Behavior Change Plan to Prevent Coronary Heart Disease

Behavior Change Plan to Prevent Coronary Heart Disease Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle Behavior to Prevent a Reoccurrence of Coronary Heart Disease James J. Speen Introduction Justification for choosing the health behavior I am a 57 year old male, diagnosed with diabetes mellitus II, and cardiovascular disease stemming from atherosclerosis. In March of 2006, I experienced an acute angina pectoris attack while testing for a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do. The angina attack led to an emergency department visit at a local health facility and ultimately culminated in a quadruple coronary artery bypass graph (CABG). My healthcare providers are continually stressing the importance of making healthy choices and maintaining a healthy lifestyle in order to prevent a reoccurrence of coronary heart disease (CHD). Further, supporting my physician’s opinion, Ferris, Kline, and Bourdage (2012) state that â€Å"biopsychosocial health displayed no direct relationship to CHD risk, but positively predicted a healthier lifestyle. A healthier lifestyle was related to lower levels of CHD risk.† Over the past 6 months, I have strayed from my regimen of healthy eating and daily exercise and am beginning to feel the negative effects of weight gain, sore joints, and decreased endurance during physical activity. It is now behavior modification time. This will be accomplished by discontinuing my current unhealthy behaviors and resuming a healthy lifestyle consisting of a regimen of eating heart healthy foods and exercise. Justification for the behavior change plan I used the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model, as outlined in our textbook, Health Psychology A Biopsychosocial Approach (Straub, 2012) to evaluate my current behavior. First, I determined that continuing my behavior would eventually lead to another CABG or even worse my death. Secondly, after considering my doctor’s views regarding CHD prevention through lifestyle modification; I chose to comply with my healthcare provider’s advice. And finally, I rea lized that I am the only one who can manage my controllable health risk factors. Method Materials and Procedure I monitored my pre-change caloric intake, blood glucose, and physical exercise levels for seven days. My caloric intake and amount of exercise was recorded using the MyFitnessPal mobile application. Blood glucose levels were measured each day with a OneTouch Ultra 2 blood glucose meter. Glucose measurements were performed twice each day at 6:00a.m. and at 10:00p.m.. This data was used to establish my base line cardiac healthy lifestyle compliance. After this period, I enacted a behavior change plan to regain control over my controllable cardiac health risk factors. I added the use of a H o Medics model KS-701 digital dietary scale to accurately measure my food portions and increased the amount of water that I consumed daily. Additionally, 1 hour of cardiovascular and strength training exercises was added to the daily regimen. Caloric intake and exercise activity were recor ded using the MyFitnessPal mobile application and blood glucose was measured with the OneTouch Ultra 2 blood glucose meter. Nutritional data consisting of caloric intake, carbohydrates, fat, protein, cholesterol, sodium, sugar, and fiber from the MyFitnessPal application along with blood glucose data, was imported into an Excel spread sheet for data comparison and analysis. Average daily values for each category were computed for both the pre-behavior change and behavior change periods.