This essay discusses the health behavior I want to change. To begin with, I will be demonstrating the goals that will help me to achieve the changes I want and also state the pros and cons that will result from the behavior change (Camit, Noble, and Algie 2009).The next thing I want to put in the record the impact the behavior change will bring on my health and lifestyle as well as measure the progress every at the end of every other week. I will also reflect on my behavior change journey by use of literature review and other available sources from the University of Wollongong library sources.
Smoking is the act of inhaling the smoke of tobacco substances from a burning pipe, cigarette, and cigars and it is possible to quit the behavior (Zwar, Mendelsohn and Richmond 2014).I have done smoking for at least eight years up to now. Therefore, I have decided to adjust to health behavioral change to be able totally quit the smoking habit. Continuous smoking habit put peoples’ lives at risk of contracting dangerous diseases associated with brain functioning (Battisti et al. 2010) and (Camit, Noble and Algie 2009).Smoke fr, om burning bushes also has negative implications for human health which makes people get admissions in hospitals due to prolonged inhalation of smoke substances (Martin et al. 2013).
Understanding what I will do to achieve the desired health behavioral change is very important. According to Zwar, Mendelsohn and Richmond 2014, “the chances of successfully quitting are maximized if the patient receives behavioral support combined with drug treatment if nicotine-dependent”.Quitting cigarette smoking in few weeks will help the body to start looking healthier (Moxham, Dwyer and Reid-Searl 2013). In order to quit smoking effectively, I decided to set short-term and long-term goals to achieve the desired result. My short-term goal was to reduce the number of cigarettes I smoke daily at least by two from current 6 cigarettes a day (Chan et al. 2012).
I decided to follow Australian Tobacco dependence guidelines for health professionals which suggest two ways of quitting: making an attempt to quit and/ or setting a quit date and maintaining abstinence. In addition, increased taking soft drinks, vegetables, salty snacks and vitamin C rich foods which help the body to feel energized and refreshed (Dooley, Jones, and Desmarais, K., 2009).
The physical effects of quitting smoking do not appear immediately to some people but internal body changes can be felt some with positive and others negative impacts. During my quitting of smoking, I started experiencing a temporary respiratory problem which involved sharp chest pains, coughing, and flu-like symptoms. Many times I would miss the sleep, feel a sudden change in moods such as feeling depressed, mood swings and anxiety. My body started to gain weight due to an increased appetite for food, which is sometimes doubted by many people that cigarette smoking does not control weight gain.This was just a way of body attempt to clear itself from the habit. I was worried and went to seek medical check-up (Kelly et al. 2012).
From the fact that I had lost my sense of smell and taste, after quitting smoking, I realized a heightened sense of taste and smell in two days after quitting. This was due to the healing of damaged nerve endings which are responsible for senses and smell (Harrison and Robson 2011).
Negative health effects caused by smoking behavior is the among the world’s leading cause of preventable death. There are approximately 30% of all cancer deaths around the world caused by smoking and tobacco use with lung cancer deaths accounting to 90%.
There are approximately 174,000 cancer deaths from tobacco use every year (Atlanta 2013).
If I don’t quit smoking and continue with my current behavior, I may be at high risk of developing the above preventable illness and death. “Quitting smoking will benefit my health by preventing problems like lung and other cancers, heart disease, and stroke.” (Walker et al. 2014.).
Moreover quitting smoking will improve my self-esteem; reduce wrinkles, body image, and improved quality of life (McElwaine et al. 2011). Social groups a smoker is attached to, staying idle, exposure to cigarette advertisements and lack of information on health benefit of quitting smoking are some few factors that encourage smoking behavior (Ingram et al. 2017).
This table describes my costs and benefits of quitting cigarette smoking.
Costs Benefits
Avoiding social groups that are encouraging the smoking behavior. No exchange of cigarette from one person to another.
Keeping myself busy and engaged at all times. Help in avoiding forgetting the behavior.
Time off from television and radio to avoid cigarettes advertisements. Increase my chances of cessation hence.
Cost of information on health benefit of quitting the smoking habit. Helps to Socialize with people. Can encourage quitting and boost self-esteem.
