subject: How You Can Encourage Your Spouse To Get Healthy [print this page] How You Can Encourage Your Spouse To Get Healthy
Making changes that lead to better health can be challenging. As hard as you might be trying, it may be more difficult for your spouse. Often, couples who lead unhealthy lives make their choices together and when one of them changes, the other may not respond that well. Likewise, it can be tough to change two people, especially if neither of you is all that excited about leading a healthier life. If you are trying to make healthy changes, you should do the work together. There are a number of things you can do to make living healthier easier for both of you. Begin by enabling yourselves to work out in the comfort of your own home. Add gym flooring and home exercise equipment to a basement or spare bedroom so you can get fit without leaving the house. Home fitness equipment does not have to be expensive and if you add one item at a time, it is far more cost-effective than joining a facility.If you are making changes and learning things about health, it can be tempting to overwhelm your spouse with all of your new knowledge. They may feel overwhelmed or attacked by your enthusiasm and become disinterested or self-sacrificing. Instead of loading up on all your new health facts during every conversation, consider telling them just one new thing each day. You can even email them a new fact or an article to read, allowing them to learn in their own time. Remember not to be too hard on them if they put the information aside for the time being. When the time is right for them, they will soak in the information and make the changes.Sometimes getting healthy is as simple as spending time together. Instead of moaning and groaning about the unhealthy choices they are making, work to find something you can do together that you both enjoy. Do not even let on that the activity has anything to do with health. Suggest you go for a hike together, plan a trip to the park to play sports, or schedule a bike ride together through the countryside.Fitness is not the only thing you can do together. If you are both trying to learn to eat healthier, it will take time to learn to prepare healthier foods. Once a week, plan to cook a meal together. Shop for the healthy ingredients and decide which tasks will be best for each of you to do. When the meal is done, it will be very rewarding consuming food you prepared together.If your spouse thinks they are your personal improvement project it may have them feeling on the spot about changing their behavior. Instead of focusing on what they are doing wrong or right, or how sick they may become if they do not make changes, channel your energy into helping others together. If you have children, you can focus on creating a healthier lifestyle for them. If your spouse's parents are aging, encourage him or her to help them make healthy changes. By taking the focus off of your spouse, it may help him or her to change.
