NMIH 108 Assignment: Introduction To Health Behaviour Change

Introduction

I currently consume meat almost on a daily basis. My baseline meat consumption was tracked for over seven days. No changes were actually made to my dietary habits during this time, but instead I only recorded my meat consumption habits. My health behaviour goal is to reduce my meat consumption by thirty percent in the next one week. This decision to make drastic changes in my behaviour of consuming meat on almost a daily basis has been made after thoughtful deliberations with my friends, family members and my confidants.

Health Behaviour Goal and Action Plan

In endeavouring to develop a systematic way of managing my meat consumption, I discovered that I consumed 20.1oz of meat for the seven days of monitoring, and most of the meat was consumed during lunch and at the campus cafeteria. Based on my observation, I decided to reduce my meat consumption by 30% through eliminating meat from the lunch meal. I intend to accomplish this by taking substitute foods at the cafeteria such as grains (Smetana, Mathys, Knoch, & Heinz, 2015) to supplement the protein I used to gain from meat. I also shared my behavioural change plan with my closest peer who we agreed that we will be taking lunch together so that I become accountable to him and overcome any temptations to consume meat during lunch break.

A goal of meat reduction by 30% is achievable because it is only the lunch meal with meat that will be eliminated.  In order to achieve this goal, I will break it into short term and long term goals. My short term goal is to avoid meat consumption during lunch meal for the first seven days and one subsequent month. The long term goal will be to eliminate meat consumption from my lunch meal for six months and subsequent year. In order to achieve these goals, I followed the recommendations provided by Mastellos, Gunn, Felix, Car & Majeed (2014) of maximizing fibre intake, fruits, and vegetables and low meat calorie diet of 1000kcal/day.

Planned Rewards

Roberts, Curzon, Koch, and Martens (2010) observes that self-awarding of rewards is an effective way of changing behaviour. According to Deci & Ryan (2008) rewards have a positive impact on one’s motivation to behaviour change and increases the possibility of the occurrence of the behaviour change. In the selection of the rewards for my short term progressive behavioural changes, I decided to reward myself at the end of each successful week of restraining from meat consumption during lunch meal. For the first week, I will reward myself by going to the cinema, followed by buying myself clothes. A successful restraint from meat consumption in the third week will be watching my favourite TV show and listening to music.

Potential Barriers and Enablers

The achievement of my behavioural change in diet will not be without potential barriers and possible enhancers. The potential barriers include taste and price, convenience, and television advertising. Perhaps the most potential barrier to my dietary change of decreasing meat consumption is taste and price of meat at the college cafeteria. Studies have also shown that taste is the most significant aspect that affect food choice, flowed by the price tag on food (Howlett, Burton, Bates, & Huggins, 2009; Harnack et al., 2008). Based on my experience and that of other students, meat at the school cafeteria tastes much better than even the one cooked at home, hence the reason why students flock at the cafeteria. In addition to taste the meat at the cafeteria is sold at an economical price that is friendly to the students’ pocket. These potential barriers are also confirmed by several studies that have shown price alterations to be more effective than offering promotional messages on health lifestyle to try to convince people to buy healthier foods (Elinder & Jansson, 2009)

Television and media advertising are also likely to act as barriers to my behavioural change. The promotions on television that encourage meet consumption are likely to tempt my appetite for consuming meat. This is why I intend to also stop watching commercial television stations. A study conducted by Zimmerman and Bell (2010) found out that there was a strong relationship between children that watch commercial television and weight gain. On the other hand, the authors found no association between children that watched non-commercial television stations with weight gain. This therefore means that advertisements also stimulate the consumption of unhealthy foods and weight gain. Another possible barrier is convenience. The cafeteria and other food stores that sell meat are easily accessible within the school compound and without, making it easy to purchase meat when tempted to. Studies done by Spence, Cutumisu, Edwards, Raine, & Smoyer-Tomic, (2009 and  Inagami, Cohen, Brown, & Asch (2009) to examine the association between the food environment and health status of individuals found out that convenience stores in the neighbourhood were linked to unhealthy lifestyle of the nearby population.

The possible motivational factors include the desire to improve overall health, lose weight, and improve body image. The greatest motivation for my behavioural change in diet is to improve my general health and lose weight. Meat consumption has been associated with several lifestyle diseases such as high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, and obesity (Micha, Wallace, & Mozaffarian, 2010). Additionally, excess body weight is a risk factor for lifestyle diseases and cardiovascular diseases (Ortega, Lavie, & Blair, 2016). It is against this background that I made up my mind to begin my plan of behavioural change by reducing meat consumption by 30%.

The desire to improve the general appearance of my body image was another motivational factor towards my behavioural change. I admired the body shape of my friends at college and how they could easily move about the lecture rooms, and how good they looked in different outfits. The study conducted by Ashton, Hutchesson, Rollo, Morgan, and Collins (2017) on the motivators and barriers in healthy eating examined the eating habits of young Australian men in relation to their behavioural change in diet. The authors found out that over 60% of the respondents embarked on behavioural change in order to improve overall health and 52.3% were motivated by improved body image. NMIH 108 Assignment: Introduction To Health Behaviour Change

Benefits of Behavioural Change

My decision of behavioural change in diet is very critical for healthy and quality life. Studies have shown that making behavioural changes such as healthy eating helps prevent or delay the occurrence of chronic illnesses such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, improve longevity, and leads to weight loss (Liu et al., 2012). Therefore, my program of reducing the intake of flesh by 30% will be of benefit because it will enable me to attain overall quality life and health by preventing chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes among others.

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Weekly Health Behaviour Change Diary

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