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Weight Management: Putting Awareness
into Action
by
Dr. Sonja Benson
Whenever you make change in behavior
patterns in your life, there are 6 basic steps:
1) awareness-becoming
conscious of the pattern or issue,
2)
acknowledgement-admitting you need to make a change,
3) choice-actively deciding
to make change,
4) strategy-creating a
realistic plan,
5) commitment-taking
action,
6) celebration-reward
yourself for your successes.
As
you are working toward making behavior change, it is important to be
gentle with yourself. Too often, people are overly hard on themselves
in the early phases of change, especially if there are any set backs or
progress isn’t moving as quickly as one would like. However, you will
ultimately be more successful if you treat yourself like a good friend
and stop beating up on yourself. Taking smaller steps and tackling one
component of change at a time will also increase your likelihood of
success.
Behavior follows basic steps in
development of habit. A cue or trigger occurs which leads to the
behavior itself which is then followed by some kind of
reinforcement; the entire process creates a habit or behavior
cycle. Understanding each piece of the process is important to making a
change in the habit or cycle. Within the “cue” or “trigger” component,
you need to ask yourself “What happened? What are the circumstances
leading to a behavior?” The behavior in this case is eating for the
wrong reasons or overeating. The reinforcer is the payoff and you need
to ask yourself “Why did I believe that behavior was good in this
situation? Why will I be likely to repeat the behavior?”
Here is an example to get you started:
Cue = “I had a fight with my partner”, Behavior = “ I went for ice
cream”, Reinforcer = “I felt comforted.” To add to this sequence and
to make change, the next steps are to identify the negative
consequences and the positive alternatives.
Using the example above; negative consequence = “I feel bad about my
lack of self control. I keep gaining weight.”, positive alternative = “
I talk to my friends or my partner about the fight to resolve my
emotions.” OR “I exercise to release some of the physical tension the
fight produced.” Practice identifying your cycles of behavior related
to the reasons you eat (from last week). Use a worksheet to identify:
Cue:
Behavior:
Reinforcer:
Negative
Consequence:
Positive
Alternative:
As
you move forward in your behavior changes toward weight management, keep
in mind these relapse prevention ideas. A lapse in behavior does not
inevitably mean a relapse. Notice little changes in your mood &
behavior. Listen to others’ input-their reactions to us can give us
information about our own behavior or feelings. Identify your urges and
outlast them. Don’t overreact to situations or to lapse behaviors.
Continue to reward your successes in big and small ways.
Copyright
©
2006 by Sonja Benson, Ph.D.
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