Behavior Change Reflection

Can Sleep Impact One’s Health: A Behavior Change Reflection

Modifying any behavior is not an elementary task. For the majority of human beings, making a change to benefit your health requires patience and effort daily to achieve results. In fact, research shows that it takes an average of “3 to 5 times before most people will attempt to change an unhealthy behavior before succeeding” (Donatelle 2013). At the beginning of the course when I was considering the various behaviors to alter I considered two behaviors that affected my health the greatest. Unlike Americans that struggle with poor eating habits (poor nutrition), excessive alcohol consumption, and tobacco use, the behaviors that I struggled with was exercise and sleep patterns.

In week 1, I was successful for five out of the seven days. The first week appeared to be a learning process for me. I was not successful for two out of the seven days because I had to carve out time out of my schedule to make time to exercise. I noticed that I struggled with making time to exercise due to my homework and various obligations. I also discovered that a strategy that helped me during the seven weeks was having someone to exercise with or in other words, an accountability partner. In week 2, I was successful for the same amount of days, five out of the seven. In week 2, I noticed I kept a similar pattern to the previous week’s schedule. However, I identified barriers that I encountered (not planning, not having enough time, not having a partner to exercise with every day, and having a migraine), but realized my weaknesses and habits and made an effort to change them. I had a partner for the five out of the seven days. Although the process of making the changes in week 2 were difficult, my determination paid off and I was successful for four days in a row. In week 3, I was successful for six out of the seven days. By the time I reached week 3 and combated my barriers of not having enough time and not having an exercise partner, I discovered a new barrier which was I began to struggle with going to bed on Saturdays because I would do homework late at night and lose track of time. However, I combated this barrier by setting an alarm to make sure I went to bed at my scheduled time. In week 4, I made significant process in my week’s sleep schedule and was successful for all seven days. This was the first week I didn't slip up, even on a Saturday. From the previous week (as I stated above), I noticed the pattern of Saturdays being an issue for me staying on track of my sleep schedule, so I implemented the use of an alarm to keep track of my time.