Enhancing Health and Fitness

Introduction

Health and fitness-related physical activity is referred to the multi-dimensional construct which contains components of muscular strength, cardiorespiratory endurance, flexibility, muscular endurance and enhanced body composition. There are wide range of health and fitness-related physical activity available for individual and service user which makes the health practitioners experience difficulty in determining which of them are suitable for the service users to enhance their health condition and improve their well-being (Haible et al., 2020). In this study, a one-to-one session with the sedentary patient is to be presented by highlighting the psychological factors which have influenced the individual's health and fitness-related physical activity. Further, strategies and actions to improve the individual's intention and confidence in participating in health and fitness-related physical activity are to be discussed.

Case Study

The one-to-one session to be discussed in the study is regarding patient named G who is a 65-year-old individual. According to the NMC Code, the confidentiality and privacy of the patient are to be maintained by avoiding disclosing their identity in the public or sharing any health-related information which may reveal their identity (NMC, 2018). Thus, the pseudonym G is been used to indicate the individual. G is reported to live less active life with no or near to less showcasing of intention to involve in health and fitness-related physical activity as he was a financial accountant who required to move less and mostly had desk jobs. G’s BMI rate is presently near 32.5 and has reported being facing hindrance in performing everyday task due to weight issues. After the death of his wife 2-years back, G mentioned to avoid going out even on weekends and spend most of the time being sedentary by watching TV, sleeping and sitting at home. G has a son who is not in direct contact with him and lives overseas.

Psychological factors influencing health and fitness-related physical activity

The psychological factors are referred to the individual-level processing of thoughts and meanings which influence mental status of an individual (Haidar et al., 2018). The psychological factors are not only responsible for influencing health and illness-related experience but also influences development of health-related behaviour. In case of G, on performing one-to-one session it was identified that he is in the contemplation stage towards his health behaviour. This means G is thinking of involving in physical activity as he feels that in the foreseeable future he requires to be healthy and avoid being dependent on others for care after currently facing difficulty due to weight issues to execute daily task on his own. This is evident as he revealed to face hindrance in moving and even develop breathless due to weight issue. The presence of depression can be regarded as one of the psychological factors which had influencing G’s consideration to involve in physical activity regarding health and fitness. Depression does influences involvement in physical activity because it has a deleterious effect on the mental efficiency of the individual to have personal boost to involve in any strenuous activity. This is because depressed people are often found to be absent-minded and lack motivation in life to remain focused on executing any needful activity for the purpose of well-being in life (Geiker et al., 2018). In case of G, it is seen that he has lost his wife just 2 years back and after the incidence he reported to have further confined him within the home and lead a sedentary life. This is mainly out of remorse towards losing his wife that created depression as he has to live alone which may have eventually led him to avoid executing any physical activity. However, it can be assumed that currently G mentally feels he need to take his own care and resolve weight issues that have been raised due to minimum to no physical activity. This is because he has realized there is no one to care for him and somehow has feel boosted to live on his own terms without anyone’s assistance from the friends or society. The lack of motivation does act as a psychological factor that influences an individual's involvement in physical activity regarding health and fitness. This is because without motivation the individuals feel lack of value and boost in life to execute any altered action that is beyond their normal livelihood (Pellegrini et al., 2018). It is evident in case of G who is seen to show no involvement in physical activity and mostly lived a sedentary life. This is because G always had a desk job and had enough money to buy a car along with live in a luxurious way which requires him to personally involve in less physical activity as described by him in the one-to-one session to me for not considering about physical fitness. G also revealed that he had always been slightly overweight his whole life long with mostly lived sedentary life and was never made aware by his family or his wife that he has weight issues or require to change his lifestyle activity. This is because G thought his family member and his wife perceived being slightly overweight indicates symptoms of being healthy and is not any health issue. It is evident from the study of Berggren et al. (2018) where it is mentioned that family members when fail to realise an individual in their family is overweight which is unhealthy are seen to avoid boosting the individual in executing alteration in their physical activity to reduce weight. The one-to-one session also revealed that he never had social support to involve in fitness-related physical activity because he was not supported to execute or get concerned about physical activity even at work. This is evident as financial consultant is mostly seen to remain confined to desk where they are required to attend client providing them less opportunity to travel and execute physical activity (Murray-Davis et al., 2020). Moreover, it was revealed by G that there was no health program or separate resources available at work that supported or boost physical activity among the employees at work. Therefore, such social circumstances may have professionally as well as personally made him remained unconcerned about his body weight and retain being sedentary in life. The self-esteem of an individual is seen to influence their activities in life because self-esteem make people realise their value portrayed by others (Erkaya et al., 2018). In case of G, he informed that he never felt low self-esteem due to overweight as he was always respected in life. However, most recently he mentioned to have faced mocking by two of his new neighbours which made him concerned regarding his body weight. The distress in performing activities influences people to alter their behaviour as they wish to overcome the stress to lead a better life (Klingberg et al., 2019). In case of G, his current physical distress of not being able to perform his daily living activities in an effective way due to weight issues is considered to have led him think to involve in physical activity from fitness as realised from the communication in one-to-one session.

