Discussion on Person’s Health Behavior Change Diary

Question

Task:
In this assessment you are required to:

1. Provide an introduction to your behavior change diary
2. Identify your preferred health behaviour change (selecting ONLY ONE behaviour to change) and justify your choice. Once you have chosen health behaviour DO NOT change it (so be careful when making a decision)
3. Set a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound). Have your classmates provide feedback about your SMART goal. Reflect on how you changed or improved your SMART goal as part of this feedback
4. Reflect on Health Belief Model that might assist you to change your behaviour (Don’t forget to use references in this section). Some examples without the process labels (NOTE: you need to include the name of the process you refer to; the pro’s and con’s associated with changing this behaviour (positive and negative things), how you will think and feel about yourself if you achieve your goal. Consider how confident you feel about making a change
5. Put together an initial PLAN as to how you are going to meet that goal over the next 4 weeks
6. Document your behaviour using the plan over a period of 4 weeks.
7. Consider the anticipated consequences of achieving your goal- what are the positive and negative things associated with reaching your goal. Finally consider how you could potentially maintain the change in the longer term, what might you do if you relapse?
8. Provide a concluding paragraph summarising what you have learned. How has this assisted you to understand theory and behaviour change?

Answer

Introduction to behavior change diary:
In the widest intelligence of humankind, the term health behavior is referred to as the activities or practices of an individual, groups of people, or even sets of organizations. it also includes the factors, associates, and appropriate consequences related to these activities which are performed in daily life. The process of policy development, developing social changes, improvising habits, and quality of life, all comes under health behavior. The perception of health behavior within an individual is stated to be self- motivated and involves diverse genders, areas, ages, and cultures (Wood and Neal 2016). These factors are found to account for approximately 50 percent of the worldwide death cases. Thus, a behavior change diary is used in order to analyze and assess health behavior and the associated factor and keep a firm track of the health and related behaviors. The assignment will focus on a person's behavior change diary which will discuss and analyze the health behavior, the health behavior models to interpret the behavior, and the changes which need to be performed in order to lead a healthy life with decreased changes of difficulties.

Physical activity:
The public health interventions in today's world have been providing greater interest over the act of changing health behavior in order to minimize the negative impact of this behavior at an early stage (Gough et al. 2020). Health behavior is found to affect an individual’s physical activity, diet, sleep, coping skills, and social behavior leading to stressful life (Rogers et al. 2018). Thus, after analyzing my daily routine and schedule, I figured out that there is one chief health behavior in my routine which is in urgent need of change and development. Physical activity has not been an active part of my life, as with the busy schedule and organized sets of hours, I often take stairs, or walk or do any other activity which involves physical effort. I have been noticing a change in my body postures and weight due to sitting all the time and working or studying, thus, I believe that physical activity is one of the health behaviors in my life which needs to be changed to sustain a better quality of life.

SMART Goal:
The SMART goal is used in order to plan and achieve the desired goal within a set of time and target. In order to manage and achieve the goal of attaining a better quality of life focusing on physical activity, the following SMART goal needs to be maintained and conducted according to the guidelines (Hertsyk 2016):

S- Specific: It is necessary that the goal or target prepared must be specific and clear in order to maintain focus on the goal and keep oneself motivated to attain the desired outcome (Aghera et al. 2018). Thus, I want to maintain a fair time for physical activity in my daily routine which will involve exercise for 1 hour and 4 times a week.

M- Measurable: The Goal needs to be measurable in order to keep a firm track of the progress and changes attained after taking the steps (Ogbeiwi 2017). Providing 1 hour after every other day is measurable and easy to keep a track of, in order to measure the progress and consistency of the routine.

A- Achievable: It is necessary that the goal that has been set to achieve is realistic and significant enough to be achievable and mist is not beyond one's limits (Swann and Rosenbaum 2018). Walking twice a week by taking 10,000 steps early morning and doing yoga for an hour twice a week is achievable and will not have any disruption on my work schedule.

R- Relevant: make sure that the goal that has been set is relevant to the desired outcome and have a positive impact on others and motivates everyone to step forward. The schedule developed is relevant and is not beyond my limit as I have plenty of time if I get up at 5 am in the morning, as my day starts at 9 am. Also, the activities are arranged according to my strength.

T- Time-bound: The goal needs to have a date set as a target to provide an individual with a deadline within which the goal has to be achieved. It helps in focusing and maintaining the proper routine provided to achieve the goal (Swanson 2016). I analyzed and found that exercise for 1 hour and 4 times a week is a fair set of hours and days which I can surely extract out of my schedule to maintain the change in my physical activity.

