Make Healthy Choices Now to Avoid Chronic Disease Later

When you're young and healthy, feeling invincible is second nature. Your body can bounce back effortlessly from late nights, fast food, and skipped sleep. But, science tells a different story. The choices we make today shape our health decades down the line. Chronic diseases don’t appear overnight. They develop silently over years, even when we feel perfectly fine. That’s why making healthier choices earlier in life can be a game-changer.

Winter farmers market finds - mostly dark leafy greens

You should enjoy your life when you're young. Responsibilities come too soon as it is. The reason I urge you to pay at least a little attention to your health early is that time can fly by and health can seem to change in a minute - when you least expect it.

Jump to:

Why You Probably Don't Worry About Long-Term Health
Chronic Diseases Develop Silently Over Decades
Adopting Healthy Habits Early is the Best Insurance
Steps to Consider When Making Health a Priority
The Misconceptions and Realities of Healthy Eating
What You Need to Be Successful
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Why You Probably Don't Worry About Long-Term Health

It’s common for people to prioritize the present over the future. It's actually a real thing called “temporal discounting." It's the tendency to undervalue long-term benefits in favor of immediate gratification.

Fruit and vegetables from the farmers market including lemon guavas, dragon fruit, carrots, lettuces, and limes

Studies also show that people routinely underestimate their risk of developing a chronic disease in the future. One study examined peoples' perceptions of risk, worry, severity, and control for six common chronic conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and colon, breast, and ovarian cancers.

Risk: "Compared to most people your age and sex, what would you say your chances are for developing (each disease)?"
Worry: "How often have you thought about your chances of getting (one of the diseases)?"
Severity: "Would getting or having (one of the diseases) be a very serious problem?"
Control: Do you believe there's a lot you can do to prevent (the diseases)?

I thought this was really interesting because just reading about makes you take a minute and think about your own risks of developing a chronic disease. The research concluded that most people, both men and women, don't believe they're at risk for developing one of the diseases, despite the fact that the majority of Americans (60%) live with at least one disease and 40% live with one or more.

I'm trying to bring awareness to the issue to help you create early habits that reduce your risk because, for better or worse, the impacts of your habits accumulate over time.

Chronic Diseases Develop Silently Over Decades

Heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and many cancers don’t just “happen” in old age. They develop silently over 10, 20, or even 30 years, influenced by diet, exercise, and lifestyle.

Consider heart disease: Research from the Framingham Heart Study, one of the longest-running cardiovascular studies, found that risk factors like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and obesity in young adulthood significantly increase the likelihood of heart disease later in life—even if symptoms don’t appear until decades later (Lloyd-Jones et al., 2006).

Similarly, a 20-year study published in The Lancet revealed that people who were overweight in their 20s were far more likely to develop type 2 diabetes and metabolic disorders by their 40s (Twig et al., 2016). These findings underscore a crucial fact: poor health doesn’t happen overnight—it’s the result of years of accumulated damage.

Lemon guavas, freshly picked blueberies and strawberries and a bowl of pomegranate arils.

Adopting Healthy Habits Early is the Best Insurance

The good news? Finding a sense of purpose for your health and combining that with healthy habits adopted early can dramatically reduce disease risk. Studies show that:

Regular exercise in young adulthood can reduce the risk of heart disease by up to 50% (Lee et al., 2012).
A diet rich in whole foods and low in processed sugars can prevent insulin resistance, reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes by 60%.
Not smoking or quitting early significantly lowers the risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Even small changes compound over time, protecting long-term health. Try swapping sugary drinks for water, walking more, or getting enough sleep. Easy.

Steps to Consider When Making Health a Priority

Let's talk about steps and habits to consider when you decide to take your current and future health seriously. While everyone is different and has unique health needs, these can give you a few things to think about and a few places to start.

