Using self-care strategies to make lifestyle changes.

Self-care in health promotion includes developing the skills needed to devise, implement, evaluate, and revise an individualized plan for lifestyle change. Using content analysis, this study examined the strategies chosen by participants (N = 95) to initiate a lifestyle change, as well as the barriers they identified to change. Goal achievement and effectiveness of the strategies chosen were evaluated at 5 and 10 weeks. Using self-care strategies to make lifestyle changes, 42.1% had achieved their goal and 49.5% had partly achieved their goal by Week 10. Social support, tailoring strategies, self-monitoring, medication, and cue restriction were considered the most effective strategies. Being able to individualize the strategies was most important to goal achievement, followed by having a specific goal, planning for barriers, and being able to make revisions.