What is a regenerative lifestyle? 

It can be hard to know what people mean when they say regenerative. It seems like it’s the new eco-friendly buzzword popping up everywhere. While the world decides how we want to use regenerative in this context, I’m going to tell you what regenerative means to me. That way, when you see me using the word, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Regenerative means taking something that isn’t ideal and leaving it better than we found it. 

A regenerative lifestyle is one that accepts that our modern lifestyle isn’t the ideal, the best version of itself. A regenerative lifestyle is willing to take a close look at itself and find opportunities for improvement. 

By ideal, I mean one that embraces individual health, happiness and agency (the ability to make decisions for oneself) as part of a big, interconnected network that includes other people and all living things. 

The five pillars of a regenerative lifestyle are diet, physical activity, sleep, mindfulness, and connection. These pillars are fundamental to building a lifestyle that approaches our ideals. They are pillars that overlap significantly with those of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, with good reason: there is a large and growing amount of evidence that these lifestyle pillars play a huge role in our ability to live a healthy, happy, and connected life.

Here are some examples of what those five pillars look like in real life:

Diet: We are healthiest when we eat diets rich in fresh fruits and vegetables. The Mediterranean Diet gets a lot of press as the “healthiest diet,” but there are lots of other traditional and indigenous healthy food cultures. The modern Western (American) diet is not healthy. It hurts our bodies, it hurts our planet. A regenerative diet is plant-forward and includes regeneratively-sourced animal protein sources on a limited basis.

Physical activity: Our bodies are designed for movement. Modern lifestyles have made us sedentary. Regular physical activity is necessary for our physical and mental well-being. Are you getting the 300 minutes or more per week of moderate to vigorous activity that has been shown to reduce mortality from lifestyle diseases?

Sleep: It makes up about one-third of our lives because it’s important. Restorative sleep improves our physical health, immune system function, and emotional states. Good sleep hygiene is a necessary part of a healthy, regenerative lifestyle.

Mindfulness: The world is increasingly being designed (yes, intentionally) to take our attention and keep it for as long as possible. But it is when we bring that attention back to ourselves that we can make tremendous steps forward in regenerating our lives. Our minds, bodies and relationships all benefit from dedicated time to practices that help us pay attention to ourselves and the world around us as each beautiful moment unfolds.

Connection: Humans are social creatures. We all do better when we feel connected to those we care about – and who care about us. Modern lifestyles and the pandemic years have normalized digital connection with physical separation. We can improve our health, live regenerative lifestyles, and actually live longer by staying connected and building healthy communities.

Future posts will explore each of these pillars in greater depth and show you how to design your own regenerative lifestyle.

When we choose to live regeneratively, we make the decision to commit to improvement. Life is a team sport, and the game doesn’t end. So we play it the best we can for as long as we can, and we try to set the rest of the team up for success.

Welcome to the team!