The article substantiates the urgency of the problem of forming healthy lifestyle skills in students of general educational organizations. The authors proceed from the recognition of the leading role of a healthy lifestyle in the system of factors affecting human health, as well as from the requirements of the Federal state educational standards for personal educational results in the field of preservation and promotion of health. This study is devoted to an integrated assessment of the subjective prerequisites for a healthy lifestyle in students of general educational organizations. The article presents the results of a survey of students regarding their relationship to a healthy lifestyle in dynamics over a three-year period. The statistical data on the subjective prerequisites of a healthy lifestyle — ideas, motivation, behavior, which together determine the attitude to a healthy lifestyle as an integral phenomenon, is analyzed. The authors emphasize the interconnection and mutual influence of the subjective prerequisites of healthy lifestyle on the formation of sustainable habits of health-preserving behavior. The method of comparative analysis revealed the contradictions between knowledge and motivation, knowledge and behavior, motivation and behavior. The subjective psychological prerequisites for a healthy lifestyle are not consistent and contradict each other, which negatively affects the formation of healthy lifestyle habits. The ideas about the requirements of a healthy lifestyle are largely socially desirable and reflect the cognitive patterns of a healthy lifestyle transmitted in the sociocultural environment of children. The value of one’s own health is not realized and is not lived, and, as a result, understanding the importance of health and a healthy lifestyle does not contribute to the consolidation of conscious, focused and sustainable health-preserving behavior.