Healthy Lifestyle Choices
Understand how lifestyle choices affect the body’s health: a balanced diet, regular exercise, adequate sleep, and avoiding harmful substances (tobacco, alcohol, drugs) help body systems function well, while poor choices increase the risk of disease
What a learner can do afterwards
- Explain how regular exercise strengthens the heart, lungs, and muscles
- Describe how a poor diet high in sugar and fat can lead to obesity, tooth decay, and heart problems
- State at least two harmful effects of smoking (damages lungs, increases heart disease risk) or alcohol (damages liver, affects brain)
The lesson
Your body works better when you move it. Running, swimming, biking, and playing sports are all exercise. When you exercise regularly, your heart pumps blood more efficiently, your lungs take in more air, and your muscles grow stronger. These changes build up slowly, a little every day.
Diego jogs for twenty minutes most mornings before school. At first, he got tired quickly and had to stop and catch his breath. After a few months of jogging, his heart didn't have to work as hard to keep up, because exercise had made it stronger.
You already know about the food groups that keep your body balanced. Eating too much sugar and fat, and not enough of a balanced diet, can cause problems. It can lead to obesity, tooth decay, and even heart problems later in life.
Some things hurt your body instead of helping it. Smoking damages your lungs and raises your risk of heart disease. Alcohol and other drugs can damage your liver and change how your brain works. The healthiest choice is to stay away from them.
Eating well, staying active, sleeping enough, and avoiding tobacco, alcohol, and drugs all work together to keep your body's systems healthy.
Watch it
Where it sits
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.