A healthy lifestyle can help prevent disease and promote mental well-being. Healthy behaviours include eating a balanced diet, getting regular exercise, avoiding tobacco and excessive alcohol use, managing stress levels, and sleeping enough. Changing to a healthy lifestyle can be hard, but making small changes can have a big impact.
The concept of a lifestyle has emerged as a major research topic in the field of health promotion, particularly for chronic diseases such as cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. A common feature of the lifestyle theories that are developed in this context is their focus on behavioural patterns. These are seen as the most important determinants of health. They are influenced by several factors, including the socioeconomic environment in which a person lives (e.g., rural versus urban environment), his/her education level and the degree of affluence in his/her family, and by cultural aspects such as religious beliefs, traditions, leisure activities and social networks.
Lifestyle is a concept that has been used in different ways by psychologists and sociologists. For example, some authors have defined it as a set of values and guiding principles that an individual establishes in early childhood to guide his/her actions and reactions to external events. Others have defined it as a set of activities that occur throughout life and may change in time. These lifestyles are influenced by dynamic forces at the sociocultural level and are thus constantly evolving. The most common concept of a lifestyle is the one proposed by Veal, which defines it as a combination of determining intangible and tangible factors. These factors determine an individual’s daily activities and his/her sociodemographic profile, and the behavioural orientations that form the lifestyle.
Besides these behavioural patterns, some of the lifestyle theories consider other aspects, such as interests and opinions, a sense of identity, relationships with others, the use of drugs and smoking, the use of technology and language. Other aspects that can influence a person’s choice of lifestyle are personal characteristics, such as intelligence and personality, and external influences, such as media, peers and family.
The different definitions of a lifestyle reflect the ambitions of the psychologists and sociologists who have studied this subject. The most recognised explicit definitions are shown in Table 1. The first ones reflect the desire to consider attitudes, interests and opinions as fundamental elements of a lifestyle and to analyse them from a synchronic and diachronic perspective, taking into account socio-cultural trends. The second set of definitions considers the lifestyle as a system of behavioural alternatives available to a person, which is determined by his/her socio-economic conditions. This includes a variety of behavioural patterns that people choose to adopt in order to achieve specific goals, such as being financially independent, having a high level of prestige and belonging to certain status groups. The last of these definitions tends to concentrate mainly on the avoidance of risk behaviours in favour of health-promoting behavioural patterns. This reflects the typical tendency in the current risk society to view lifestyle as a behavioural pattern that can be modified with targeted educational campaigns.
