hardship in changing their behavior and develop methods in creating interventions that will contribute to improving their health and changing their negative lifestyle.
Reference
Bouton, E.M. (2015). Why Behavior Change is Difficult to Sustain. Preventive Medicine, 68, 29-36. Doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2014.06.010
Glanz, K., Rimer, B. K., & Viswanath, K. (2015). Health behavior: Theory, research, and practice (5th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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