“Fall” Into Healthy Behaviors
Welcome to your Behavior change challenge! The goal of this project is to help you begin to add healthy behaviors into your busy days and to (hopefully) build some healthy habits and structure to your schedule. This process may seem a little overwhelming at first, but I trust that you will get into a groove over time.
This challenge will last six weeks. Our start day will be Monday, September 13 and our ending day will be Sunday , October 24. From now until the start day I’d like you to begin paying attention to “where you are now” in terms of these behaviors. The behaviors follow several dimensions of health: Physical, Mental/Emotional, Social, Spiritual, and Intellectual. As your textbook explains, our wellness and health is usually a dynamic process. We can be doing great in one area but struggling in another. This is normal! I’m sure you will recognize this pattern as you track your own behaviors.
I don’t expect you to dive head first into making all of these changes in order to strictly follow the program. There is great benefit in approaching change gradually. This will allow you to get comfortable in stages and not get stressed out by changing everything all at once. This slower process will ultimately help you to make lasting changes.
In this packet you will find a daily checklist. This will allow you to have something to mark off each day for the things you did or did not complete. This is a great visual for you to track your consistency and help identify areas of improvement. You will turn these in each week throughout the program. Try and fill them out daily….otherwise you will forget what you did or did not do.
Here is an idea that may help you…… start slowly. (If you want to dive in with everything you can do that too.)
Weeks 1 and 2: Focus on one or two of the items that may be “new” to you. If you don’t usually eat veggies or fruit, pick a couple that you like and start adding them in to your daily dietary choices. You may even want to go to the grocery store and buy some apples or baby carrots that you can keep in your room as a handy way to remind yourself to eat fruits and veggies. Pick ones you like! You probably won’t eat it if you don’t. Get a new water bottle to start drinking water. Know how many ounces it holds and figure out how to reach your water goal. Stop taking the CatTran if you can. Getting in 10,000 steps a day will come easier if you do! Your goal should be to check off at least 12 items per week.
Week 3: Once you’ve gotten a few behaviors down, add in one or two more. Do an exercise video on YouTube or use one of the “no equipment dorm room workouts” in your Health workbook. Find an exercise you enjoy! I’ll be including a walking/jogging plan as well as a “Couch to 5K” plan among your worksheets here. Let’s try and check off 15 items this week!
Weeks 4 and 5: Now you should really be in the groove of practicing healthy behaviors. Find your weak areas and work on them. My weak area is social wellness. I much prefer to stay home but I know that isn’t always good. So I committed to a book club that meets once a week. I enjoy it and know that I am getting some great social interaction as well. See if you can check off 20 items!
Week 6: Fine tune and adjust for maintenance! Now that you’ve added in several healthy behaviors make some small adjustments so that they will stick!!!! This week should feel almost easy as you continue to make health and wellness a priority. A good goal is to try and stay in a good “wellness pattern” 80% of the time. So this means that per week you should regularly be checking off at least 25 items.
Each week you will turn in a journal entry (provided here) along with your daily tracking sheets. Please don’t try and tell me what I want to hear in your journal responses. That isn’t the point. Your journal entries should reflect your struggles and accomplishments over the week. Where were you successful? Where did you fail? How can you change your environment to set yourself up for success next week? What was easy? What was hard? What did you like? Hate? Struggle with? Honesty with yourself and REAL self-reflection will allow for more success in the end and eventual change for the long term. Please understand that you will need to write thoughtful, detailed responses for each field. One or two sentence answers or bullet points are not acceptable and will result in a poor grade!
What if I screw up and fail my first week? Well, sometimes that happens but I want you to tell me why! What made you screw up? Did you stay up too late and miss class? Were you hung over and didn’t feel like exercising? Were you just lazy? Owning your mistakes and short-comings are the first step in over-coming them. Instead of lying to me and telling me you did great, be honest with me and yourself and figure out what to do in order to do better the next time.
What if I physically can’t exercise because of a medical condition or injury? Email me and we will figure something out.
What if I don’t like to meditate or do yoga? There are other ways to relax instead of meditation or yoga. What about simply sitting outside and closing your eyes? What about hanging out in your hammock? What about listening to music on your bed? Research some ways to relax. I think you’ll be able to find some activities you enjoy. The activity must be relaxing in nature….. it needs to slow you down, reduce your breathing and HR and act to return your body to homeostasis.