The Healthy Bride

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)

Time Magazine Monday, Jul. 06, 2009
First Comes Love, Then Comes Obesity?
By Bonnie Rochman

It’s full-on wedding season, but anyone about to pledge to have and to hold should pay closer attention to the bit about “in sickness and in health.” New research shows that within a few short years of getting hitched, married individuals are twice as likely to become obese as are people who are merely dating.

The study, published in the July issue of Obesity, set out to determine how romantic relationships affect the tell-no-lies number on the scale. Researchers tracked changes over a handful of years in the weight and relationship status of 6,949 individuals, and their findings don’t bode well for commitment. Not only are married people more likely to become obese than those who are just dating, but young people who move in with a boyfriend or girlfriend tend to pack on the pounds too. (See pictures of the busiest wedding day in history.)

And in a twist sure to tick off all the ladies in the house, the study notes that unmarried women who have been living with their sweeties for five years or less run a 63% increased risk of obesity. What about unmarried men? On average, they have no increased risk during cohabitation.

“With women, we saw incremental risk after one year,” says Penny Gordon-Larsen, one of the two nutrition epidemiologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) who conducted the study. “The longer she lived with a romantic partner, the more likely she was to keep putting on weight.” Meanwhile, the risk of obesity among guys — married and unmarried — spikes only between the first and second years of living together.

What’s behind the weight gain? Gordon-Larsen and the paper’s lead author, Natalie The, have their theories after questioning 1,293 couples for a separate part of the study. Mealtime may become more important than it was when the people were living alone. Gym memberships may not get the same workouts they did before nuptials. And maybe, after months of prepping to squeeze into crinolined and cummerbunded finery, couples just let themselves go.

Scientists have known for a while that having a close relationship with an obese person, whether a friend or a spouse, makes you more likely to become obese. So how to break the cycle? Perhaps by drawing inspiration from the same person who helped get you into this mess: your better half. Amy Gorin, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut, published a study last year that showed if one spouse participates in a weight-loss program, the unenrolled spouse tends to lose about 5 lb. Now Gorin is exploring whether enlisting the support of spouses can help both partners shed more pounds. In June she wrapped up a 16-week pilot study of 20 couples, in one of which, the support person lost more weight than the main participant in the study.

Couples don’t have to live chubbily ever after. And studies show that marriage conveys some health benefits, like living longer and being more likely to quit smoking, notes UNC’s The, who lives with her boyfriend but insists her obesity findings haven’t scared her away from the idea of marriage. “This is an interesting paradox,” she says, “but it certainly wouldn’t stop me.”