We know we should eat a balanced diet, stop smoking, have at least two alcohol free nights a week and increase our level of exercise. We know what lifestyle options are better for our health and wellbeing, only sometimes it is really hard to make these health choices and changes. Or is it? Following are some guidelines about the influences and barriers that we all face when we want to make changes and some strategies on how to make these changes. Hopefully, reading this will make forming healthier lifestyle habits a whole lot easier!

What are the influences on our lifestyles?

In order to make changes we need to understand what influences our behaviour, how we function as individuals, what aspects of our environment can be used to support change and who can we turn to, to support these goals. In reality, for behaviour to change, we need to set up our lives to support this change.

What influences our thoughts, feelings and behaviours?

Many factors will influence how easy it is to make changes towards a healthier lifestyle.

Genetics

If you have a family history of certain health-related problems, like heart disease or breast cancer, then this may provide you with real inspiration to eat a balanced diet and exercise.

You may have been born with a health problem and so have always been aware of what is the best lifestyle for you. However, even though we know we have inherited certain risks, this doesn’t always make us do what is best for our health!

How can this be when we know the consequences are so serious?

Because we are human we often need more to motivate us to sustain healthier alternatives than fear. We may think ‘It won’t happen to me’, ‘I am not that overweight’, or ‘A few drinks every night won’t hurt!’

Personality

Personality also influences how well we are able to make healthier choices. Someone who is outgoing, active and motivated will be more likely to sustain changes to their lifestyle than someone who would rather stay indoors and stick to their routine. Some of us get bored easily and need variety, while others don’t like change.

Way of thinking

The way that we think also has a huge impact on motivation. If we only think in black or white, good or bad, then it becomes hard to find balance in our lives. For example, if you have this ‘all or nothing’ thinking pattern, you may swing from diets that cause you to starve yourself and then turn to bingeing. If you find that you are a more emotional and sensitive person, then perhaps this influences how much you turn to food, alcohol or drugs, particularly as a comfort when you feel challenged. We know that people who are depressed can put on a lot of weight, or alternatively they find it difficult to eat and see their weight drop below a healthy range.

Support

Support is vital to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. For instance, we know that people who have a supportive social network are less likely to suffer depression, stress and heart disease. This seems to work in two ways. On the one hand having people who care for you and nurture you is generally good for your wellbeing. It makes you feel good about yourself. Having support also means that there is someone to talk to, offload to or seek help from, when you are trying to make changes in your lifestyle. They may provide you with words of encouragement, divert your attention, boost your self-esteem, or they may give you strategies to call on should you need. Support can come from friends, family, partner, children, health professionals, counsellors and also from your own inner reserve (if there is any left!). Of course sometimes people who should be supportive can sabotage our best efforts. It may be helpful to think about the people in your life who you turn to for support and ask yourself “Do they have my best interests in mind?”

How to make changes to lifestyle

Having looked at what influences our lifestyle choices, we now need to work out how to make changes. Only you can make changes to your lifestyle, no one else can do it for you. Other people may suggest healthier alternatives, but only YOU can put these in to practice. To make these changes it is helpful to understand a little bit more about yourself, what motivates you, your goals, and what has happened in the past when you have tried to make changes in your life. Think about the following questions. Remember, it is important to be as honest with your answers as possible.

What needs to change?

The first step in making healthier choices in your life is to identify the areas that need to be changed. Ask yourself:

•  Am I overweight, do I drink too much, smoke, take drugs (prescription and non prescription) or need to exercise?

• Am I compromising my health in any way?

• Are there health related risks in my family background that I could prevent by making healthier choices in my lifestyle?

Once you know what needs changing then you can start thinking of ways to make this happen. What has stopped you or allowed you to make changes in the past? It is helpful to understand more about how you operate in your world. Ask yourself:

• What motivated me in the past to make changes?

• What happened in the past to stop me participating in healthy behaviours? For example, like exercising or taking up smoking/drinking again.

• What are my expectations in changing to a healthier lifestyle?

• What are my fears about making changes to my present lifestyle?

When you understand what has been helpful and what has hindered change in the past, it is important to put the helpful influences into place (if possible). If you have certain fears about making changes then you may need to explore these further and/or seek guidance and support.

What are your goals?

Okay, so you know what needs to be changed and you are also more aware of your expectations and what helps to motivate you. Now it is helpful to understand what goals you have in relation to your health and to your life.

What do you want to achieve by making these changes?

Ask yourself:

• What are my short-term goals in relation to my health? For example, to feel better about myself, to have more energy, to decrease my risk of illness.

• What are my long-term goals in relation to my health? For example, to decrease my risk of illness, to increase my life expectancy, to have more quality time with my family and friends.

