A Guide to Lead a Healthy Lifestyle for Engineering Students

Engineering has many activities that can lead you to neglect some healthy lifestyle habits. For instance, you might be used to doing night outs or snacking up on your favorite junk food.

In fact, students are used to this lifestyle throughout their academic tenure. However, if you are one such student, it’s high time to rectify some health mistakes.

Researchers have found that around 85% of bachelor's degree students consume junk food in recent times. What is the ill-effect of such an unhealthy diet?Fast foods can lead to problems like depression, headaches, acne, heart diseases, dental problems, weight gain, and bloating.

Indeed, if you don’t want any of these issues during and after your engineering tenure. Here's a guide to help you with some valuable lifestyle tips and to become an efficient engineer.

Steps to a Healthy Lifestyle

You are an engineering student. This implies that you are left with no time to look after your health. But this lack of time doesn’t mean you should neglect the most vital aspect of life.

Here are the fundamentals that you should pay attention to for achieving a healthy lifestyle:

Take care of Diet
Exercise
Sleep
Mental health

If you follow some tips to cover these four aspects, a healthy lifestyle isn’t difficult to achieve. Let’s analyze each parameter at a time.

Tips to Achieve a Healthy Lifestyle for Engineering Students

Regardless of the tenure in an engineering course, these lifestyle tips can help you carry out your daily activities without facing burnout.

1. Food or Diet

Certain habits can improve your diet, whether you eat homemade food or visit the hotel's dining facility. For this purpose, you need to break the food aspect into different categories:

Schedule
Types of Food
Limit Fast Food Consumption

Schedule

First, let’s talk about the schedule. Here’s what you might be doing as an engineering student — skipping breakfast.

Neglecting the power of breakfast is a mistake that you should avoid. Why?

Get this — our bodies are asleep for eight to nine hours (predominantly longer) after the previous night’s dinner. A healthy morning breakfast provides the necessary nourishment to kick start the day.

At the same time, you should eat your lunch, evening snack, and dinner at a particular time. Resultantly, your body will get used to the schedule and process food accordingly.

Healthy Lifestyle Tip #1: Don’t skip breakfast and follow timings.

Types of Food

You should consume foods rich in vitamins, minerals, and proteins if possible. Some desi foods like whole grains and nuts can boost your brain activity. Thus, you can perform well in academics and extra-curricular tasks.

Notably, foods rich in vitamins, fibers, and minerals help in the body’s optimum performance. Try to eat a wide variety of healthy foods that include the following:

Vegetables
Fruits
Rice
Pulses
Eggs
Salads

Overall, your focus should be to balance junk food with these nutritional alternatives. For a healthy lifestyle in engineering, try to consume the majority of your diet comprising these foods.

Healthy Lifestyle Tip #2: Eat the majority of nutritional food items.

Limit Fast Food Consumption

Fast foods like French fries, chips, burgers, pizzas and soft drinks are every engineering student’s delight. You might be tempted to visit the canteen and munch on such tasty food items. Still, the adverse health effects of these foods are apparent to everyone.

Junk foods have a high sodium content. Hence, you can face issues like obesity, increased cholesterol, and blood pressure levels in the long term. So, if you are health-conscious, it is better to avoid such foods strictly.

But the practical conditions might be challenging. For instance, you might be a student living far away from home with limited economic resources. In such a case, you should try to limit your intake of junk foods rather than eliminating them completely.

Healthy Lifestyle Tip #3: Limit consumption of junk foods.

2. Exercise

It is difficult to get the motivation for daily exercise, especially when you are an engineering student. You need to keep up to date with semester exams, viva exams, project dates, assignments, and practical sessions. So, it can become challenging to keep working out.

Still, will this excuse reduce the ill effects of a sedentary lifestyle? Absolutely not!

The solution — work in groups. In student life, you benefit from collaborating with like-minded individuals for various activities.

So, use this advantage and assemble a group of friends to visit the local gym. If you want to avoid the gym expenses, exercise at home or a local track.

Here are other ways to stay fit and keep the body moving:

Walk to the college.
Play sports like cricket or badminton regularly.
Use the stairs in your college.
Work out at home.

Healthy Lifestyle Tip #4: Stay active and keep moving.

3. Sleep

It is hard to get a good sleep at night as an engineering student, isn’t it?

You need to prepare for GATE and college exams, submit assignments, and get ready for viva. These activities can hamper your sleep schedule, thereby affecting your ‘healthy lifestyle for engineering’ mission.

Now, the question is – how to get the ‘above seven hours sleep’ every night? Here are some practical tips.

Plan in Advance

‘Prepare a timetable.’ How often do you hear this line from your professors and parents? Probably, on several occasions.

Still, you do not follow the advice. Planning in advance can help maintain a healthy lifestyle for engineering students.

