Reflection on achieved goal

Assignment part 2 1. Write 4 weekly journals describing and analyzing the experience of changing health related behaviour. Describe how you felt as you implemented your plan and worked towards achieving your goal. Note the challenges, successes, set backs, re-evaluation of goal/plan and any related feelings. Focus on the feelings experienced as opposed to the process. Discuss the identified predisposing, enabling and reinforcing factors and how they played a role in the changing of the behaviour. Discuss how achieving this goal affected your overall "holistic" health and well-being. 2. Analyze journals and incorporate research into each journals that supports and explains your findings and experience. *Assignment part 2 should be based on assignment part 1 and I just put assignment part 1 right after this. Assigment part 1: 1. For the purposes of this assignment, I have identified my commitment to exercise as a health related behaviour which I would like to change over the next four week period. To achieve this behaviour, I have attempted to turn it in to a more specific goal, which meets the SMART criteria. My objective over the next four weeks is to go on three half-hour runs every week. Since I already run occasionally (1 – 2 times per week), I think that this goal is both realistic and attainable. It is also specific and measurable. Finally, I understand that the most important aspect of changing behaviour is commitment to the behaviour over time. 2. Changing this health behaviour is connected to different predisposing, reinforcing and enabling factors. I think that people who have healthy and active friends in their lives are more predisposed to running consistently. Further, I think that people who maintain a disciplined lifestyle are also predisposed to running regularly. Regular physical activity is reinforced in a number of ways. Individuals with athletic partners are more likely to maintain their activity through time. Since reward systems are useful to changing behaviour, I think that by offering incentives—through activities such as television—I will be able to reinforce my commitment to running regularly. With respect to enabling factors, I believe that things such as proper athletic equipment enable the performance of the activity. In the middle of winter, running is much more difficult without an indoor gym or treadmill. Consequently, a gym membership is a common enabling factor in the form of exercise I am advocating. 3. My research indicates that there is a strong correlation between physical activity and good health. Authors such as Warburton, Whitney Nicol and Bredin (2006) suggest in their essay . "Health Benefits of Physical Activity: The Evidence" that there is irrefutable evidence of the effectiveness of regular physical activity in the primary and secondary prevention of several chronic diseases. By routinely engaging in physical activities such as running, one is more likely to live longer and healthier. 4. My plan for achieving the goal of my health project—three half-hour runs per week—tries to consider the predisposing, reinforcing and enabling factors that I outlined above. Since I have already been running, the enabling factors I have identified are already satisfied. I am in possession of running equipment already, as well as a gym membership. I also plan to reinforce my behaviours by working together with my roommate. My roommate has very similar athletic goals. I feel that by working together, we will both be more motivated to run. Finally, I have attempted to develop a reward system to keep me on track in my commitment with running. My budget is limited right now, but I have decided that each week I successfully go for my runs, I will go out to the movies.