purewellnessamy

What do you do if your significant other has abominable eating habits? How can you get him (or her, but I’ll be using “him” in this post) to eat more healthfully?

I’ve been sitting on this post for over a month now waiting for inspiration to strike.  Alas, I have not been struck.

My goal was to provide a detailed map of action items that would send him skipping down the merry path to health, but…

But. The reality of the situation is this: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO CHANGE ANOTHER PERSON.  ESPECIALLY WHEN  SAID PERSON DOES NOT WANT TO BE CHANGED.

As with any habit, he has to WANT to change his diet.  If you’re dealing with someone who is age 30 or younger, he most likely thinks that health problems are many years away. (I was still smoking cigarettes socially until I was 32! I simultaneously gag and feel ashamed when I think about that.) So if your argument is that poor eating habits are going to kill him, it will most likely go in one ear and out the other. 

Also, if you tell him that he CAN’T eat junk,  junk is all he’s going to want to eat.  People are funny like that, right? Mary, Mary quite contrary. Or Harry, Harry quite contrary.

A while back a person I follow on twitter (Roger Bezanis) tweeted this: “The nutritional avenues we walk without a care in our teens turn to dead ends when we reach our 20′s and a death march in our 30′s and 40′s.”

That is one chill-inducing tweet. Well, I don’t know about you, but it gives me chills because I can relate to it so well.  My eating habits were completely whacked-out in my teen years all the way through to my late twenties. I went from the starvation diet, to the no-fat diet, to the soup-and-Triscuit diet, to the wine-for-dinner diet and back again. I clearly remember laying in bed one night staaarrrvvving, concentrating on getting my heart to stop palpitating, all while fantasizing about eating chocolate pudding. And the kicker is that I was going to get up at 5:30 a.m. to go for a power walk (this was in the early 90s when power walking was cool ) to burn off extra calories. I am amazed that I never had a heart attack.

But, I digress. How can you get your loved one to eat better?  Well, aside from telling him straight out:

I LOVE YOU AND I WANT YOU TO BE HEALTHY, STUPID (or pet name of your choice), you can try some or all of these things:

1.  Watch Food, Inc. together.  Watching our food production system in action isn’t appetizing. It may give your honey the push he needs to eat less processed food.
 
2.  Play the virility card. If you’re married, or plan to get married and start a family, tell him that nutrition affects fertility in men as well as women. So, if he wants kids in the near future he’d do well to improve his eating habits now.

3. Ask him to lead by example. If you already have children together, tell him that he needs to set a positive example for the kids by eating better quality food.  Not to mention the need to take better care of himself so he can be here to see his children grow up.

4. Take the bull by the horns. If you’re co-habitating, you can take on the responsibility of food shopping.  Buy only the healthy stuff that you want to buy. Tip: Be a label reader, if you’re not already. Don’t buy foods containing:

• high fructose corn syrup
• partially hydrogenated oils
• aspartame
• artificial colors or flavors

If he absolutely needs his junk food of choice, well, he can take his butt to the store and buy it himself.
 
5. Channel your grandmother. Go a step further and offer to prepare his breakfast, lunch and dinner.  It doesn’t have to be fancy – oatmeal with mix-ins (fruit, nuts, peanut butter) for breakfast; leftovers from dinner, fruit, and some cut-up vegetables for lunch; pasta or quinoa topped with sautéed vegetables, some good quality fish or meat/chicken for dinner.  If you don’t enjoy cooking, or are busy with work, this is a huge responsibility. Try it for a week and see how you both feel about it. Maybe there will come a time when you’ll alternate cooking weeks. A girl can dream, right!?

 (Now that summer is over, it’s soup and crock pot time! Get online and search for some easy, healthy and delicious recipes. You can also click on my Cooking at Home tag over there on the right side of the screen to bring up some easy recipes that I love.)

6. Upgrade unhealthy foods to healthier foods. For example, if he drinks soda, try getting him to switch to seltzer spiked with juice. If hot dogs are his thing, find the best quality, no nitrate, all beef hot dogs and ask him to eat one (or two) only on the weekend on a whole grain bun.  If he has a sweet tooth, ask him to try switching from M n Ms to a piece of high quality dark chocolate (70 % cocoa).  

Upgrading is a great alternative to depriving.  You’re not saying “don’t eat *fill in the blank*.” You’re saying “Here, try eating this better quality*fill in the blank*.” Just switching from white bread to whole grain bread is a step in the right direction.

7.  Exercise together. Exercise makes you feel good. And when you feel good, you want to keep feeling good, right? That good feeling will more likely than not help him make better food choices.  I mean, how counterproductive would it be to go for a 3 mile run or walk, only to come home and get weighed down by eating a big greasy burger, large fries and a soda?  Blech.

So, there are 7 tips for helping your S.O. eat more healthfully.  It’s not the detailed map that I had envisioned, but I hope you find one or more of the tips helpful.  If you’ve already been through this process successfully and your S.O. is now the epitome of a healthful eating, please share what worked for you!