The Health Belief Model (HBM):
The Health Belief Model (HBM) is known to be one of the most effective tools which are used by professionals in order to analyze and predict behaviors and practices related to the health of an individual. It is entirely focused and influenced by the motivation and willingness of individuals in changing and developing their health behavior based on their health insights (Wu, Feng, and Sun 2020). It is stated that the belief and viewpoint of an individual about health condition have a major role in analyzing and determining the health behavior and there are certain key factors which have its effect on the health approach:

1. Assessing the barrier which may have an impact on the process
2. Witnessing knowledge about factors which may impact on taking action (Khiyali et al. 2017)
3. Assessing the benefits, one will achieve from the act
4. Vulnerability towards certain illness
5. Confidence towards oneself and the ability to progress (Shao et al. 2018).

After analyzing the health belief model, I found that it is necessary for me to develop my will and interest towards the goal I have made in order to sustain a healthy lifestyle. Physical activity has been not at all an active part of my daily routine which was because I had less consideration towards it and the health conditions which may take place in the future with the routine I follow. The health belief model will help me in overcoming my ignorance towards physical activity and provide me with the support to achieve my goal. It has its effectiveness in guiding me with the risk I may have in the future if I do not start getting involved in physical activities. There are pros of getting involved with exercise and workout in daily life which will not only help me in the present date but will also ensure better health and quality of life in the future. It will help me get my life in a routine and disciplinary manner, it will help me become more active and progressive with work along with providing me a risk and illness free living for the rest of the time period. There are not many consequences of the goal as it will just make me a bit busy as I will have to arrange my work and task in order to assist myself with exercise and workout. After going through my SMART goal and the health belief model, I have developed my self-esteem and confidence level higher as there is no fear or doubt left inside me related to the goa I have desired to achieve. I believe that changing my health behavior and involving physical activity in my routine will help me lead a better and healthy life ahead.

Physical Activity Planning:

Reflection over behavior change:

The Anticipated Consequences:
There is certain positivity that I achieved after going through the whole process of behavior change process one of which includes, bringing my life into a routine. Earlier there was no proper time for eating, working sleeping, or resting, but after getting involved in physical activities, I have a proper time of sleeping and getting up, I eat and take rest on time and even it has improved my productivity in work. There is no such negative goal I witnessed while reaching my goal, as I was well organized with my work and personal life and was providing time to my workouts accordingly. Though there were some times where I used to feel demotivated due to not able to complete the target goal set for every week. In order to maintain the process for the longer run, it will be necessary not to skip the process for even a week until it's an emergency. It will be required to increase the activities gradually with increasing time to sustain the limits.

Conclusion:
In order to conclude, it can be stated that the behavior change session has provided me with a wide-ranging understanding and knowledge about the need to have a proper behavioral change in life in order to remain healthy and risk-free. As, there are stated to be three chief behaviors related to healthy behavior which include smoking, physical activity, and regular diet which are related to the occurrence of four chef health complications such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory disorder, and cancer. It is necessary to push oneself beyond limits in order to safeguard the health condition for a longer run in life.

Reference:
Aghera, A., Emery, M., Bounds, R., Bush, C., Stansfield, R.B., Gillett, B. and Santen, S.A., 2018. A randomized trial of SMART goal enhanced debriefing after simulation to promote educational actions. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, 19(1), p.112.

Gough, A., Prior, L., Kee, F. and Hunter, R.F., 2020. Physical activity and behaviour change: the role of distributed motivation. Critical Public Health, 30(2), pp.153-165.

Hertsyk, A., 2016. SMART goal setting in physical therapy.

Khiyali, Z., Aliyan, F., Kashfi, S.H., Mansourian, M. and Jeihooni, A.K., 2017. Educational intervention on breast self-examination behavior in women referred to health centers: Application of health belief model. Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention: APJCP, 18(10), p.2833.

Ogbeiwi, O., 2017. Why written objectives need to be really SMART. British Journal of Healthcare Management, 23(7), pp.324-336.

Rogers, L.Q., Carter, S.J., Williams, G. and Courneya, K.S., 2018. Physical activity. In Handbook of Cancer Survivorship (pp. 287-307). Springer, Cham.

Shao, C., Wang, J., Liu, J., Tian, F. and Li, H., 2018. Effect of a Health Belief Model-based education program on patients’ belief, physical activity, and serum uric acid: a randomized controlled trial. Patient preference and adherence, 12, p.1239.

Swann, C. and Rosenbaum, S., 2018. Do we need to reconsider best practice in goal setting for physical activity promotion?

Swanson, M., 2016. Implementation of a SMART Goal Intervention for Diabetic Patients: A Practice Change in Primary Care.

Wood, W. and Neal, D.T., 2016. Healthy through habit: Interventions for initiating & maintaining health behavior change. Behavioral Science & Policy, 2(1), pp.71-83.

Wu, S., Feng, X. and Sun, X., 2020. Development and evaluation of the health belief model scale for exercise. International Journal of Nursing Sciences.