How to Eat Healthy When Your Significant Other Doesn’t

It would be so much easier to have healthy eating habits if it weren’t for the other person living with you. Your significant other, specifically.

Living with someone who isn’t quite as concerned about his or her eating habits can feel frustrating if you’re trying to change yours. Especially if they’re trying to push the foods on you that you’re trying to eat less of or avoid altogether.

There are some things you can do to help your significant other understand your desires, but also to help yourself make food choices that are based on YOUR desires and goals.

In this post, I’m sharing how to eat healthy when your significant other doesn’t. I’m also sharing how to communicate with him or her in a way that is non-confrontational, why it’s important to you to eat healthy.

Be Clear on Your Desires

The first thing that will help you eat healthy when your significant other doesn’t, is to be really clear on YOUR desires and goals. Write down the reasons why you want to eat healthier.

Write down how it will benefit you to have healthier eating habits. Next, write down how it can also benefit your significant other (or even your children if you have them) as well.

Being clear on your desires and the impact on your life helps show the importance of your actions. And when you’re really clear on these, you’ll be much more motivated to eat healthy when your significant other doesn’t.

You’ll also be much more equipped to communicate to him or her why it’s important to you. (I’ll help you with this in a bit.)

So keep that piece of paper where you wrote down all those desires and benefits handy, so you can use that as great motivating fuel to make healthier food choices.

• READ: 3 Advantages to Setting Really Big Health and Body Goals (Blog Post)
• LISTEN OR READ: Social Eating Habits (Podcast Episode)

Do Your Own Grocery Shopping

If your significant other isn’t on-board with developing healthier eating habits, then you be the one in control of the food in the house. Or at least the food YOU’LL eat that’s in the house.

Do your own grocery shopping, so even if your significant other has foods in the house that you’re trying to avoid, you have plenty of other alternatives that you feel good about eating.

It needs to be easy to do the behavior of eating the healthier food, so actually having those healthier foods in the house is a must.

PRO TIP: Put your food front and center in the refrigerator and pantry when you can. It’ll be easier for you to choose that, rather than the foods you are trying to eat less of.

• GET WEEKLY TIPS: Eating Habit and Weight Loss Tips
• LISTEN OR READ: Eating Behavior Triggers (Podcast Episode)

Decide Ahead of Time What You’ll Eat

Deciding ahead of time what you’ll eat, rather than in the moment, will increase the likelihood you’ll make the healthier choice that is aligned with your desires and goals.

This can mean deciding just one meal ahead of time, an full day of meals and snacks ahead of time, or an entire week ahead of time.

When you decide ahead of time, you’re using part of your brain called the pre-frontal cortex that is very future-focused and tends to make decisions that aren’t emotion-based.

The decisions we often make in the moment when stressed, tired, tempted, etc. are more impulsive and more about pleasure or avoidance of discomfort. These decisions are NOT future-focused, so often you forget about your goals when you’re making food decisions in the moment.

So decide ahead of time, what you’ll eat. Whether it’s just one meal or a full week of meals.

• LISTEN OR READ: Why Willpower Fails to Change Eating Habits (Podcast Episode)
• READ: 7 Biggest Mistakes When Changing Your Eating Habits (Blog Post)

Communicate Clearly With Your Significant Other

Just communicating your desires/goals and reasons why you want to have healthier eating habits will help you eat healthy when your significant other doesn’t.

Your significant other has reasons he or she DOESN’T eat healthier, so may feel like you should share those reasons. So just communicating clearly your reasons why you want healthy eating habits will help him or her understand a little better.

Here’s where you can also take that list of ways that YOU eating healthier will benefit not only you, but also your significant other, and children if you have them.

Your significant other loves you, so wants you to be happy and healthy. Your significant other will also enjoy the benefits to him or her, from you eating healthier.

So use that to your advantage to help you eat healthy when your significant other doesn’t.

• LISTEN OR READ: Losing Weight and Increasing Connection (Podcast Episode)

Final Notes (& More Tips)

It can really feel like there are barriers to you having healthier eating habits, but there are ALWAYS ways to work around those barriers. That’s what I help career women with when I help them break their bad eating habits and lose weight.

We find that no matter what the circumstance, there are always ways you can stay in control. This just makes breaking any bad eating habit so much easier.

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