Health Belief Model Of Social Change

We have all reached a point in our life, when the urge to make a change was vital. The journey from making the decision to change or to make a change in a specific area of our life, to the realization of that change is influenced by many factors. These factors vary from social factors (family and friends support) and economic factors to intrapersonal factors (willpower, motivation). I have attempted myself for six weeks to make a health behavior change. The outcome at the end of the six weeks was predictable based on the journey, but the journey itself was unpredictable and an eye opener on the challenges faced by people while attempting to make a change in their life. The health behavior change that I decided to make six weeks ago was to
The Health Belief model is essentially composed of five keys concepts which are: perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, and cues to action.1 I did not need to apply all the keys concepts to my health behavior change. Perceived susceptibility is essentially about the belief of one about the chances to get a condition.1 My BMI (Body Mass Index) indicates that I am slightly overweight, but I do not really rely on those values because they do not really take into account people muscular mass. Thus, I did not really think that I would get a condition if I do not make a change in my diet. Perceived severity is the belief about the seriousness of the condition.1 This concept was not applicable to my change. Perceived benefits is the beliefs about the positive outcomes of the potential change.1 Even though I knew I was not on the verge of obesity, I knew that making a change in my diet and drinking more water would absolutely benefit my health. Being small does necessarily means that someone is healthy. Another benefit that I thought about was that it would save me lunch money if I was bringing my own meal and my bottles of water. Perceived barriers is the beliefs about the factors that can hindered the change such as cost or physical pain.1 My perceived barriers were the money I would have to spend on fresh vegetables, fish and fruits while the kitchen cabinets and the fridge were already full of food, the time I would have to spend cooking, and giving up minutes of my days to do yoga. Cues to action is essentially balancing the benefits of the changes versus the cost of the changes.1 It is the will to act after analyzing the susceptibility and the seriousness of the potential disease or condition.1 My cues to action were obviously the money I would save by not buying lunch on campus (which is more than the money I