Chapter 3 Lecture

Developing a Healthy Lifestyle

What is Healthy?

  • Your health is dependent upon personal lifestyle choices as well as the following uncontrollable elements:

    • Genetics
    •  Environmental conditions
    • Technological developments of your country
    •  Gender
    • Ethnicity
    • Cultural issues
    • Age-specific risks
    • Potential for accidents

Life Expectancy

  • Many factors determine how long you live

  • Life expectancy provide researchers with statistical averages for tracking health concerns, but does not consider the “individual”

  • The average life expectancy for a person living in the U.S. is 78.7 years in 2010

  • The average life expectancy for women is 81.1 years

  • This average is nearly 5 years more than men
    U.S. 2020 census Links to an external site.

Leading Causes of Death for Women

  • Heart Disease - 25.1%
  • Cancer - 22/1%
  • Stroke - 6.7%
  • Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases - 5.5%
  • Alzheimer's - 4.3%
  • Unintentional Injuries - 3.6%
  • Diabetes - 2.9%
  • Influenza/Pneumonia - 2.3%
  • Kidney Disease - 2.0%
  • Septicemia - 1.6%

Whole Person Concept

  • Three important elements bring about your state of well-being:

    • Mind (psyche)
    • Body (physical status)
    • Spirit (philosophy about living for yourself and with others)

  • Two major categories of factors that influence your status as a whole person:

    • Endogenous factors (events that occur within you)
    • Exogenous factors (events that occur outside you)

Dimensions of Wellness/ Holistic Wellness Model

  • Wellness has been described as consisting of 6 major dimensions:

    • Physical
    • Social
    • Occupational
    • Intellectual
    • Spiritual
    • Emotional

World Wellness

  • There are 6 primary environmental issues for world wellness:

    • Air
    • Water
    • Energy
    • Food
    • Toxins
    • Nature

  • The world is referred to as Mother Earth, and is the earliest and strongest female archetype that exists for women. 

  • It is vital that issues of world health is not ignored compared to individual health

World Wellness For Women

  • The UN Fourth World Conference on Women (1995)

    • The Platform of Action was an agenda for women’s empowerment.

    • Critical areas of concern were:

      • The burden of poverty on women
      • Unequal access to education and training
      • Unequal access to health care
      • Violence against women
      • The effects of armed (or other) kinds of conflict on women
      • Inequality in economic structures and policies
      •  Inequality in the sharing of power and decision making
      • Etc...

Wellness vs. Illness

  • Health is viewed along a continuum of wellness to illness
  • Health intervention is the act of interfering to create change
  • Three forms of health interventions are:
    • Education (research and study)
    •  Prevention (avert occurrences of illness)
    • Treatment (decrease discomfort/increase health)

Learning and Behavior

  • Primary reinforcers can be positive, negative, and punishment

    • A Positive Reinforcer is rewarding the behavior
    • A Negative Reinforcer is the removal of something uncomfortable
    • A Punishment involves the presentation of something uncomfortable

  • Resistance to change is often a result of the existence of secondary reinforcers (interfering belief or value)

  • Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

  1. Basic Physiological Integrity
    • Body function
    • Respiration
    • Circulation
    • Nutrition
    • Elimination
    • Sleep
    • Activity
    • Rest
    • Comfort
  2. Safety and Security
    • Sensory function
    • Environmental safety
    • Legal and economic protection
  3. Belonging and Love
    • Communications
    • Relationships (intimates, family, friends, groups, communities)
    • Sexuality
  4. Ego-Strength and Self-Esteem
    • Effective coping
    • Intelligence
    • Maintaining autonomy and control
    • Assertiveness
    • Transitional states
    • Culture of cohorts
  5. Self-Actualization and Fulfillment
    • Enrichment
    • Adaptive flexibility
    • Life patterns
    • Creativity
    • Legacies and transcendence
    • Recreation and leisure

Theories and Models of Health Behavior Change

  • The Transtheoretical Model

    • Multicomponent stage model consisting of 5 stages

  • Theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Action

    • 3 primary concepts that can affect behavior change

  • Self-Efficacy

    • Conviction that you can change behavior based on your actions

Planning Your Lifestyle Change

  • Managing lifestyle changes can occur through a self-help plan which involves 3 steps:

    • Personal Inventory (evaluation of personal health)
    • Helpful Attitude (consider this a permanent change that promotes realism)
    • Plan of Action
      • Assessing behavior
      •  Setting specific goals (behavioral contract)
      • Formulating intervention strategies
      • Evaluating progress