Importance Of Exercises For Your Health

Introduction

Exercise is a very important part of life. Mayo suggest, “Get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week, or a combination of moderate and vigorous activity” (Laskowski 2016). I decided to follow this suggestion in order to complete my behavior modification. Aerobic exercise includes anything that gets oxygen moving to your heart and other muscles that are being used during physical activity. This could include biking, running, and dancing. Exercise can also lower the risk of obesity and heart disease because it is continuously moving blood throughout your body.

I am not a heavyset female. I just want to maintain my weight, stay active, and healthy.

Identify a Target Behavior

The behavior that I choose to modify for seven days was exercise. It is very hard to find time for exercise while being a full-time college student and working thirty-five hours a week. During high school I use to be very active. I was involved in several physical education classes and ran track for several years.

When I went to college physical education classes were not necessary and began to lack my daily exercise routine. I work at Blain’s Farm & Fleet as a sales associate so I am always on my feet walking around but I wanted more. I wanted to engage my core and run as well. I also need to maintain a daily routine of exercise to train and become fit to become a police officer. I set a goal to work out for seven days.

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For five of those days I choose to exercise for twenty minutes while engaging my core. My activities included sit ups, pushups, and planks. For the other two days I decided to make them cardio days. I live in the country so I decided to run alongside the road for a mile. I also decided to use Wii Dance Party as another way to get my cardio in.

Positive and Negative Reinforcements

I felt a lot more confident and healthier when I completed my goal. A positive reinforcement I gave myself was watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy after completing my goal for the day. I love watching Grey’s Anatomy but I watch it too much sometimes and this was a good way to limit myself. A negative reinforcement was every time I did not meet my goal for the day I added ten minutes of exercise to the next day. These reinforcements worked well for me because it gave me motivation to complete my daily goal.

Success of Failure (Table)

Day 1

Tuesday Day 2

Wednesday Day 3

Thursday Day 4

Friday Day 5

Saturday Day 6

Sunday Day 7

Monday

Goal

(160 minutes) 20 Minutes 20 Minutes 20 Minutes 30 Minutes: Cardio 20 Minutes 20 Minutes 30 Minutes: Cardio

Actual Time Spent Exercising

(110 minutes) 20 Minutes 0 Minutes 30 Minutes 20 Minutes: Cardio 0 Minutes 30 Minutes 10 Minutes

Unfortunately, I did not meet my weekly goal of one-hundred and eight minutes. I fell short by fifty minutes. I only met my goal three out of the seven days. The behavior was unsuccessfully modified for four days. It was very hard for me to find time in my day for any type of physical activity sometimes due to school and work. But, I plan to continue this routine in order to feel better about myself and get in shape.

Conclusion

This behavior modification project was very helpful. It allowed me to shape and change a

behavior that I wanted to do for the betterment of myself. Even though I did not meet my goal I still was able to feel confident about myself and continued to strive for success. Life gets busy and I will not always have enough time in a day to complete everything but I will try my best. This also reassured me that I can do anything I set my mind to. I will continue to modify this behavior throughout my life and to continue to see a good change in myself.