Behavior change through exercise: personal weight loss outcomes

Behavior Change

Change of behavior

The concept of behavior change is a common phenomenon of late and there are various approaches that people use to achieve this. There is the operant conditioning also known as instrumental conditioning which is learning or unlearning process that is instilled by punishments and/or rewards for the wanted behavior or unwanted behavior. In the operant conditioning, there is an association between the behavior and some form of consequence for that particular behavior as indicated by Kendra Cherry, (2011). The other approach that is mainly used ins the classical conditioning where the person or the subject is exposed to some stimuli in order to reinforce a behavior that is aimed at being learned. It was extracted from the Pavlov dog experiment and can be used today as well. However, in this paper, the operant conditioning will be applied. The idea of operant conditioning discovered by Skinner B.F who was a behaviorist and this is the reason for the reference to this approach at times as Skinnerian conditioning. This approach has allowed a lot of change in behavior of people and animals especially in training them, with the wanted behavior given reinforcement or emphasis as the subsequent unwanted behavior suppressed.

Targeted behavior change

The behavior that I intend to change in this case is the habit of sleeping early. It has been the norm for me to sleep before 8:30pm on a daily basis. Hence it denies me the chance to execute my duties to a satisfactory conclusion. These duties include house chores during the weekend and general academic work during the week. It also denies me the chance to keep up-to-date with the daily happenings and news from both America and across the world. I need to start sleeping a bit later than 8:30pm and my aim is to be able to sleep at 10:00pm being the earliest. This way I can complete my assignments and any other duties that I should be doing before I go to sleep. This is how significant this behavioral change is to me.

Specific behavior change goal

The specific change that I desire is actually the increase in my wakefulness at night after regular schooling hours. I need to be able to add some 1 1/2 hours more to my regular sleeping time of 8:30pm so that I can be able to stay awake till 10.00pm as the earliest that I should be sleeping for the sake of my academic work. It is geared towards increasing a desired behavior.

How behavior will be changed

The process of extending the number of hours that I will have to stay awake is not an easy task and may need time to accomplish. In the bid to achieve this, since I must, I have first prepared myself psychologically to tackle the problem.

The behavior change process will be split into three phases, bundled into 30 minutes additional sessions that will at the end of it all give one hour and a half on top of the initial study time that was there.

Phase one: this will run for a month and will involve adjusting the sleeping time from 7:30p, to 8:30 PM and on an alternate day sleep at 9:00pm. With the elapse of week one, this will change to sleeping at 9:00pm on each day on the week two, three and four.

Phase two: the target for this phase will be to increment of the number of minutes by 30 minutes more. This stage will start at the beginning of the second month and will see me adjust my sleeping time to 9:30pm each day. This will be helped and made easy from the fact that in the last three weeks of first month I was accustomed to sleeping at 9:00 daily. During the extended time I will be ensuring I am occupied with my academic work, assignments, term papers research and all academic manner of material. There will be time set aside for new update from reliable channels like the msnbc, BBC world news and CNN among others. This phase two will run for a month as well.

Phase three: this is the ultimate phase that will see the timing go up to the targeted one hour and a half more time added to my study time. Based on the adjustments that the body has had over the phase one and phase two, this phase is likely to be easier to go through. This phase will see an additional 30 minutes added on the sleeping time hence will be sleeping at 10:00pm on a daily basis but the weekends. This will allow me to execute my entire academic backlog but also get time to unwind and prepare for the coming week. The weekends will have a deduction of one hour from the sleeping time hence I will be retiring to bed at 9:00pm to give my system a break as well.

Reward system

Since the approach used is both the behavior activation system and behavior inhibition system, the reward system as is in the operant conditioning will be used. The reward system that I will use for myself is varied according to the number of days and the time that I will have achieved. The reward system will as well work in collaboration with my dad. I am going to buy a timed chocolate dispenser, which will be set to be dispensing the chocolate bars at 9:00pm or 9:30 or 10:30 depending on the phase that I will be in the reset will be adjusted accordingly.

Motivation

The goal I was out to achieve falls in the third step (belonging) of hierarchy in the Maslow Pyramid since the adjustment of the extra hours that I would be awake is aimed at increasing my grades so that I also belong or be counted among those who perform well in class. The obvious counter-motive here is pleasure since all the time I had to struggle to forgo the pleasure that my peers were involved in and concentrate on my behavior change. The motivation was an intrinsic motivation since it gave me inner satisfaction to see that I can change and adjust my behavior to what I hitherto thought was an impossible task.