A person’s lifestyle reflects his or her attitudes and values, worldview, habits, and behaviors. A healthy lifestyle includes regular physical activity, a balanced diet, and avoidance of tobacco, excessive alcohol use, and drugs. It also includes an attitude of moderation and the ability to deal with stress.
Despite the widespread knowledge that lifestyle influences health, many people continue to make unhealthy lifestyle choices. These include smoking, a lack of exercise, poor eating habits, and over-use of medications (particularly antibiotics). In the US, nearly 40% of deaths are linked to these or other unhealthy lifestyles. Fortunately, more and more evidence shows that making healthy lifestyle choices can prevent or control some of the nation’s leading causes of death.
The term “lifestyle” is used by many different fields of research, but it is not well defined. This can cause confusion when it comes to interpreting and applying research findings. This narrative review and analysis of the concept of lifestyle is intended to shed light on the current state of knowledge in this area.
Lifestyle has been considered as a construct within sociological currents (such as Weber’s theory of status groups) and in psychological theories related to consumer psychology, psychology of values, and individual psychology. Theories that emphasise the internal dimension of lifestyle have as their main limitation the fact that they do not consider the environmental context in which these behaviours take place.
Other models and theories that consider the external dimensions of lifestyle are based on the concept of culture, which is considered to be the primary factor determining people’s ways of life. The main advantage of these models is that they allow a more comprehensive analysis of the factors that influence lifestyles and the way in which they change over time.
Another type of model that examines the relationship between lifestyle and health is one based on human needs and satisfaction. It is argued that each person has a set of needs, some of which are physiological and safety-related, while others are more related to the desire for self-gratification or the need for social recognition. The method in which these needs are satisfied and the pace at which they are met determines people’s lifestyles.
A new direction in the development of lifestyle models and theories is the critical health psychology approach, which focuses on a vision of healthy lifestyles as contextually situated, meaningful, and holistic health practices that are shaped by the interaction between the person and the environment. This manuscript reexamines the main definitions of lifestyle in the psychological and sociological fields, considering their internal, external, and temporal dimensions, in order to identify the main components that characterise this concept. The results of this analysis are incorporated into a theoretical model that can serve as the basis for developing a new framework for understanding lifestyle and its link to health.
