My wife has recently started showing more of an active interest in trying to lose weight again alongside with me, which is kind of nice.
It’s not always easy for a couple to try this kind of thing at the same time because at least we’ve found that instead of trying to motivate each other to stay on track and keep it up, sometimes efforts of encouragement can instead be interpreted as nagging, which as you might assume has a negative effect. It can be tough because unlike an exercise partner who’s just a friend, having that spouse to say, “What do you mean you didn’t workout today?!” can unintentionally hit nerves when you’re already in a less than fantastic mood about missing and then possibly start misinterpreting their encouragement as hinting that they’re not happy with how you are now … even if that’s not something that’s ever been an issue in the past!
😳
Instead, what I’ve been trying to do lately is just focus both on positive reinforcement and then also feed that back into myself to say, “She went to the gym today and feels great, so I should go do it, too!” For our situation, it just seems to be a lot easier to say something nice in hopes that it will continue on tomorrow than say something else that not only doesn’t help now, but also might linger to deter from continuing on tomorrow anyways. There’s a lot of psychology to being married, let me tell you, and I still like to think that we’re one of the better couples! 🙂
One last thing – part of Sara’s plan that hopefully will have a more direct impact on me is that she’s trying to eat better foods, which means that she’s making dinner in the evenings a lot more often. So far she’s been trying to focus on a heavy protein/veggie menu with little or no carbs, which is good because I’m trying to get rid of as many processed foods from my diet as I can, too. Plus, lunch is actually usually the hardest meal for me because I have a tendency to want to just go out to eat, so if there are leftovers already made in the fridge that I can just heat up, that’s one less thing left up to my own indiscretions!