Strategies to improve health and fitness-related physical activity

In case of G, he is already seen to be willing to increased physical activity. Therefore, the key action required is arrangement of resources and strategies to fulfil his intention and provide him positive motivation to follow the physical activity for fitness to avoid relapse of overweight. The initial action for G to support involving him in physical activity related to health and fitness is arranging personal physical trainer for the individual. This is because personal physical trainer analyses the health condition and mobility efficiency of a person to determine the best physical activity for them in helping them gain normal and efficient body weight (Alexandra-Camelia and Nicolae, 2017). Since G is obese and has spent most of the life being sedentary, he is required to have active and continuous support of trainer to help him guide the way to gradually reach physical fitness and overcome his current weight issues. G is to be involved in weight management program at the gym through the physical trainer where he to be provided assistance in using equipment to involve in physical activity for fitness and health. In case of G, apart from referring him to a trainer, he is to be trained and involved in performing certain daily exercise behaviour for him to feel independence and self-capable to manage his health condition. This is because self-empowerment of the patients to be able to take their own care in managing health and well-being assist to feel valued out of avoidance in being burden of care and self-capable in taking their own care without hindrance (Ebrahimi et al., 2017). One of the physical activities to be recommended to G as exercise behaviour is walking and jogging. The walking and jogging are one of the best basic behaviour of physical activity for individuals because it does not require any equipment or resource in performing it. Moreover, apart from reducing body weight by using body fat as energy walking and jogging also helps in lightening the mood of the person, strengthen muscles, support enhanced functioning of joints and improve circulation (Duzova et al., 2018). However, walking and jogging may be difficult to be performed by individuals who have joint pain or shows risk of unable to maintain balance (). However, the physical assessment of G informed that even though he is above 60 years, but he has no difficulty in joints or movement apart from the hindrance created due to increased body weight. Thus, walking and jogging is the initial exercise behaviour in which G is to be actively involved in enhancing his well-being. The distress and depression are able to be resolved with walking and jogging. This is because walking and jogging are performed in natural environment that creates positive vibes for the people like G to gradually overcome distress and depression (Barua et al., 2020). It is evident from the study of Pratiwi et al. (2020) which informed that positive psychological actions and relaxation are faced by the previously depressed participants in the study who were allowed to walk around the urban parks. This is because the natural environment led the older depressed as well as non-depressed individuals to have less anxiety and higher positive moods. Since G is found to remain depressed after losing his wife and avoided even to go out socially which may act as barrier from him to involve in physical activity, thus involving him to walk and jog in the nearby park would help him both physical and mentally to overcome the situation and be social. The use of motivational interviewing is to be done for G to help him get actively involve in physical activity for fitness and health. This is because motivational interviewing acts as counselling method to assist people in resolving ambient feeling along with insecurities to develop internal motivation which they require to execute change in their behaviour (Barnes et al., 2018). Thus, executing motivational interviewing of G would help him to overcome his insecurity of being alone and helpless, in turn, would motivate him to involve in physical activity to develop well-being. The Change4Life is the healthcare campaign which focuses to inform the risk factors, cause and impact of weight gain along with mention ways in which weight gain can be prevented rather than strictly involving any person to weight-loss program (NHS, 2019a). G is to be involved in the program to help him get informed about the actions to be performed and not to be performed physically to gradually develop healthy weight and fitness. The NHS has arranged a free 12-week guide for weight loss through dieting and exercise plan for any individual to be accessed (NHS, 2019). In case G expresses unwillingness to continue going to the gym for weight loss, he is to be involved in the program to make him personally empowered to execute exercise and dieting for reaching health weight and fitness. In order to ensure G, avoid relapse of his condition being depressed and gain weight by remaining sedentary, he is to be actively involved in free physical exercise program for life. G is to be informed in detailed through health education regarding the importance of physical exercise to make him realise the importance of continuing the physical activity for life.

