Stages Of Change Model Essay, Research Paper
I came upon this article in Nutrition Toady Volume 31 #4 from August
1996. Nutrition Today isn^?t quite the magazine you would find me reading,
but to tell you the truth this article interested me greatly. The author is
a
lady who has a nutritional doctorate. This article includes many claims
about what it takes physically and mentally to eat right and keep a healthy
body weight, but at the same time it proves those claims with many facts.
The big question is if dietary behavior change is difficult, how can
health and nutrition professionals effectively intervene. The author uses
the Stages of Change Model as proposed by Prochaska and Colleagues for
addictive behaviors consists of six dynamic stages. The six stages are:
Precontemplation, Contemplation, preparation, action maintenance, and
termination. Precontemplation is when an individual is not considering
making any changes. Contemplation is the time when an individual is
aware there is a problem and is considering taking action to resolve it.
Preparation refers to the time when an individual commits to taking action
sometime within the next 30 days. Action is the busiest time. There are
noticeable efforts to change the targeted behavior. Maintenance is the
stage when a person tries to stabilize the behavior change and prevent
relapse. Termination is the final stage, this occurs when there is zero
temptation to revert back to the old behavior. Now the author uses these
six stages to relate it to dietary habits and how people can use this process
in their lives and make them become aware how to fix their dietary
problems and even problems beyond that.
In this article the author says, and I quote ^?This model may be useful
for
nutrition and health professionals in both clinical and community settings.
It
can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational intervention.
As a result of reading this article I became more aware of myself and
what to look for when getting into bad habits. I would recommend this
article to anybody