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