A healthy lifestyle is a key to good health, but it can be difficult to change your habits. It is also important to be kind to yourself as you make these changes. It may take some time before you feel the benefits of your new habits, so be patient with yourself and don’t give up. Try replacing one refined grain each day with a whole grain to get started, and gradually work up to a full replacement diet. Adding in some physical activity, like walking to the store instead of driving, will increase your level of fitness. Experiment with different types of exercise to see what you enjoy most and works best with your lifestyle.
The concept of lifestyle has been used and explored in several fields, mainly psychology and sociology. The major explicit definitions are grouped into three interpretative keys: internal, external, and temporal (see Table 1).
Psychologically, the main perspectives of the concept have been based on personal characteristics and behaviours. The concept was first used by Adler in his personality theory and he described it as a psychic imprint of an individual, the result of a compromise between inner and outer demands. He believed that lifestyles develop throughout adulthood, reflecting the evolution of a person’s way of living, thinking and behaving.
Sociologically, there are a number of theories that describe and analyse the concept of lifestyle. Often, they are based on the social position of the individual within a certain social context, such as the models of Weber and Bourdieu [5,6]. More recently, a tendency to include this approach has developed in consumer and value research.
Most of these approaches have focused on the behavioural component of lifestyle and have given little importance to the psychological, identity and life span dimensions. It is also not clear in most of these theories how lifestyles form and evolve, either synchronically or diachronically, as well as whether they have a linear or nonlinear character.
The most common concept of lifestyle in the health field is that of a set of behavioural choices that influence an individual’s health. In this approach, lifestyle is considered as a determinant of disease and can be changed with targeted educational campaigns.
However, there are many other factors that have a greater impact on the onset and progression of chronic diseases than lifestyles. For this reason, there is a need to broaden the definition of lifestyle to include an integrated approach that considers behavioural, psychological and life cycle aspects. In addition, the concept of healthy lifestyle needs to be defined more clearly to reflect an individual’s unique dietary and behavioural patterns. This would be beneficial in identifying specific interventions that could be effective in the prevention of disease. The aim of this article is to reexamine the concept of lifestyle from these three main points of view. This will allow us to identify its strengths and weaknesses and suggest an avenue for further research.
