To achieve a goal takes careful consideration planning and motivation. For at least the past year I have told myself that I would like to better my physical wellness, however, I stayed in the contemplation phase and neglected to start on the journey up until June. Something as simple as writing down goals for the previous assignment helped to manifest the start of progressing toward my goals. My two goals focused on improving my food choices and integrating more fruits and vegetables into my daily diet and also to incorporate exercise into my daily routine. One major factor that played a role in starting to work toward the goals I made was living on my own for the first time, in this setting, I am the one accountable for how I structure my day and also what food I bring into my apartment and limit on going out for unhealthy snacks or fast food. Another factor that helped was including my friends in on my plan and make connections with those that already exercise and have gym memberships to have a buddy to motivate me to go. I have never had a gym membership so at the beginning of this goal I was attempting to incorporate aerobic exercises that required limited equipment, but this wasn’t the best fit for me after experimenting. Finding out what strategies work for me was an important learning curve and I believe now I am on the right track and plan to continue on my path of working on completing these goals and then setting new ones that align with my abilities at that time.
My first goal was to improve my overall wellness by integrating more fruits and vegetables daily and to eat more mindfully. By the end of the summer semester, I will have integrated 3 or more servings of fruits and vegetables into my daily food intake. Starting this program directly after finishing undergrad into a new apartment by myself just transferred my eating patterns. Not knowing how to cook many things, therefore eating the same things for several meals throughout the week that would often include high amounts of simple carbohydrates, sodium, and excess sugars. Being at home more often because of COVID-19 has made me curious about using my kitchen more and learning how to cook things that interest me that I typically would only order at a restaurant. This spark has allowed me to make a plan before going into a supermarket and include foods that I know I will eat and that fit my goal of including 3 servings of fruits and vegetables each day. When I have access to a kitchen, my breakfast plan has stayed the same over the past couple of years but with this goal, I made some tweaks. Each morning I eat one egg over easy on a whole wheat light English muffin with seasoning and a full peach. Keeping this meal in my routine makes it easy to plan to shop and always tastes good and keeps me happy. For lunch, I found was the place where I often used to not eat the healthiest, so this was the area to improve the most and still somewhat challenges me. Some options that I have come up with are chicken salad sandwiches, baked chicken with steamed vegetables, steak fajita salad, and a couple of others. Planning out my meals in the morning also helps me to visualize and plan out that I need to eat a certain meal and don’t grab snacks instead. For snacks, throughout the day I include strawberries, light popcorn, and wholegrain pretzels, and guacamole. Dinners weren’t the problem area for me, so I stay consistent with having a serving of vegetables with protein. One way I found was fun to incorporate vegetables into my meals was a vegetable version of pasta, like cauliflower gnocchi or zucchini noodles. To stay on track with my plan I try to incorporate at least one meal a week that I tell myself not to be upset about like getting pizza or a burger and fries at a restaurant. Being able to balance out the rest of my meals is doable when you can look forward to something.
My second goal was to improve physical wellness by planning out aerobic exercises more regularly. By the end of the summer semester, I will have integrated at least 3 aerobic exercises into my weekly schedule to help towards maintaining a more ideal body weight. I am very proud of myself for the progress I have made on this goal. At the beginning of making this goal, I was doing outdoor walks on trails like Back Cove and Scarborough marsh, however, I was inconsistent maybe doing them once or twice a week. Two weeks ago, I made the decision to get a gym membership to Planet Fitness and have been going every day except one day and completing some cardio, core, and strength exercises each time. I was quite intimidated since I had never had a gym membership before, never utilized the free gyms on the Biddeford campus as an undergrad there but pushed myself to try this. I started going initially with a previous classmate and she showed me around and a general workout flow to try to follow and now I have been going alone for well over the past week. I look at my class schedule and homework schedule for the day and decide on a time to go wherever it fits in and both me and others have noticed a start of a difference in my appearance and I can’t wait to continue. If there’s ever a day in the gym that I feel myself getting more tired and can’t finish what I planned to accomplish then I pick a middle ground in the distance goal and achieve that instead. Paying for membership also plays a role in motivating me to go and also, I know that if I try to do a workout at home, I won’t get the same satisfaction in myself as if I went to the gym.
Prochaska’s transtheoretical model is a way for individuals to recognize what stage of making a change they are currently in. The stages each outline the likelihood that the person is going to make the change starting with precontemplation up to termination when the change has occurred and relapse will not occur (Prochaska, Redding, 2015, p.125). This model is useful to determine where in the cycle of change a person may fall recognizing that it is possible to go back and forth between the stages before completing a goal. With the two goals that I had made for this course, when I made the goals, I was in the preparation stage since I had wanted to make a change for some time but never took the leap and committed to it. Currently, I am in the action stage and will be for a while, at least 6 months, before reaching the maintenance stage before they become habits. I never thought that I would be successful in starting these goals based on previous health tendencies I had in the past, but I couldn’t be happier that this assignment has started me on my journey to improving my physical and mental wellness.