Conclusion

The above discussion regarding the patient G who was involved in one-to-one session revealed that due to depression and distress from life and living alone he further involved being sedentary that led him gradually to become obese from overweight and it interfered with his ability to effectively perform activities of daily living. The psychological factors like lack of social support, low self-motivation and others contributed G to remain sedentary and develop increased body weight. In this context, G is determined to be involved in active physical activity through assistance from physical trainer and to be included in aerobic exercise such as walking and jogging to gradually become fit. Moreover, he is to be involved in different physical training program to avoid further relapse of his weight issue. .

Continue your exploration of Enhancing Hand Hygiene in Aged Care Facilities with our related content.

References

Alexandra-Camelia, G. and Nicolae, N., 2017. From Fit To Fat. Why Athletes Gain Weight After Retirement?. Acta Medica Marisiensis, 63.

Barnes, R.D., Ivezaj, V., Martino, S., Pittman, B.P., Paris, M. and Grilo, C.M., 2018. Examining motivational interviewing plus nutrition psychoeducation for weight loss in primary care. Journal of psychosomatic research, 104, pp.101-107.

Barua, A., Masum, A.K.M., Bahadur, E.H., Alam, M.R., Chowdhury, M.A.U.Z. and Alam, M.S., 2020. Human Activity Recognition in Prognosis of Depression Using Long Short-Term Memory Approach. International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology, 29, pp.4998-5017.

Berggren, S., Roswall, J., Alm, B., Bergman, S., Dahlgren, J. and Almquist‐Tangen, G., 2018. Parents with overweight children two and five years of age did not perceive them as weighing too much. Acta paediatrica, 107(6), pp.1060-1064.

Duzova, H., Gullu, E., ÇIçEK, G., Koksal, B.K., Kayhan, B., Gullu, A. and Sahin, I., 2018. The effect of exercise induced weight-loss on myokines and adipokines in overweight sedentary females: steps-aerobics vs. jogging-walking exercises. J. Sports Med. Phys. Fit, 58, pp.295-308.

Ebrahimi, H., Sadeghi, M., Amanpour, F. and Fahidi, F., 2017. Evaluation of the effect of empowerment model on self-efficacy and self-esteem among diabetic patients: a randomized control trial study. International Journal of Health Studies, 2(4).pp.56-78

Erkaya, R., Karabulutlu, Ö. and Çalik, K.Y., 2018. The effect of maternal obesity on self-esteem and body image. Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences, 25(6), pp.1079-1084.

Geiker, N.R.W., Astrup, A., Hjorth, M.F., Sjödin, A., Pijls, L. and Markus, C.R., 2018. Does stress influence sleep patterns, food intake, weight gain, abdominal obesity and weight loss interventions and vice versa?. Obesity Reviews, 19(1), pp.81-97.

Haible, S., Volk, C., Demetriou, Y., Höner, O., Thiel, A. and Sudeck, G., 2020. Physical activity-related health competence, physical activity, and physical fitness: analysis of control competence for the self-directed exercise of adolescents. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(1), p.39.

Haidar, S.A., De Vries, N.K., Karavetian, M. and El-Rassi, R., 2018. Stress, anxiety, and weight gain among university and college students: a systematic review. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 118(2), pp.261-274.

Klingberg, S., Mehlig, K., Johansson, I., Lindahl, B., Winkvist, A. and Lissner, L., 2019. Occupational stress is associated with major long-term weight gain in a Swedish population-based cohort. International archives of occupational and environmental health, 92(4), pp.569-576.

Murray-Davis, B., Berger, H., Melamed, N., Mawjee, K., Syed, M., Barrett, J., Ray, J.G., Geary, M. and McDonald, S.D., 2020. Gestational weight gain counselling practices among different antenatal health care providers: a qualitative grounded theory study. BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 20(1), p.102.

NHS 2019, Start the NHS weight loss plan, Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-weight/start-the-nhs-weight-loss-plan/ [Accessed on: 20 February 2021]

NHS 2019a, Change4Life, Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/change4life/about-change4life [Accessed on: 20 February 2021] NMC 2019, The Code, Available at: https://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/sitedocuments/nmc-publications/nmc-code.pdf [Accessed on: 20 February 2021]

Pellegrini, C.A., Ledford, G., Chang, R.W. and Cameron, K.A., 2018. Understanding barriers and facilitators to healthy eating and physical activity from patients either before and after knee arthroplasty. Disability and rehabilitation, 40(17), pp.2004-2010.

Pratiwi, P.I., Xiang, Q. and Furuya, K., 2020. Physiological and Psychological Effects of Walking in Urban Parks and Its Imagery in Different Seasons in Middle-Aged and Older Adults: Evidence from Matsudo City, Japan. Sustainability, 12(10), p.4003.