Life-style intervention: a conceptual framework.

Abstract

Improving one's life-style may improve one's health. However, there is a lack of consensus on how to promote compliance with newly adopted health habits. This paper presents a conceptual framework that individuals can learn to assess their life-styles and plan for health-behavior changes. It can also be used by professionals from different disciplines who are developing programs to teach healthy life-style choices. The framework is organized into three ideas: (1) Health status to a large extent reflects the individual's styles of living (a composite of beliefs, emotions, and action patterns). (2) These styles can be encouraged or sabotaged by the individual's support structures (relationships, environments, and equipment). (3) The change process can be seen as a series of steps that cycle through phases of readiness appraisal, decision making, experimentation, and reevaluation. clinical examples and documentation from relevant theory and research illustrate and substantiate the framework.