Fitness Goop

New Year New You?

Nothing like a new year to make us dust off our dreams of long-desired transformation! If this is the year you decide to turn those dreams into a plan, there are a couple of researchers you may want to meet. Their names are Prochaska and DiClemente, and together they have spent more than 30 years studying the process of change – how we do it, when we do it, why we fail to do it…

P & D have developed the Transtheoretical Model of Change, which holds that there are distinct stages we traverse in undergoing any lasting change in behaviour.

These stages are:

• Precontemplation
• Contemplation
• Decision/preparing for action
• Action
• Maintenance
• Lapse/relapse

As the name implies, in the Precontemplation stage the person is not thinking about or invested in making a change. It may be that he or she doesn’t have a problem with their behaviour – for example, a parent may not like that their daughter is smoking but she herself may not see it as an issue – or they may be in “denial” about the severity of the problem.

In the Contemplation stage, people start to calculate the pros and cons of making a change versus keeping things as they are. If alcohol use is the issue for example, at this stage someone would begin to weigh the negative consequences stemming from their drinking, versus the pleasure they receive from it, or how big a part of their social life it is. According to the stages of change model, individuals don’t decide to make a change until pain – whether it’s physical, emotional, financial, legal, relational or some other type of pain – enters the picture. The contemplation stage is where we first start to acknowledge and take the measure of that pain.

If the contemplation balance tips on the side of making a change, we enter the Decision/Preparing for Action stage. At this point, the individual is planning to implement a change within the next six months or so, and starts to put together a strategy and seek out the resources, information, or supports they anticipate they’ll need.

Those strategies are put into play in the Action stage – we join the gym, look for a new job, join AA, start therapy, etc.; whatever steps we’ve decided to take to result in the desired change.

If we are very lucky (and very rare), the action steps we’ve taken are successful and we enter the Maintenance stage. According to this model, after 2 years of maintenance, behaviour has been successfully changed, and the person exits the model at the maintenance stage.

More often, changers spend some time visiting the Lapse/Relapse stage. A lapse is defined as a temporary return to old behaviour, while a relapse is a more pervasive set-back. Someone having a lapse will emerge from it back at the action stage, usually taking with them an awareness of some additional triggers they need to be aware of, or other strategies they need to implement.  By contrast, a relapser will end up back in the precontemplation or contemplation stage (questioning whether they need to make a change, or questioning their ability to do so).

So how does this apply to your new year’s resolutions? If you are serious about making a change, it helps to lay the groundwork – resolving your fears and motivations, making a decision and commitment, thinking through and testing your strategies, bouncing back and learning from your setbacks.

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