Brides: Are you really ready for change?
You are about to embark upon a new life. Things are changing all around you, and now is a great time to begin a new healthy lifestyle make over. Are you ready?
Let’s take a look at the stages of change and what it takes to really make a long lasting shift in your lifestyle. Then you can decide if you are really, truly ready to embark upon a healthier lifestyle….from this day forward.
The key to a lifetime of fitness is consistency. Getting started with a regular fitness program, or if you have started one, staying with it can be a challenge. You are not alone. Only 25 percent of American adults participate in the recommended levels of physical activity,which is certainly not a good statistic. Heart disease is the number one killer of women and men in this country, and for many people, this tragic life experience is avoidable.
Let’s get clinical
Let’s take a look at the stages of change and help you determine where you fall in “The Stages of Motivation Readiness for Change Model continuum”.
We will ask you to take some tests and to look deep into yourself to determine whether you are ready to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Next, we will review your current state of health using our wellness and risk factor inventories.
Take your time, be honest, and be thoughtful. What you end up writing down may surprise you.
According to The Stages of Motivational Readiness for Change Model, individuals move through a series of stages as they adopt and maintain a new habit (Prochaska and DeClemente 1983). This model was determined after researchers studied groups of people participating in smoking and alcohol cessation programs and monitored how they moved through the behavior change process. The model has been validated and applied to a variety of behaviors, including smoking cessation, exercise, contraceptive use, and diet.
Behavioral change is rarely a casual, single event. The Stages of Change model shows that, for most people, a change in behavior occurs gradually (you didn’t decide to get married overnight, for example), with the person moving from being uninterested, unaware, or unwilling to make a change (known as the precontemplation stage) to considering a change (the contemplation stage) to deciding and preparing to make a change.
Making a change in life requires purposeful, determined action. This does not come without planning, dedication, effort, and a great desire. Relapses are a normal part of change and should not come as a surprise; they are just part of the change process. Many people find themselves moving cyclically through these stages before the change becomes established.
Let’s look at the stages and determine where you fall. Specifically, these stages, as applied to exercise, include:
1. Precontemplation. You are not even considering exercise, let alone scheduling it in your weekly routine.
2. Contemplation. You regularly consider beginning to exercise, but you make no effort to incorporate exercise into your schedule.
3. Preparation. You are working out, but not at recommended levels. Your exercise times are also inconsistently scheduled or not scheduled at all.
4. Action. You are exercising at recommended levels, but have done so only for less than six months.
5. Maintenance. You have been exercising regularly and on schedule at recommended levels for more than six months.
Most people move through these stages at different points in their lives. The movement tends to be cyclical rather than linear; you move through the stages in an orbital fashion.
You can also look at these stages in the context of maintaining healthy eating habits. Because the two topics go hand in hand, when you examine your fitness program, you also should assess your eating habits. Otherwise, you’re not going to be as healthy as you could. Looking at both areas of your well-being will give you a truer picture of where you stand today. In fact, you may find you score better in one area than the other.
Before you move on, go back through the previous list, substituting “healthy eating” for “exercise” throughout to determine what stage of maintaining a nutritious, healthy diet you are in. This will also prepare you for the questionnaire to follow on Monday. See you then!
(The abouve is an excerpt from The Healthy Bride Guide: Fit and Fabulous from this day Forward by Christi Masi available on Amazon.com)
Tags: bridal changes, bridal fitness, healthy bride, Healthy Eating, Healthy Lifestyle, wedding fitness, wedding weight loss