For most people, living a healthy lifestyle is a priority in their daily lives. It includes eating a nutritious diet, getting regular exercise and staying hydrated. It also means not smoking or consuming excessive amounts of alcohol. However, it is not always easy to make healthy choices on a consistent basis, particularly if you have a hectic schedule or are dealing with an illness.
The concept of a healthy lifestyle has been analysed from a number of different perspectives, including sociological and psychological approaches. Generally, these approaches tend to differ from each other in the way they define and understand this concept. Moreover, they also differ in their focus on internal or external dimensions of lifestyle.
Theories that favour an internal interpretation of lifestyle consider it as the organisation of personality, a system of values and a pattern of behaviour justified by these values. They are mainly of sociological origin and can be distinguished by their main focus, which is either on social positioning (as in the models of Weber and Bourdieu) or on practice and behaviour, especially when it comes to consumer research [6, 38].
These theories consider lifestyle as an expression and synthesis of self-realisation processes in particular sociocultural contexts. Giddens defined this process as a disembedding, which caused lifestyle to become decentralised, fragmented and diversified. This approach has been criticized for neglecting the fact that lifestyle is the outcome of the interactions between people and their environment.
Another type of definition, which combines both the internal and external aspects of lifestyle, defines it as a set of behavioural patterns that determine consumption. The main determinants of these patterns are the needs, aspirations and values of individuals. It has been criticised for not considering the effects of societal changes on these behavioural patterns, which are considered to be an important factor in the maintenance of a healthy lifestyle.
Finally, a more recent approach considers the influence of lifestyle on health and well-being by incorporating the concept of culturally situated and meaningful health practices into its framework. This concept is the result of a critical reworking of the concept of healthy lifestyle, which is necessary to create more effective theoretical and explanatory models for health promotion interventions. It is also necessary to address the limits of this approach, which are related to its lack of in-depth analysis and its reliance on the concept of consumer behaviour.
