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Want tangible tips on how to lead a healthy lifestyle? I recently took a course from Harvard on healthy living and I’m sharing what I learned.
Staying healthy is hard. If you live in America, sometimes it can feel impossibly hard.
Take it from me: back in college, I survived on ultra-processed foods like microwaved hot pockets and breakfast cereal! But after learning to cook homemade healthy foods and seeing the transformation it made in my life, I’ve devoted my career to teaching other people how to do the same.
Over the years, I’ve become interested in something: what makes people want to make healthy choices? And how do they stick with them in the long term?
A few months ago, I signed up for a Harvard Executive Education course called “Lifestyle and Wellness Coaching.” Here’s what I found out!
I Went Back to School (Harvard!)
OK, so I didn’t go to Boston and get an actual degree! But Harvard does have an impressive list of executive education digital courses where you can learn from this prestigious institution online. The course I took on Lifestyle and Wellness Coaching was offered through Harvard Medical School.
One reason I wanted to take the course was I’m in the process of writing a Mediterranean diet cookbook, Mediterranean Every Night (to release spring 2027), and I’m particularly interested in lifestyle patterns that support health.
Another reason is because a good friend of mine is a doctor who specializes in lifestyle medicine and we often have long, passionate conversations about health and behavior change. Like, we’ll sit around the dinner table and talk about the pillars of lifestyle medicine (yes, I’m nerdy about this!).
What’s lifestyle medicine? It’s a specialty of medicine that uses lifestyle changes like diet, exercise, and stress management to prevent and manage conditions like heart disease and diabetes.
I wanted to learn more about how to help people understand how to do this in a simple, fun way.
6 Ways to a Healthy Lifestyle (Pillars of Lifestyle Medicine)
What did I learn? While I learned a lot in the class about specific coaching strategies, the most impactful thing was the six pillars of lifestyle medicine. These pillars are the six major parts of your lifestyle that affect your overall health and wellbeing.
What I love about the pillars is that it makes “being healthy” feel less overwhelming and more attainable. I had heard about the pillars but learning about them in detail was helpful for me in my own vision of what kind of life I want to live.
Here’s a list of each pillar of lifestyle medicine (defined by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine) and the guidelines for each that were communicated in the course:
Nutrition
- Enjoy a delicious and nutritious whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern. Harvard recommends the Mediterranean Diet or the Healthy Eating Plate.
- Include lots of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes.
Exercise
- Complete 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity each week OR
75 to 150 of vigorous-intensity physical activity each week. (Moderate means you can talk but not sing; vigorous means you cannot sing or talk.) - Complete strength training twice each week on nonconsecutive days.
Sleep
- Enjoy 7 to 9 hours of restorative sleep each night.
Stress Management
- Practice at least 12 to 15 minutes of stress management techniques each day.
Social Connection
- Make time to connect with at least one friend or loved one each day (or 7 times per week). This can be with the same or different people.
Avoiding Risky Substances
- If you smoke, quit.
- If you don’t drink, don’t start.
- If you do drink, consume 1 or less drinks per 24 hours period if you are a woman and 2 or fewer drinks per 24-hour period if you are a man.
What Makes It So Hard
Living a healthy lifestyle shouldn’t be hard. But in America (and increasingly other countries), there are many obstacles. For example, we have such easy access to processed and packaged foods.
Have you heard of SAD? It’s the Standard American Diet (SAD) or Western Diet, which is high in processed foods, refined grains, sugars, and unhealthy fats, and low in nutrient-dense whole foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. That makes it high in calories, sodium, and sugar, but low in essential nutrients.
American culture has also made it easy to live a relatively sedentary lifestyle if you’re not intentional about staying active, and easy to be disconnected socially from friends and family.
(Personally I believe there are lots of ways this could be achieved from a structural and institutional public health perspective in our country, but that’s a different conversation!)
How to Get Started
It’s easy to read through the lifestyle medicine pillars and feel overwhelmed. But in the course, we talked about how finding small, attainable goals in each category can lead to real progress.
For example, one of real-life case study examples in the course was about a person who ate donuts for breakfast and fast food for dinner. But his first small goal was simply to drink coffee with 1 sugar packet instead of 2 sugar packets.
So, these goals can be small and tangible! Here are a few examples:
- This week, eat 2 servings of fruits and vegetables at each meal.
- Browse my 50 Mediterranean Diet Recipes, Mediterranean Diet Snacks, and Mediterranean Diet Breakfast recipes and pick 1 or 2 to make next week.
- Commit to 2 days of lifting weights at home (here’s one video I use).
- Make a goal of not using your phone before bed and reading instead.
- Check in with a friend or loved one every day this week.
- Make a date with a friend to walk, play tennis, or attend a dance class (two pillars at once!).
- Replace one alcoholic drink this week with one of my top mocktail recipes.
What are you interested in committing to? How do you feel about the 6 pillars of lifestyle medicine? Leave a comment below: I’d love to hear from you!
Photos by Shelly Westerhausen Worcel
I have been doing my best to live a healthy lifestyle, but there are some things that are very difficult. First is eating 2 servings of fruits & vegetables at breakfast, or really at any other meal. When I was young I could eat that much, but in my old age I just can’t eat that much. And veggies for breakfast is very unappetizing. That said, I do eat healthy breakfasts, no fast foods or junk foods. Weight lifting is also problematic for me because it has always been like torture (thank you 8th grade adaptive gym class!). Another difficult one for me is checking in with someone every day. I pretty much don’t have a social life beyond my marriage and grocery shopping (I do get good hugs from a couple of grocery store staff). I’m working towards more of a Mediterranean diet, but have to be careful about how many and what kind of carbs I eat because of being pre-diabetic.
Do you live near a YMCA? They offer many exercise classes geared toward seniors. I’m one myself! For social interaction, try volunteering or joining a Bible study. These are the things that worked for me.
Wonderful info. Thanks so much. Breakfast is always a challenge – oatmeal, eggs, avocado toast or sweets for a change. Going to pick up some smoked salmon for the toast recipe. Veggies at breakfast are hard to work in to our morning routine other than occasional eggs/black bean tortillas. I’ll be watching for suggestions.
I’m a part of this movement as a former Hospital Pharmacist who understands when medications are needed and when they are being used as a false sense of security with no lifestyle change. If you are interested in gut microbiome testing I’d be happy to send you a complimentary kit with a personalized evaluation plan. IMHO it’s truly the best test to assess how all of the lifestyle components are playing out to provide protection or risk of chronic disease and what YOU need to prioritize.
Check out http://www.functionalpharmacist.life
As a primary care physician with board certification in Lifestyle Medicine, I love that you are getting the word out there about this.
Thank you so much! It’s such an important topic!! We’re very interested in uniting creatives and medical professionals in this: I’ll shoot you an email to chat more!