PSY3405 D920 "Critical" Health Psychology, Fall 2015
An Interdisciplinary Course on Race and Health
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I knew about this Trans-theoretical model of behavior change before this course and I was trying to change my eating behavior, but I failed some times already, keeping relapse from action stage back. From my experience I can say, it s EXTREMELY difficult not only to lose weight, but maintain it.
But I’m positive and I know that some day I ll win 🙂
In 2011, I decided that I was going to change the way I ate, with the motivation of one of my co-workers at the time. We started on a fruit and vegetable cleanse which we pushed each other to keep going and we did this for 2 weeks. Another co-worker decided that she would push me a little bit further and we started an exercises regiment. We did this for months until, I had an accident and fractured my ankle. Once I fractured my ankle, my motivation to eat better and the ability to exercise combined took me back to my old behaviors.
This reading has given me an understanding of what happened and why. I am currently in the contemplation stage again because, I want to do it but the cons and the pros are on equal playing ground. My physical body is not capable of actually doing what my mental self has planned. I have even gone as far as to actually start at one point but found that I was hurting myself more than helping.
Thanks for this article, it has really given me a different perspective.
All three of these concepts (Biopsychosocial) play an important role in the health and mental illness of a person’s life. However, out of the three, I personally think the psychological concept is the most critical, although the two are also; but the mind is a very important place and tool that one could use to overcome any obstacles, problems, and the like. With your mind, you can sway or divert negative thoughts by really disciplining your mind and being able to handle the social and other biological illnesses one might face. For example, although some mental illness are sometimes beyond control, in the case of social and cultural influences, regardless of what situation you find yourself, if you have a well discipline mind(psychology), you will be able to change any negative influences whether bad eating habits, loss of job, relationship, etc. I believe, (except if one is born with a typical mental illness or anything beyond that), that, the mind is a powerful tool to curtail social and cultural, and biological nemeses.
The TTM almost reminds me of those AA 12-step program. It probably isn’t even a stretch if those steps were based off of TTM. But the graph shown (in the articles/slideshows, as well as in class) does represent how going through the stages is a bit steep, but one misstep and you fall back to where you were.
The other models/concepts/theories are also pretty interesting, mainly being that all of them sound familiar, even though I haven’t heard of them before this class. Maybe it’s because some of them were based on already existing programs to help change behavior (mainly those anti-addiction help programs or diet/weight loss programs).
During middle school my health instructor thought us ways on how to take care of our bodies. For example doing exercise and eating healthy. That help me take care of myself and avoid the risk of obesity, I was a twelve year old with a size of 36 in jeans. During the end of middle school and beginning of High school I always took care of myself. Every morning I drank a glass of water, ate a heathy breakfast, lunch and dinner and around 8 I focused on my exercise routine without eating or drinking anything with the exemption of water. It wasn’t until my senior year of High school when I had to focus on applying for collage, studding for SAT, trying to pass my AP courses and having a part time job, was when I took less care of my body. I was always on a rush that I ate when I had time, sometimes while I was studying during the middle of the night I always had a middle of the night snack. Now its hard to start all over and every time I try I continue to fail.