• What are my short-term goals in relation to my overall life? For example, to go on a holiday within six months, to take up yoga, to eat more vegetables.

• What are my long-term goals? For example, to sell my house and move to a quieter, more peaceful area, to complete my adult education course.

Write a list of your short and long term goals. Date the list so that you can refer to it in future. You may find that to achieve your overall life goals you need to fulfil your goals of having a healthier lifestyle. Or you may find that, in fact, your goals for your health and for your life are the same.

Am I ready?

If you are not ready for change then it will be very difficult to make sustainable changes. I don’t pretend that any of the earlier questions are easy to answer. It is difficult to know what you want to do in the future and it is difficult, sometimes, to know what will happen to your health. The next question however, is probably one of the most difficult ones to answer.

‘Am I really ready for change?’

If you are not really ready to change, then it will be really difficult to maintain any changes that you try. Some people will say ‘I have tried diets before, but I didn’t really have my heart in it. ’Or they may say ‘I wanted to give up smoking but I did it at a time when my kids were leaving home, my husband retired and I had to look after my mum.’

Then others will say ‘ the time was right and I knew this time I had to put all my energies into quitting otherwise my health was really going to deteriorate’. Think very carefully about whether you are ready for change and whether your life is set up to support this change. When you are truly ready for change, change becomes so much easier.

Support

I have talked about the influence of support on making changes to your lifestyle, now it is important to ask yourself about the supports that you have in your life at this time. Ask yourself:

• Who can I turn to, to support any changes I make to my lifestyle?

• Where else can I get support to make these changes? For example: a medical practitioner, psychologist, support group, a friend or group of friends, education course or community health centre.

Unhelpful ways of thinking

Unhelpful ways of thinking influence our ability to make changes. We all have unhelpful ways of thinking. For instance, it is easy to think you have ruined your chances of ever losing weight because you slipped and ate that chocolate bar, cream cake and/or bag of chips! It is easy to think that you are to blame for all the little things that go wrong, that you will never be happy with your body anyway, so what does it matter if you are overweight! What this kind of thinking does, however, is make you feel negative, depressed and often anxious. How often do we say ‘I should have said this…’ or ‘I should have done this’? We don’t realise how many rules we carry in our head that guide our life and make us frustrated and anxious when we don’t follow through.

The following are examples of thinking distortions. It is helpful to acknowledge the ones that you do and think of ways to challenge yourself when you think this way in the future.

• ‘Black or white/all or nothing’ thinking – there is no grey, just good or bad – ‘I eat everything in sight, I can’t be trusted around food ever’.

• Catastrophising – the worst possible thing will happen – ‘It will end in disaster I know it. I could never ever cope without alcohol’.

• Personalising – it’s always your fault – ‘I can’t get anything right’.

• Negativity – you focus on the negatives and/or the weaknesses; there are no positives – ‘I fail more times than I get it right’.

• Jumping to Conclusions – predicting the future and it’s bad – ‘I know I will fail’.

• Rules like Should and Shouldn’t – you have fixed rules that include words like should, must, can’t – ‘I shouldn’t have had that cigarette’.

If you can identify the ways that you think that are unhelpful, then you are half way there to doing something about them. Try and catch yourself when you think in an unhelpful way and challenge yourself: ‘I don’t really eat everything in sight’; ‘I do get things right sometimes’; ‘I can think of times when I have been stressed and I haven’t reached for a drink’.

Where to from here?

The above questions may help you identify the areas that need change and ways to help change take place. At the end of the day any changes you make are really up to you. The way we think, feel and behave involves many complex processes that are influenced by many factors. Consequently the quick fix solutions won’t work. Take change one step at a time and don’t be too disheartened if you take a step backward every now and again. As long as you progress generally in the direction towards healthier choices then you are a long way from where you started – from the unhealthy to the healthier! If you need further support it is important that you seek help and information from the many people who are out there to help you, like general practitioners, specialists, psychologists, nurses and registered support groups.

The Jean Hailes Foundation magazine is designed to be informative and educational. It is not intended that The Jean Hailes Foundation magazine provide specific medical advice or replace advice from your health professional. The Jean Hailes Foundation does not accept any liability to any person for the information or advice (or the use of information or advice) which is provided in this magazine or incorporated into it by reference. Information is provided on the basis that all persons reading the magazine undertake responsibility for assessing the relevance and accuracy of its content. 

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Note: This article is an archive. Whilst the Jean Hailes Foundation for Women’s Health has made every effort to ensure this information was accurate at the time of publication, the article content has not been updated since the date listed below. 

Content March 21, 2004