Elsevier

Mayo Clinic Proceedings

Volume 77, Issue 2, February 2002, Pages 122-129
Mayo Clinic Proceedings

Original Article
Motivation to Modify Lifestyle Risk Behaviors in Women Treated for Breast Cancer

https://doi.org/10.4065/77.2.122Get rights and content

Objective

To determine motivators of health behaviors (relevant to risk for chronic disease and cancer recurrence) after a cancer diagnosis.

Patients and Methods

Eighty-six women who had been treated for breast cancer (mean age, 54.8 years; median time since diagnosis, 23.5 months) participated in this cross-sectional study (1997-1998). Respondents completed a questionnaire assessing overweight or obesity status, dietary fat intake, energy expenditure, motivational readiness for exercise and weight loss, and variables associated with readiness for exercise adoption and weight loss.

Results

Forty-six women (54%) were overweight or obese, and 47 women (55%) reported dietary fat intake of 30% or higher. Sixty-one women (72%) were in action/maintenance stages for exercise adoption. A majority believed that diet and exercise can change the course of cancer. Overweight and obese women in the sample were more likely to be in early stages of motivational readiness for weight loss, and they reported significantly lower exercise self-efficacy and lower eating self-efficacy than their nonoverweight peers. However, they endorsed more benefits associated with weight loss than the nonoverweight subgroup. Thirty-three women (39%) reported both a low-fat diet and exercising at recommended levels.

Conclusions

Only a minority of respondents reported consuming a diet low in fat and exercising at recommended levels, which suggests a need to improve both diet and exercise behaviors among women treated for breast cancer. Overweight and obese women reported low self-efficacy for exercise and eating, suggesting that interventions should focus on increasing self-efficacy for behavior change.

Section snippets

PATIENTS AND METHODS

In this cross-sectional study, 86 women were recruited via a newspaper advertisement and flyers soliciting participation in a study examining health behaviors (1997-1998). The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Miriam Hospital, Providence, RI. Eligibility criteria included the following: age 18 years or older; ability to complete questionnaires; and diagnosis of breast cancer within the past 10 years. Women currently receiving treatment (eg, chemotherapy, radiation

Sample Characteristics

The sample consisted of 86 women (mean ± SD age, 54.8±10.4 years) (Table 1), of whom 83 (97%) were white and 54 (63%) were married. Thirty-six women (42%) were working full-time, 33 (40%) reported household incomes of $20,000 to $49,000, and 33 (40%) reported household incomes of $50,000 or higher. The sample was well-educated, with 65 women (76%) who had attended college and 21 (24%) who had a high school education or less. Only 7 women (8%) were current smokers, 41 (48%) were ex- smokers, and

DISCUSSION

This study examined the specific health behaviors of diet and exercise and the motivation to modify these lifestyle risk behaviors among women previously diagnosed as having breast cancer. Prior research has focused almost exclusively on examining these types of behavioral factors for predicting risk of breast cancer among healthy women.38 Much less is known about these important health behaviors among the increasing number of women already diagnosed as having and living with this now-chronic

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the contributions of Barbara Doll to manuscript preparation.

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    The study was supported by an intramural grant from the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University School of Medicine, Providence, RI.

    Individual reprints of this article are not available.

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    Copyright © 2002 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.