Journal Reflection

Above are pictures of my lettuce garden which I began before this class started but is a huge part of my behavior change centered around trying to purchase only locally grown produce (and its even bigger now!). As we have already thinned the lettuces for many salads and they continue to grow it is great to see a little part of nature and food production on my porch. I have also committed to including more fruits and vegetables in my daily diet. I think my first roadblock/barrier was the assumption that it would be really easy. However, I noticed after the first couple weeks that everytime I went to the store, I simply bought what looked good and what was cheapest. I felt guilty buying more organic and expensive produce because I feel I should be living as cheaply as possible in grad school. After identifying this barrier and noticing that it happened on several occaisions I decided to buy our produce exclusively at the Farmer's Market. For three weeks now I have attended the DeWitt Farmer's Market, only two blocks from my house, every Tuesday (and it is made even easier after being inspired by class earlier in the day). I know by shopping at the FM I can achieve my goal, and while there I can still make choices that I feel are cost effective, so I feel I am reaching my goal while still conserving my money. I've done CSA's in the past and by shopping at the FM I am reminded that as an avid cook I really enjoy having a limited amount of choices (ie things in season and local). It is more inspiring because you have to be more creative in working with produce that you haven't cooked with before or adapting a new vegetable into a favorite recipe.

So how I overcame this barrier was to reread the Tools of Behaviour Change. In my journal I made a list of small steps that would help me overcome my barrier. My list is as follows: 1. Before writing in my journal I will read over my initial goals, being mindful that they may have changed. 2. Establish Sundays, when I usually write my blog to be one of the two days I journal. It is a good time to write after just having been introspective about an academic article. 3. Refine my goals to include some smaller milestones I can meet along the way. 4. Speand more time identifying barriers and creating direct solutions. Creating this list helped put my journaling into a framework that I could follow and setting a schedule helped me make a commitment to myself to stick to it.