Call for your Health

1. Health is a constantly changing state of being that moves along a continuum from optimal health to premature death and is affected by an individual’s attitudes and activities.
2. Wellness means to engage in activities and behaviors that enhance quality of life and maximize personal potential by consistent balancing of physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and social health.
3. Living a wellness lifestyle facilitates the development of health-related fitness, which includes cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength, flexibility, and desirable body composition.
4. Lifestyle diseases represent the major threat to health and quality of life among Americans.
5. Personal motivation is the only way a person can adopt and maintain a wellness lifestyle. This motivation can be affected by family members and social pressure.
6. For change to occur, knowledge alone is insufficient. Attitudes and beliefs are the catalysts of behavior change because the more highly a health benefit is valued, the greater the chance of making a change and adhering to it.
7. An external locus of control is a belief that the factors controlling people’s lives are outside the people themselves and thus beyond their control. An internal locus of control is a belief in which people view themselves as being in control.
8. Self-efficacy refers to the beliefs people have in their ability to accomplish a specific task or behavior. These beliefs specifically affect ability to perform and achieve. A strong sense of self efficacy is central to self-regulation.
9. Many Americans now believe that it is possible to control many health-promoting and health inhibiting behaviors.
10. The discrepancy between health knowledge and health behavior is greatest among young adults.
11. Lifestyle change is one of the most pervasive human endeavors.
12. A fundamental belief in lifestyle-change programs is that health behavior is a learned response and therefore can be changed.
13. Health behavior is influenced by many complex forces, including family, role models, social pressure, advertising, and psychological needs.
14. The four steps in a lifestyle-change program are assessing behavior, setting specific and realistic goals, formulating intervention strategies, and evaluating progress.
15. Intervention strategies used in lifestyle change include behavioral contracts, stimulus control, positive and negative reinforcers, support groups, and behavior substitution.
16. Lifestyle change should be viewed as a learning experience rather than a test of willpower.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 4:36 am and is filed under Health and Wellness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.