What Is A Healthy lifestyle

The starting point for this guide has to be to define exactly what is meant by the term a "healthy lifestyle.' To do this let's first look at the two words separately.

First we will define HEALTH.

The world health organisation in 1946 defined health as: "A complete state of mental, physical and social well-being not merely the absence of disease."

According to Merriam-Webster the definition of health is: "the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit."

My favourite definition is from the free dictionary: "A relative state in which one is able to function well physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually in order to express the full range of one's unique potentialities within the environment in which one is living." 

Now let's look at the word LIFESTYLE. It is defined as "the way in which a person lives."

The American heritage dictionary of the english language defines lifestyle as: "A way of life or style of living that reflects the attitudes and values of a person or group."

Dictionary.com says it is "the habits, attitudes, tastes, moral standards, economic level, etc., that together constitute the mode of living of an individual or group."

Wikipedia defines a lifestyle as the way a person lives: "this includes patterns of social relations, consumption, entertainment, and dress. A lifestyle typically also reflects an individual's attitudes, values or worldview. A healthy lifestyle is generally characterized as a balanced life in which one makes wise choices."

A final definition of lifestyle is: "the aggregation of decisions by individuals which affect their health, and over which they more or less have control."

That's a whole lot of definitions but nowhere does any website (which I could find at the time of writing this guide) actually define the term "healthy lifestyle." So in the beginners guide spirit I have coined my own simple healthy lifestyle definition in one (easy to understand) sentence.

"A healthy lifestyle is making the best daily life choices to preserve good health and well-being, lowering the risk of being seriously ill or dying early."

Larry Lewis

Yes you did read that right. The risk of not having a healthy lifestyle is death. You may think I'm over exaggerating but it's so important to live a healthy lifestyle yet so many of us choose unhealthy lifestyle choices every day. We have the mindset of "it will never happen to me" but over time living an unhealthy lifestyle will catch up with all of us"

With that said, let's move on to the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle and how you can start making positive changes to your current lifestyle.