If teenage is the time when you develop a new outlook towards life, then your 20s are a time when you start on the path of self-discovery and explore life to the fullest. Fresh out of college and starting with a career, most 20-year-olds are starry-eyed as they enter the corporate setup. Soon enough, however, the sedentary lifestyle, long working hours and binging on takeaway menus become the norm, while health takes a backseat.

Young adults have to face romantic challenges, job pressure, family stress and money problems. As a result, there’s no time to think about long-term health. Research from Northwestern University, however, shows that health and lifestyle decisions we make in our 20s have a significant impact on how well we age. Prioritising health during the third decade of our lives is strongly associated with a lower risk of developing cardiovascular health conditions in middle age.

To help, here are four simple strategies that you need to implement in your 20s so that you can start positively on the road to a healthy life later.

Learn About Healthy Living

The excitement of meeting new colleagues and making a living is almost too palpable when we start our first job. Also, being young and carefree in your 20s, you begin to understand yourself, what makes you happy and what upsets you. Here, you must realise what would motivate you to be better each day? What do you want to achieve? And most importantly, what you must do to keep healthy? Therefore, you must make a conscious effort to learn about healthy living and how to develop habits that would help you become a more youthful version of yourself. You can subscribe to online journals, magazines and lifestyle apps to keep updated on the latest on health-related topics. You can also attend seminars on healthcare and lifestyle, to meet like-minded individuals and listen to experts sharing their experiences.

Develop A Habit for Exercise at One Particular Time in A Day

Whether it's during work or outside work hours in a bar, if you are engaging in a lot of snacking and consuming high-calorie drinks, you must ensure that you exercise accordingly, to offset all those extra calories. Studies show that most young adults tend to consume more calories during the weekend than on other days of the week.

Therefore, you must devote at least 30 minutes each day to engage in a moderate to an intense workout. Make sure to choose a particular time of day to exercise and then dedicatedly follow the routine, day in and day out.

You can also switch between exercises and shuffle workouts now and then, to keep the motivation up. You can choose from weight exercises in the gym or physical activities such as cycling, running, yoga, callisthenics and even swimming. Remember, keeping a regular exercise routine will help you improve your fitness and develop a habit that will keep up with you, in your later life.

Create A Healthy Living Environment in Your Home

A healthy home is a key to a healthy mind and heart. Therefore, you need to make sure that your home has a healthy, relaxing environment where you can unwind after a day’s hard work. To do this, the first thing you must do is to ensure that your home has ample ventilation. When fresh air enters your home, it not only rejuvenates the oxygen content in the air indoors but also flushes out any impurities from the inside.

You can also spend some time to create a small garden patch in your home by placing indoor plants and shrubs. While it is not possible to have a full-fledged garden inside your house, especially when you live in a metro city, you can always induce a shade of green inside your home through these plants to elevate the overall holistic ambience.

Overall, it is crucial to learn the importance of work-life balance when you are in your 20s. Without it, you would see yourself quickly burn down from all the hard work. You must also make it a habit to avoid bringing work and any related stress back to your home, no matter how hard you work during the day.

Buy a Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan

Often, young adults, in their 20s find the concept of buying life insurance or critical health insurance absurd, believing that there’s still time before they start worrying about their health. However, that’s the thing with health - you cannot put the finger on when it would deteriorate.

If we talk about the type of lifestyle most 20-year-old’s sustain nowadays, with all the partying, drinking and binging, chances of developing health issues such as high cholesterol, diabetes or even cardiovascular health conditions are considerably high. Therefore, you need to be more responsible for whatever you put inside your body. Also, you must invest in a comprehensive health insurance plan or a critical illness plan as soon as possible. With the health insurance in place, therefore, you can easily handle any significant expenses due to an unforeseen medical emergency.

Also, you can use the fixed financial benefit from your health plan to help cover all medical costs, especially in case of critical illnesses along with costs of post-treatment nursing and even a loss of income during the treatment phase.

The Journey Towards A Healthier Lifestyle Begins Today

The adage of “Health is Wealth” couldn’t have been more relevant than it is today, especially for young adults in their 20s. With time, you can gain everything – wealth, money, family or fame but health is one thing you can never get back, no matter how hard you tried. Therefore, you must put your health above everything else and try to imbibe a healthy lifestyle and habits from an early age.

That said, it is also crucial that you invest in a health insurance plan as soon as possible to augment your lifestyle. By delaying in getting health insurance, you are not only putting your savings at risk but are also putting yourself in a situation where availing health insurance is just going to get costlier. At Generali Central, we understand the importance of your health and wellbeing, and therefore, provide a range of online health insurance plans that are personalised to suit your healthcare requirements. To know more, give us a call or connect with our health insurance experts today.