Veganism - Sustainable Lifestyle Management

Lifestyle Management -

Lifestyle Management workshops have become a regular feature for executives in companies.

Occupational Health Physicians & Industrial Psychologists conduct these workshops to help people with their overall health & wellness. The term ‘Lifestyle Management’ has become synonymous with ‘Weight Loss & Stress Management’. The advent of vaccines & antibiotics mitigated the threat of infectious diseases & led to chronic & lifestyle illnesses becoming the primary health concern. The notion of health & wellness emerged which gave a more holistic perspective of health.

What’s Wrong With Lifestyle Management?

Lifestyle management broadly involves lifestyle solutions from the viewpoint of physical & mental health of an individual. Most workshops provide insights on personal lifestyle, stress & ways to cope with it & improving interpersonal relationships through developing positive attitudes, behaviours & emotions. The focus is on self without regard to animals & the environment.

A Step Forward-

According to BC Atlas of Wellness (Miller 2007), the term wellness includes various dimensions such as physical, psychological/emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, occupational and environmental. Many factors contribute to wellness in a series of complex and interacting ways, but wellness, like health, is more than the absence of disease; it involves important subjective concepts by individuals about themselves. The BC Atlas of Wellness highlighted health as a resource for everyday living & gave a framework for better policies to be developed for nurturing human condition & spirit with regard to environment.

Sustainable Lifestyle -

Sustainability means consuming resources responsibly in tandem with production without causing irreversible damage to the environment. It’s about giving thought to what you should buy and consume. Most people do not practice sustainable lifestyles because they are not convinced about the impact of their individual attempts at sustainable living while the rest of the world continues to live in luxury. Companies indulge in a patch work of fitful practices under the garb of CSR initiatives without any long term commitment to change & often to get environmental credits only. Sustained commitment towards a sustainable environment is the need of the hour. Lifestyles are largely matter of individual values, beliefs & preferences. Long held beliefs & personal habits can be difficult to change unless there is awareness and a willingness to change. Empowerment is the way forward.

Veganism-Sustainable Lifestyle Management-

Veganism – Veganism is a lifestyle that excludes animals from the diet & use of animal products in daily life.

Veganism & Health - Studies show that a vegan diet helps in weight reduction .It also prevents & reverses lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease & other chronic ailments.

Veganism & Environment - A vegan diet helps to reduce your personal impact on a host of problems such as global warming, water scarcity, soil degradation, deforestation & world hunger.

Veganism & Conscience - Veganism is a conscious decision to abstain from the cruelty being meted out to animals across the world. It is conscientious objection to acts of violence against the millions of animals that are sacrificed to cater to a consumerist society.

Eriyah Flynn, the founder of Coalition for Planetary Health & Peace articulates it well by saying that, “veganism is not a binary issue of either health or ethics. There is tremendous opportunity to raise the level of consciousness about the true insidious and pervasive impacts of the single behavior of an animal based diet/culture”

Lifestyle Management is passé. A vegan lifestyle must be embraced as an all encompassing long term solution to end a host of worldwide problems. For sustained health & wellness of individuals & the planet, the new mantra should be Sustainable Lifestyle Management through veganism.

About the Author
Manisha Hariharan is a businesswoman,corporate trainer,image consultant & writer.She is also a member of People for Animals,Wardha & most importantly a vegan.
manisha_pfa@yahoo.com

*Proper wildlife rehabilitation is an extremely biologically and ecologically responsible attitude toward all living things.*