Journey: A Psychology Capstone
Introduction
To start, my name is Christopher Bell and I’m 24 years old. I am a Senior Psychology Major. When I came to Champlain College, it began the turning point of my life, a necessary life change. I lost 110 pounds in 8 months during my time at Champlain College from January 2018 to September 2018.
Brace yourselves,
Yup. That’s the change right there. Unfortunately, I didn’t have many pictures of myself around 2015–2018 that could show what I looked like better than the picture on the left. In my defense, it was taken as a joke!
I believe my weight loss journey all started when I went to a nutritionist in 2015 who prescribed a blood test for me. I found out I was in danger of pre-diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. The nutritionist then educated me about calories and sugars. Knowing this information, I went from 310 pounds to around 250 pounds. However, I was living at home at the time and lost all motivation to keep up with it and went up to 280 pounds…The thought that I was harming myself was still prevalent, every time I bought and ate any kind of junk food, I was beating myself up…
Then comes Champlain College. I was living at Spinner Place; it was my second semester (January 2018) and I had gotten the motivation to go for walks again. I would take the bus from Spinner to Campus 10+ times a day and walk all the way back. I would rack up around 10 miles a day of walking and would only eat around 2000 calories a day.
My sources of motivation came from knowing that the food I was eating was actually harming me and calorie counting was an easy game to play to reach achievable goals. I had a support network through my roommates, and college students all around. Through my roommates and family, I got immediate gratification by telling them my progress. Through college students all around, I knew they were seeing some kid take literal steps to doing something about their health and that I would have a story to tell and show.
So naturally, this all brings me to my Capstone Idea, which I’ve decided to call Journey because I had to make a title for this article.
Capstone Idea
My Capstone idea was originally supposed to introduce a new way of teaching Nutrition and Fitness at Champlain College. I somehow wanted the college to either implement a program that focuses on integrating modern approaches to the classroom through goal setting, instruction and social support or to have a nutritionist brought on to campus like how there was one a few years ago. I had to narrow down what I actually wanted it to be but I knew I wanted it to be something related to the physical health of students on campus, which in turn would improve their mental health. I ultimately settled with the idea of having a nutritionist hired who could offer a blood test done through LipidPlus, which is a cost-effective blood test kit that could accurately show one’s cholesterol, HDL, LDL, TG and blood glucose levels. With a nutritionist right there, they could provide consultation with the student to ensure that they wouldn’t be distressed about any results. They could also answer those burning questions like “What’s HDL, or LDL, or TG or cholesterol or blood glucose levels??” that everyone might have when they hear those things…The idea behind this was to get students to think about how they might perceive themselves vs how they actually are. I wanted it to motivate students who already were looking to change, as it did for me and to possibly get the ball rolling for others who were neglecting their physical health, also how it happened for me. The nutritionist would be there to provide guidance and support. Something that I lacked during my time here at the college. I found out months later that my methods for weight loss would be considered drastic and could have potentially been much worse. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, I had to modify my idea to adjust to quarantimes. I couldn’t keep the plan for having an onsite nutritionist, though I could certainly advocate for it to happen once the college goes back to in-person sessions. Instead, I proposed the introduction of a Health Coach program.
Health Coach Program
My proposal is an envision of a Health Coach Program (Journey) at Champlain College to have experts teach students necessary skills to coach students in meeting personal dieting or fitness goals. The experts would also be available for consultation and such. This would be very similar to Champlain College’s Peer Coach program that has students help other students build resumes, cover letters, interests and job searching. I think that a Health Coach Program with individual or group sessions would offer another outlet to connect with other students remotely, give students accountability and hopefully a routine that can be followed. In said sessions, students can be given encouragement, set goals and talk about anything (hopefully in relation to health!). I believe that it’s important to prioritize what student wants to do so they can set their own goals and if they don’t want that, the coach can give them goals based on the students preferences, limitations and schedule. The goals of the program is to increase the well-being of a student, improve physical health, offer a social support network, educate and empower students and give a personal sense of achievement. I think that this would lead to an improvement in academic performance as well and retention within the college. Aside from the obvious health benefits, I think that tuition will have to be restructured for this remote period and I believe that a Health Coach Program could be a service gained from the restructuring of that. I also think that students with extraordinary accomplishments in terms of their own physical health could be rewarded with a Wellness Scholarship. New habits and beliefs are formed during our time at college. That’s where I see the implementation of a Health Coach program to be important, lets capitalize on that.
Conclusion:
This idea is very personal to me, as I believe knowing more about yourself physically can help give people a push in making decisions that will ultimately better them. That is why it’s important now more than ever to take care of student’s health.With the isolation comes a breakage in routines. Sitting at home, I feel a disconnect with the college and have little purpose to take care of myself with less people to check up on me. I can easily google things that I could do but it’s pointless to me if I can’t share my results with anyone or if I don’t have the validation that what I’m doing is actually positive. A focus on bringing stability to life through making healthy decisions with support of peers can have long lasting benefits that go beyond the institution and in turn could give a greater appreciation towards it. Therefore, I hope that the college will take my idea into serious consideration.
Thanks for reading!
-Chris