Take a personal inventory: Figure out why you want to focus on your health. Having a purpose makes it easier to commit to taking action. Take stock of where your health is now and how you want to change it. Having a direction and a goal will support your actions.
Do your own research: Health information can be confusing and social media and the internet can make it even harder to find reputable information. This guide from the National Institutes of Health provides some tips for finding trustworthy information. I also recommend reading or listening to experts who write and/or broadcast about health and attribute the information they discuss to researched, documented studies. Google Scholar is a search engine for research studies.
Talk to people who are further along on the journey: We've all had to start a new phase when making changes to our lives. If you know people who have changed their outlooks, their diets, their activity levels, quit smoking, or other lifestyle habits, engage them in a conversation to learn how they did it. Learn about their motivations, their struggles, and their victories. So many people have made changes and have a story and tips from which you can learn.

Swiss chard, purple-stemmed broccoli, Bloomsdale spinach and sugar snap peas

Making Healthy Changes Can Take Time

Realize that the path may not be a straight line: Changing habits, your diet, or your daily routine is hard, but you don't have to change all at once. Once you decide that you want to change, you'll become more aware of your current habits and more able to substitute new ones.
Create new habits and do them consistently: Once you're able to create some new habits, reinforce them by doing them as consistently as possible. And, even if that consistency is uneven at first, it will change over time. It may waver a little here or there, but over time, if you want to change, you will.
Commit to health with purpose: If you really want to change, you will find the will to do it. However, you can't force it. If you're not sure or not ready, maybe you need more time to learn, or more time for self-reflection. Be easy on yourself, but know that no one can make it happen but you.
Start slowly. It's not all or nothing: Just take one action. It can be small. Even small actions will start you down the path.

Early spring farmers market finds swiss chard, carrots and celery

The Misconceptions and Realities of Healthy Eating

Healthy eating is too restrictive: It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Make healthy choices in small ways, here and there like eating a piece of fruit for a snack and/or adding a green vegetable or a salad to your dinner. Once the small changes become part of your daily routine, try a new recipe or a new fruit or vegetable. Go to a farmer's market. Keep your goal in mind and be open to trying new approaches until you find some favorites and then, over time, that will become your new normal.
Healthy food is too expensive: It's hard to directly compare "healthy" foods other foods, but there are a few issues baked into the claim.
- Healthy foods are mostly fresh and perishable, which means that they need to be stored or eaten with a few days or they will spoil. So, some people claim that they are not a good value for that reason. It's true that to be healthy, you must spend some time preparing and planning which foods you will buy, and how and when you will prepare, eat and store them.
- Healthy foods must be prepared. This isn't always true because fresh fruits and vegetables are actually the original fast foods. They don't require any preparation at all. However, many vegetables, beans, legumes and other foods do require preparation and that does require forethought and planning. This But, lifestyle habit change seems like a small price to pay now to avoid a painful and possibly fatal disease later. Don't you think?
Making healthy food is too hard: You do have to slow down and learn a few new skills to shop for and prepare healthy foods. If you end up with a disease down the line, you'll be slowing down for a whole other reason. Eating healthier requires commitment, and the will to invest your time and energy now to get the long-term pay off. It's just like any other goal that you want to accomplish. You have to put in the work. Our culture has convinced people that the work isn't necessary. It is.
Eating healthy takes too much work: It does take work. You need to learn which foods to eat, where to buy them, and how to prepare and store them. And, then you need to schedule in the time to do all that. It takes a willingness to change the way you use your time and energy. As too many have learned the hard way, "hustle culture" and "convenience" foods are not the panacea they were made out to be.
Healthy food doesn't taste good: If you've been eating a lot of foods that are packaged, processed or prepared, your palate has adapted to the highly seasoned chemicals and flavorings added to those foods. Fresh whole foods lack those strong flavors. Raw or lightly cooked vegetables lack those flavors so they might not taste very good to you at first. You'll need to adapt your palate to enjoy the more delicate flavors of fresh, whole foods that are more lightly seasoned. It takes time, but is so worth it in the long run, and remember, that's where we're focused. Learn how.