What It Means To Live a Healthy Lifestyle
Living a healthy lifestyle is something we all strive towards. But if you ask someone, “What does it mean to live healthily?”, you’ll get a lot of different answers. For some, it’s about exercising every day. For others, it’s about not drinking. For some, healthy living it about eating vegetables and drinking water. Here at ACCQSleepLabs believe that getting quality sleep is a key part of a healthy lifestyle. But with so many different answers to the question, how you do know if you’re really living a healthy life?
Why we search for the definition of “healthy lifestyle”
We often look for the answer to this question because we want to make sure we are doing everything right when it comes to our health. And if we can get a clear, black-and-white answer as to what a healthy lifestyle is (and isn’t!) then we can know what we should and shouldn’t do.
It’s not that easy
Unfortunately, answering this question is not that easy. As we said, “healthy” can look different to different people, all depending on age, baseline of health, medical history, physical and mental limitations and many other factors.
First off: What is a “lifestyle”?
A lifestyle is the way you live. It can be looked at as micro as an individual person’s to as macro as a culture, country or group of people. IT can involve how you spend your time, your hobbies, your environment, your priorities, your beliefs and everything in between. Some types of lifestyles include:
Rural lifestyles
Urban lifestyle
Solo lifestyle
Nomadic lifestyles
Digital lifestyle
There are dozens of different types of lifestyles. “Healthy” is another one.
The general definition for a healthy lifestyle?
In general, you can define a healthy lifestyle as living in a way that lowers the risk of being sick, ill or dying early on in life. There are general guidelines you can follow for this including:
Eating fruits and vegetables
Sleeping 8 hours a night
Drinking water
Exercising
Limiting processed foods and sugar
Pro healthy living!
We support living a healthy lifestyle with a focus on taking care of your mental, physical and emotional health. Feel good! Have fun! Live well! What doesn’t want that?
We believe that there is not one single way to build and live a healthy lifestyle but many ways. And, more importantly, you need to find the way that works for you.
There’s a lot of info out there about what you should and shouldn’t do to keep yourself healthy. This is our take on it:
Defensive living is not sustainable for health
When it comes to healthy living, many people focus on the things they shouldn’t do. Don’t eat treats, Don’t drink juice. Don’t be lazy. Don’t stay up late. Don’t, don’t, don’t. This mindset of “limitations” or living your life in defence-mode is not sustainable throughout life and can lead to a lot of rollercoaster and on-again-off-again health “habits”.
On top of this, this type of mindset can make it easy to be swept up into fads and health trends that are based on little more than a TikTok or person trying to make a quick buck. It make “healthy living” into this chase and defensive living trying to focus on fear, shame, blame and finger pointing. Ultimately, this can have a larger, more negative impact on your health and wellness. Being kind to yourself is at the centre of it all.
Health as adding to your life
Yes, there are absolutely things you should avoid to maintain a generally healthy life. But looking for things that you add to your life instead of avoiding is a great way to make health approachable, fun, and (most importantly) maintainable. For example:
Add an extra glass of water with your coffee
Go for a 10 minute walk at lunch
Include a second veggie at your dinner
Do a night time meditation once a week
Spend time with people you live
Make time for a hobby or pass time you enjoy
This “adding health” lifestyle makes healthy living what it should be: a bonus to your life that empowers you in your decisions in a way you can and should feel good about.
So, what does it mean to live a healthy lifestyle?
Living a healthy lifestyle is about making choices every day that help you feel good, physically, mentally and emotionally. It’s about having the capacity to do what you love, spend time with the people you love and feel fulfilled every day. It’s about adding joy to your life, practicing moderation and avoiding shame about food, exercising and other habits.
Life is to be enjoyed. Healthy living is doing everything you can to enjoy it as much as you can for as long as you can.