Week 1
(20/01/2018 to 26/01/2018) Short-term and long-term goals were set. The dietary plan includes milk which reduces taste for a cigarette, snacks with a lot of salt which will help in reducing nicotine, vegetables (celery, carrots, eggplant, squash, and cucumbers) to help in keeping my mouth busy, and foods rich in vitamin C to reduce craving for cigarettes. After using milk before smoking, the cigarette tasted unappealing and boring
Week 2
(27/01/2018 to 03/02/2018) Change milk with food rich in vitamins C, having drinks, salty snacks and started keeping myself busy with school assignments for more than 45 minutes. I joined subject discussion groups which kept me on busy.
Week 3
(04/02/2018 to 09/02/2018) 30 min information search online about quitting testimonies esp. YouTube videos. I watched YouTube videos on effects of smoking on my body and I was shocked. I managed to smoke one cigarette a day.
Week 4
(10/02/2018 to 16/02/2018) Average cigarettes smoking went down to 1 or just a puff in a day. I forgot to smoke when I came from subject group discussion or felt it was not important to smoke. At this point, I felt motivated to set a full quit date.
Week 5
(27/02/2018 to 02/03/2018) Continue attending group discussion for 30 min daily after classes, increase my personal readings. Avoided peer smokers completely. I checked on my smoking behavior and realized good progress. I remembered reducing my cigarette smoking to almost 2 in a day.
Week 6
(08/03/2018 to 14/03/2018) Reduced number of smoking in a day to one attempt or not smoking at all. Continued with soft drinks and vitamin C rich foods intake. There is a substantial improvement in health and brain alertness. I can now feel more energetic and jovial. My social life has boosted my self-esteem and confidence. My appetite for food went up.
I began the journey of health behavioral change with the fears of risky illness that causes death or dangerous preventable diseases (Martin et al. 2013). I yearned to increase my self-confidence and increase my brain alertness as well as improve my academic performance (Clarke et al. 2009). In my short term goals was to avoid smoking more than 4 cigarettes in a day for a period of 6 weeks, to reduce the number of cigarette to 2 in 6 weeks, and by the next 6 months quit smoking completely (Gordon 2013). I tried to use food rich in Vitamin C which restores those consumed by smoking as well as reduces craving for a cigarette. Milk was also important to help me feel bad when smoking after taking milk (Kelly et al. 2011).
In addition to dietary plans, I also included information search to enhance my knowledge on the ways to reduce my smoking and benefit of quitting the behavior on my body health, self-esteem and academic performance (Lee et al. 2013). As part of the activity, I engaged with subject discussion groups for 30 minutes daily to avoid being idle as well as creating time for personal studies and lower my risk of engaging in smoking (Barrie et al. 2015). I also avoided any television or radio advertisement on cigarettes after realizing cigarette smoking behavior has been linked to frequent exposure to cigarette advertisements (Moxham Dwyer and Reid-Searl 2013).
Furthermore, I put my effort in reducing my cigarette smoking by 2 in the first5 weeks by searching information on YouTube on health benefit of quitting smoking because the literature suggests that quitting smoking can be done gradually by suggesting positive health-related benefiting few weeks for people with high amount of nicotine (Kelly et al. 2012). It was motivating how I managed to reduce the number of cigarettes I smoked to 2 per day.
Besides, studies show that Associate Professor Stuart Johnstone developed “the interactive gaming app NoGo, which is currently being tried in adolescents and adults in the Illawarra, is the brainchild of UOW psychologist”.“This approach could easily be adapted to help people quit smoking, as part of a treatment program, and we intend to examine that application in the future.” Frequent reduction in a number of cigarette sticks motivated me to set a quit date due to getting more and more engaged in productive activities (Hoek and Jones 2011).
The most rewarding choice I made and brought a lot of positive feedback was joining subject group discussions in school and creating more time for personal studies. The interactive gaming app NoGodeveloped by Associate professor Stuart Johnstone has helped in a bigger way to train my brain on how to quite the behavior (Stephen, Mcinnesand Halcomb, 2018). Fortunately, the university has all the time internet access that gives an opportunity to get the right information required on issues concerning behavioral change (Ghorai et al. 2014).
The other supporting method I have used in dealing with the irresponsible behavior was the Volitional help sheet. This sheet contains ‘situations and solutions’ and is a low-cost approach specified tool used to achieve desired results (McElwaine et al. 2013). This helped my situations such as when am tempted to have one or two cigarettes because of their availability, I try to go away from that location. In the same way, I feel to smoke while I am free, I remember dangers associated with the smoking including illness such as cancer and death. And I had to learn to say no to the peer smokers who could try giving the cigarette even when I felt a craving for it (Armitage et al., 2014).
