A person’s lifestyle can impact their health. It can be a contributing factor to the development of serious illnesses like heart disease, stroke and lung diseases. Lifestyle also includes habits such as smoking, poor diet and lack of physical activity. Taking the lead in designing your own lifestyle is one way to improve health and reduce risks of developing serious illnesses.
A healthy lifestyle is a choice that involves many different aspects of your life, from how you spend your time to how you use your energy and money. It’s important to know how to balance these aspects of your life, so you can live a long, happy and fulfilling life.
It is important to consider what you value most, because that’s what will help guide your decisions. There are many ways to achieve a healthy lifestyle, and the most common include eating a balanced diet, getting plenty of exercise, and not smoking or drinking alcohol excessively. Having good self-discipline is also a key aspect of a healthy lifestyle, as it helps you stick to your goals and maintain a positive attitude towards life.
Historically, the concept of a lifestyle was developed from sociological perspectives, with Thorstein Veblen and Max Weber being two of the most influential scholars in this field. Veblen’s concept revolved around the idea that people adopt a lifestyle in order to distinguish themselves from social strata that they view as inferior, and in order to emulate the lifestyles of those who are considered superior to them.
Other scholars have looked at the internal dimension of a person’s lifestyle, with particular emphasis on values, attitudes and orientations. These models have favoured the idea that a person’s lifestyle can be determined by a set of personality traits, and it is these theories which are often criticised for focusing on personality traits and not the context of behaviour and consumption that is influenced by them.
The third category of lifestyle theory focuses on the environment in which a person lives, with particular attention given to the relationship between location and the range of available lifestyles. The types of lifestyles that are available in a particular place depend on the cultural and natural environment, as well as the level of affluence within a neighbourhood.
Currently, there are no definitions of a healthy lifestyle that are unanimously agreed upon by scholars. Most of the existing theories, however, focus on the behavioural component of a person’s lifestyle, and give little consideration to the psychological, identity or life span dimensions. A more comprehensive approach to understanding the concept of a healthy lifestyle is therefore needed.