Is now the time to make a healthy lifestyle change?

Feeling unsure whether you're ready to take a step towards healthy living? It's common to feel a bit like you want to make a change and a bit like you don't at the same time. We've put together some handy tools to help you work through it and make that choice.

1: 'Readiness Ruler'

Ask yourself: on a scale of 0-10, how ready am I to make this change? Once you've got a number, reflect on why you're at that point. If it’s low, what needs to happen to increase it? This will reveal a lot about whether you're ready to take action and may help you plan your first steps.

You can also replace Readiness with Importance or Motivation: how important is this to me on a scale of 0-10? How motivated am I to commit to this?

As well as showing where you’re at right now, you can ask yourself the same questions later and see how you've progressed, which can be motivating in itself!

2: 'Decision Scales’

This is basically a glorified pros and cons list! But there's a twist: to get a balanced view of where you’re at, you think about both the good and bad things about making a change and not making a change. Weighing up both sides makes all the difference in really understanding whether you’re ready to take the next steps. Try drawing out and filling in the boxes below, starting at the top right and working around the page clock-wise.

^{Step 4: Good things about committing to a change}

^{Step 1: Good things about staying as you are}

^{Step 3: Bad things about committing to a change}

^{Step 2: Bad things about staying as you are}

3: Imagine the future

Imagination is a powerful thing. Whilst making a change right now can feel difficult, sometimes motivation comes from thinking about the long-term effects. Imagine what life will be like in 6 months, a year, 5 years, if you stay as you are. Then imagine how things could be different if you commit to improving your health (whether this is by managing your weight, getting more active, quitting smoking, drinking less, or something different altogether).

Which is the better option? You decide…

What’s the verdict?

How do you feel about making a change now you’ve worked through these steps?

If it turns out you’re not quite ready, that’s ok:

Knowing this is a positive step, as you won’t be setting yourself up to fail. We’ll still be here to support you whenever you’re ready.

If you feel ready and raring to go, that's great too!

Get in touch or register for your free healthy living profile, let us know what your goal is and find out how we can support you along the way.

How does this work?

The tailored approach LiveWell Dorset uses to come up with solutions to the things that are stopping us achieving our goals, is based upon work done by University College London developing the COM-B model of behaviour change. In this model, all behaviour is influenced by understanding a person’s capability to change, their opportunity to change and their motivation to change. By understanding which of these is the biggest barrier to change, we can tailor support accordingly. This model of behaviour change is at the centre of the support we offer, online and in person.

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When you register with LiveWell Dorset, we ask you some questions about you and your health (how much you smoke, how active you are, how much you drink and how much you weigh). We store that information and use it to shape our service offer to you – such as the advice we give or the extra services we connect you to. The only people who will see this information will be those involved in the delivery of the service and management of the data. If you would like to use extra services (such as slimming clubs and pharmacies) we have to share this information with them. For us to be able to put you in touch with these services, we must have your consent to share that information with the service (we’ll ask for that later, when if you sign up for extra services).

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