The literature suggests the use of mobile phones (mHealth) for smoking cessation Programs which “transforms healthcare delivery around the world due to its affordability and right
time availability” (Magor?Blatch and Rugendyke 2016).
I applied for the mHealth cessation programs in my behavioral journey like SMS subscription for informational mass weekly-updates and found it better to help achieve the desired positive behavior. “Mobile phones have been proven effective in delivering interventions for various diseases and health conditions” (Mccosker, Zainuddin and Tam 2014 ). The method motivated me to continue trying to change my behavior through sending of motivational messages to my phone. “Various online smoking cessation interventions have proven to be effective as well. They provide distraction through games and videos besides sending motivational messages through emails” (Zhu et al. 2017).
Using these method interventions, however, I stopped reading the motivational messages and unsubscribed, this was as a result of not being on the web all the time due to limited access to a smartphone, and few or limited sources of an intervention designed in this platform (Palipudi et al. Group, 2012). In other circumstances, I found it very expensive to use mHealth cessation mobile services because governments’ restriction makes companies sell those (SMS) too expensive (Kariippanon et al. 2015).
According toPalipudi et al. 2012, large numbers of smokers plan to quit smoking in developing countries like Bangladesh and India is 68% and 47% respectively. There is premature death in India with studies showing that there are 38.4% of smokers, 38.3 men and 38.9 women smokers have tried to quit. Australia has 4.5 million smokers with 3 million wanting to quit and other about one million trying to quit every year (Wilson et al. 2016). Therefore mobile phones can act as a link even to the most remote areas to extend health care support and services (Feros et al. 2013).
It is said that there are two most important times in your quitting. One of them is during preparation to quit and after you quit. Here it is suggested that individuals must couch the reasons they want to quit in positive terms such as instead of “, When I stop smoking, I will stop looking old”, couch it like “, As a non-smoker, I will always look younger”. In my case, I decided to write my couch my statement on my reasons to quit as, “Non-smokers look healthy and alert all the time”. This approach and coaching statements helped to remain positive in my journey of ensuring that I achieve the intended health goal. I also decided to buy myself most expensive things to reward myself.
In regards to this, I strongly believe that the methods used in the theory of planned behavior (planning, past behavior, interactions, number of cigarettes smoked and predictive power of future orientation) can help someone struggling with drug abuse disorders to change their behavior. The possibility of managing this behavior is psychological treatment in which rewards are physical look and couches are provided for achieving the desired behavior.The result here will be an improvement in self-motivation as this will only be personal behavior change achievements (Freeman et al. 2015.). Therefore contingency management is the best way to help individuals with substance use disorder.
Similarly, individuals with substance abuse disorder can be assisted through an early intervention such as those with moderate to mild substance use disorders, treated with general health care. Those who are severely on substance abuse disorders needs special treatments attention (McDermott et al. 2016).
In addition, some activities like group discussion can help individuals stay away from their bad behaviors as they reflect on the future desired behavior. Group discussion includes those activities that can keep you engaged mentally so that you do not have to remember things that you do not intend to (Oinas-Kukkonen, Win, and Chatterjee2016, January). Group discussion group discussion enhances self-esteem and feeling of attachment to a relationship with individual group members and this helps in avoiding loneliness (Win, Oinas-Kukkonen, and Iyengar2017).
Present studies have recommended the use of promotional programs to help smokers develop and know their will-power in regards to non-smoking of cigarettes as well as be informed of the required effort to modify smoking habits. Modification of behavior is an important element for the treatment of substance abuse disorders. A person ready to change from substance abuse disorder indicates a desire and ready commitment to the process of change(Glover et al. 2015). The readiness to pursue treatment is the inspiration to people with the substance use disorder. There are many who want to quite from substance abuse but fear that there will be no different in their effort so they remain in the drugs consumption. Such cases become challenging and other methods can be applied to help them.
Conclusion:
Throughout this process, it has come to my knowledge that, if a person is ready to identify a life-threatening behavior they are likely to change it. I was able to identify the perils associated with cigarette smoking and decided to apply health behavior change to help myself from contracting the smoking-related illness and was kept motivated by my desire to have healthy body and mind. I have realized that it is possible to change even behaviors that seemed impossible for ages if a person feels it is important to keep on the check. I have also noticed that I can apply my knowledge I got from the process to help an individual so much willing to cease unhealthy behavior.
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