The Concept of Lifestyle
A healthy lifestyle focuses on eating well, exercising regularly and getting enough rest. It also includes building strong relationships with friends and family. A healthy lifestyle is a personal choice, and the right balance will feel good to you both physically and emotionally.A person’s lifestyle reflects his or her attitudes and values, as well as worldview and beliefs. It includes patterns of social relations, consumption, entertainment and dress. It can also reflect the degree to which a person seeks or avoids risk. While the concept of lifestyle has become a prominent research topic in many disciplines, it is not always used consistently or understood clearly. In the field of health psychology, for example, it is often equated with behavioural factors such as smoking or drinking alcohol or avoiding unhealthy behaviours. This tendency to limit the concept of lifestyle mainly to the behavioural component of an individual’s choices impedes the development of more effective health promotion interventions.During the course of the 20th century, several lines of psychological research developed the concept of lifestyle. Rokeach, for instance, linked it to a person’s value system, namely the hierarchy of values he or she holds. Other researchers have opted for a broader definition, and they include within the concept of lifestyle not only habits but also values, interests and attitudes.The common ground among the various models is that a person’s lifestyle is formed and shaped by both internal and external influences. The differences are in the way these influences are interpreted and the temporal dimension is addressed.One of the main issues is whether or not it is necessary to define a set of characteristics that distinguishes one lifestyle from another. Weber, for example, defined a lifestyle as an aggregate of the activities of a group, so that people who shared the same lifestyle were part of the same status group. The same approach was followed by Veal, who argued that direct contact was not necessary for sharing a lifestyle.The different perspectives have their merits. They allow us to better understand the dynamics of a person’s lifestyle and help in the design of more effective interventions. However, they have their limitations as well. For instance, it is not clear how these theories can be applied to a salutogenic and ecosystemic perspective of health. Furthermore, they do not address the question of how and why individuals adopt a particular lifestyle, or whether or not there is a continuum between different lifestyles. These limitations must be taken into account as the field of lifestyle research develops further. A multidisciplinary discussion of the concept of lifestyle is needed to reach a more comprehensive understanding.