How to Eat Healthy, Stress Less, and Walk More

How to Eat Healthy, Stress Less, and Walk More

Eating Healthier

When I study, I tend to eat a lot of junk food that sits around in my room because there are no healthy options. I especially love brownies and chocolate

when I’m stressed.

If I create barrier to obtaining junk food and increase my ability

access to healthy foods, will it cause a behavior change?

How I might change the Environment

Changes Made:Increasing ability

- Plugged in fridge, cleaned it- Stocked it up with healthier foods that

were easy to prepareDecreasing ability

- Took all of my junk food and put it in a cabinet out of sight

- Taped up cabinet and put motivating message on it

Decreasing Stress

Changes Made:Creating a Trigger

- My bed is on the floor with my bed frame over it. As an anchor every night, I get into bed. I placed a curtain blocking my bed as a reminder that I need to sit on top before I can pull up the sheet and sleep. Increasing ability

- Set up place on my bed frame that is ready to go for comfort and sitting

How I might change the Environment

Set up to create a ready-made environment by the

end of the night

Trigger

Walking More

Day 1: Reducing Alternative Behavior Triggers

I placed my bike somewhere else by my dorm to put it out of sight, and to make the time cost of getting it outweigh the time taking to walk to my destination.

Day 2: Unfortunately out of sight didn’t mean out of mind

Biking was still an alternative because it was near in my mind. The time I would save later in the day between classes biking made it such that the time saved throughout the day was worth getting my bike.

I placed it back at my dorm at the end of the day and told myself I wouldn’t ride it. I wanted to go somewhere at night on campus. I then used this as an excuse to ride it instead of walk.

Day 3: Eliminating Triggers for alternatives

I called a friend and lent my bike to her for the upcoming week to eliminate biking as an alternative. My Longboard also went into my top closet shelf, as to remind me of my goals. I would do the ‘uphill’ task because it was now easier then overcoming the barriers to retrieve my bike and longboard. A wise choice, because I ended up running a marathon that weekend. When I came back, my motivation tanked with my soreness. I discovered that it was kind of cool to walk. If I can walk then, I can walk anytime.

Day 4: Increasing Ability

I needed to make larger efforts to wake up earlier or to leave class on time in order to make it to my next meeting. I changed my alarm time and started to gage the amount of time necessary to walk places. My ability to arrive on time improved with my practice.

Day 6: Walking is gaining some sort of attraction for me, comparable to biking. Whoa.

I can see the benefits and kind of like it. I call my family membersFriends stop to walk with me oftenI can listen to musicI get to slow down my dayI get to reflect on what I’ve learnedI get a few moments to myself in this face

paced environmentI feel better after a walk…..

I’m still learning about why I could like this form of transportation better than my alternatives.

The most successful ones were the ones that manipulated with ability

(associated with behavior and alternatives to behavior).

Success: Eating healthier, and walking more

In creating a new trigger for the meditation, I became desensitized to the triggers meaning after a few failures at the task. More

alterations and clearer triggers would be necessary to accomplish the task