How to Eat Healthy when your Spouse Doesn't

The Tips:
1. Volunteer to Grocery Shop
2. Learn to cook delicious healthy meals
3. Don’t try to convert
4. Find a like-minded community to link up with

There is no doubt about it. It is extremely difficult to eat well when your spouse has no interest in doing so. You’ve likely been there where you tried to start a healthy eating routine, but your partner orders pizza, or cooks a massive plate of pasta and you dive in too. From there it’s a downward spiral of poor eating until you’re fed up once more. You eat together, you go on dates together and you might even shop together so it’s important that we try and tackle this issue. I also hear this happening to wives mostly, when there husband doesn’t want to eat well, but it does happen to husbands from time to time, so this topic is relevant for both spouses equally.

Here are a few tips to help you stay on track while your husband (or wife) orders the Burger:

1. Volunteer to Grocery Shop

This strategy is simple. Go into your kitchen and toss all junk food out. If it’s there, you’ll likely eat it. Until you can develop some will power, ditch the Cheetos, bread and Mac and Cheese. Then, head to the grocery store and start fresh. If your spouse isn’t there putting junk into the cart then you won’t buy it. Plus, you can spin it that you really want to serve them by doing the shopping this week. Win-win.

2. Learn to cook some delicious healthy meals

Now that you’ve got your food, you’ll need to do some research in cooking healthy. The myth’s are false healthy cooking is not terrible! Terrible cooking is terrible. If you put some effort into learning how to cook, your food will be good. I’ve got a few recipes on Ex Nihilo Health, but you can google healthy low-carb, paleo, vegan or whatever you want meals and find them easily.

3. Don’t try to convert

This is the most important point. Your spouse will likely be unconvinced by your berating, arguing or even sound reasoning. Why? First, everyone and their mother is telling them how to eat. From Jillian Michaels to McDonalds to Jimmy in the cubicle next to them at work, they all have opinions. You don’t want your voice to get lost in the sea of stuff thrown at them.

When it comes to health/diet people will take notice of your healthy eating decisions, positive mood or your slimming physique and pursue you. As hard as it will be, you’ll need to do the same with your spouse. Sending blog links to them every day won’t get it done most of the time.

This is one of those scenarios where you’ll have to bite the bullet and just be patient. Everyone who discovers a new diet gets fired up and wants to tell the world, but the proof will be in the pudding, as they say.

4. Find a like minded community to link up with.

While you wait for your spouse to come around, you’ll need a community of people to be around for motivation and accountability. If you’ve ever tried to diet without that (I’m sure you have) you know how difficult it can be. Finding people to push you when you’re slacking or encourage you when motivation is low is a serious game changer.

The easiest place to look first is a group of healthy friends. Ask them to teach you what they know and ask for accountability. Then offer to do the same for them. More than likely, it could be that their spouse isn’t in a rush to get healthy either and you guys could fill the void for each other.

Other places to find like-minded people are yoga studios, Crossfit gyms or classes offered in gyms. I personally think this is easiest since you already work out and are demonstrating you have similar health passions. This could be a quick win for you.

A very underrated place to find like-mindedness is through online communities. Places like Bulletproof, T-Nation or even your favorite health website have forums and message boards where people grow in community and hold each other accountable.

QUESTIONS:

1. What are your thoughts of this video? Agree? Disagree?
2. Has your spouse or roommate ever demonstrated an unhealthy diet pattern? Did you follow suit at times?
3. If you did, what was the result?
4. Have you ever preached at someone to try and convert them to your diet or way of living? What was the result?
5. After listening to this, what can you do to help lead your spouse to eat better?
6. What is something you can do this week to help you continue to stay healthy despite your spouses eating habits?

RESOURCES:
Wild Kitchen App: fatburningman.com/wild-kitchen-app/
Ex Nihilo Recipes: exnihilohealth.com/category/recipes/
Paleo Recipes: paleoplan.com/recipes/
5 reasons Christians should care about their health more: exnihilohealth.com/5-reasons-christians-should-…