One common roadblock to successful fat loss that many people don't expect when beginning their journey is their spouse. Issues can be as simple as your spouse waving off your new goal as "just a fad", or your spouse could be trying to actively sabotage your efforts due to their own insecurity or belief that you don't need to lose weight.
Whether we admit it or not, other people's actions and opinions do affect us. If your spouse isn't on board, your willpower reserves can be depleted at a dangerously fast rate. Below are some tips to help get your spouse to board the fat loss express and to increase your chances of success if you have to ride this train alone. Keep in mind, all of these also apply to family and friends.
1) Explain what you're doing and why you're doing it.
If you're seeking the advice of this post, it probably means your spouse doesn't understand why you've embarked on this journey, so tell them. Whether it be because you're concerned about your health or you want to feel better in your clothes (or both), convey this to your spouse.
Tell them how you feel about your current state and what achieving this goal would mean to you. It may be that they simply aren't aware of this. Believe it or not, they aren't psychic.
2) Tell them how to help.
After conveying the importance of your fat loss goal, tell your spouse what they can do to help. Express your concerns over things they're doing to harm your fat loss efforts, such as teasing you for getting a grilled chicken salad with water while they're getting a burger, fries, and a coke. You should also let them know things you would like for them to do that they aren't currently doing, such as providing encouragement on days when you're having a hard time sticking to your new habits.
Make sure you request these things of them. Don't demand them. After all, they're already having to adapt to your new habits. If you make demands of them, you may cause them to be less supportive rather than more supportive.
3) Prepare for the attacks.
Not everyone will share your enthusiasm for the changes you're making. Your spouse may or may not attempt to derail your diet but even if they don't, someone will.
Upon discovering you're on a diet, some people will go out of their way to offer you junk food. You should expect people to try and tempt you before it happens. Knowing it will happen will help you not to be caught off guard when it does.
Be Direct
Turn down food politely but firmly. Don't leave wiggle room. For example, if someone offers you something to eat or drink that you don't want, say "No thank you" or "Thanks but I'm not hungry". People will typically leave you alone if you say something along those lines. If you say "I can't have that" or "that doesn't fit in my diet", you're practially begging them to continue hassling you.
4) Keep quiet.
Don't complain about your diet to others. This only invites people to further highlight the difficulties of the dieting process or to tell you that you don't need to be on a diet to begin with. Both of these responses can bring into question if your sacrifices are really worth it, which takes away from your willpower reserves.
5) Keep on keeping on.
It's important to keep in mind that, for whatever reason, your spouse may continue to be unsupportive no matter what you try. If this is the case, you just have to keep making healthy choices and maybe they will eventually see things your way and hop on board. Until that day comes, you will need to arm yourself with the knowledge needed to make dieting as easy as possible, conserving as much of your willpower reserves as possible. Here are three articles to get you started:
How To Make Healthy Choices In The Real World
Six Ways to BOOST Your Fat Loss!
How to eat LESS and feel MORE satisfied
Thank you so much for reading! If you found this information helpful and think others will benefit from it as well, please give this article a share on social media. If you like what I have to say, sign up below to become a Treadaway Training insider and never miss a post or video. I will be back next week with another fat loss topic. As always, God bless you AND your family and I'll see you next week.