In short, you can benefit from the following activities:

Finishing work on time.
Balancing various engineering activities.
Getting time for recreation.
Leading up to a good sleep at night.

Healthy Lifestyle Tip #5: Plan your routine well and get adequate sleep.

Keep the Phone Away

Your smartphone emits blue light that blocks melatonin. Hence, your body needs more time to fall asleep.

This results in sleep deprivation, thereby making you feel drowsy and lazy the next day. So, can you efficiently grasp all the knowledge from classes in your college? Definitely not.

To lead a healthy lifestyle for engineering life successfully, you need to resist the anxiety to scroll through your smartphone.

Healthy Lifestyle Tip #6: Don’t use the phone before going to sleep.

4. Mental Well-Being

Engineering life is stressful. In fact, a hectic schedule can take a toll on your mental well-being. So, it is vital to keep your mind fresh to achieve a healthy lifestyle.

In addition to the usual timely tips, you need to balance your engineering tenure. How do you do that? Here are some suggestions:

Don’t burden yourself with unrealistic expectations.
Play sports almost daily if possible.
Go for refreshing evening walks.
Participate in fun activities at the college.
Plan some exciting field trips.
Make time for watching movies and songs.

In fact, listening to music can lead to several benefits like reduced stress, relaxation, and boosting your mood.

So, stay positive and focus on your psychological well-being. After all, life isn’t all work. You should enjoy the different facets and give your best in academics.

Healthy Lifestyle Tip #7: Don’t stress too much and balance studies with recreational activities.

An Overview of the Mantra for Healthy Lifestyle

This table compiles the tips to find the perfect combination of food, exercise, sleep, and mental well-being.

Table: Healthy Lifestyle Tips for Engineering Students

Tip Number	Strategy
1	Don’t skip breakfast and follow set timings.
2	Eat the majority of nutritional food items.
3	Limit consumption of junk foods.
4	Stay active and keep moving.
5	Plan your routine well and get adequate sleep.
6	Don’t use the phone before you go to sleep.
7	Don’t stress too much and balance studies with recreational activities.

These tips can gradually improve your performance, outlook, and health during the engineering course. Hence, you no longer need to worry much about exam day anxiety and frequent illness during the course.

Benefits of a Healthy Lifestyle for Engineering Students

Some of you might question the need to stick to all these tips. You might feel intimidated by sacrificing some bad habits like junk food or pulling the night out.

It is, however, vital to realize that a healthy lifestyle can transform you into an efficient person and engineer. This section contains a breakdown of the benefits of developing a healthy lifestyle for engineering students.

Better Work Management

The results are simple to analyze. A fit body will lead to efficient management of your curriculum. Resultantly, you will be able to understand the concepts quickly without worrying about any illness.

Next, sound sleep will help boost your memory, thereby reducing the unnecessary burden of studies. Finally, a fresh mind can enjoy studies and extracurricular activities optimally.

Overall, a healthy lifestyle for engineering students can lead to improved competency and a positive outlook.

Reduced Health Issues

Eating wholesome food provides all the vital nutrients to your body. So, your immunity to resist viral infections improves drastically.

Nobody likes to write an exam with a persistent cold or fever. A healthy lifestyle helps prevent such sickness, thereby minimizing your hassle. In addition, mental well-being will help you prevent common issues like depression and anxiety. All these factors lead to an energetic engineering tenure.

So, your discipline and strict adherence to the mentioned tips can help prevent undesirable diseases. This benefit is vital to advance your career smoothly.

A Boost to Creativity

How can you become creative and develop world-class technological solutions?

With motivation, enthusiasm, and a positive outlook. A healthy lifestyle provides adequate rest to your body and mind. Hence, your brain develops a high state of cognitive and analytical skills.

Consequently, you can develop innovative technical projects, seminars, and software solutions. The limits are endless and a healthy lifestyle fuels this creativity.

Improvement in Longevity

Almost everyone wants to live a long life. Your engineering academics are just the beginning of a promising career. Indeed, you would like to witness professional growth in the near future. A healthy lifestyle and good habits will keep your mind and body fit. Hence, you can maintain such a routine properly even after crossing 40 years of age.

This schedule will indirectly help improve your fitness levels. So, you can work, enjoy, and pursue your passions vigorously.

Overall, a healthy lifestyle for engineering students can be the start of a promising journey.

Wrapping Up

You should emphasize balancing the hectic engineering schedule with healthy lifestyle tips. These tips can prove beneficial for your current and future activities.

Notably, a healthy routine improves your quality of life, leading to a greater chance of achieving academic success. Also, these health tips are simple to follow and only need a decent level of determination.

Start by creating a well-planned schedule and balance your diet, sleep, and exercise effectively. At the same time, pay attention to your mental health. Don’t allow stress to impact your daily routine.

After all, engineering is a promising career that requires intelligent management and some handy tips.