6 Ways to Get Your Husband to Eat Healthier
I get it: it’s not always easy to get your husband to support your desire to eat healthier. And that’s why I want to give you 6 ways to get your husband to eat healthier.
I want to offer a caveat: I am only one man. I don’t speak for the entire male population when it comes to this. But, as a man, I understand how men think.
Click the audio player if you’d prefer to listen to the post.
Before we can go any further, we have to answer a question: what is “eating healthier”? At Life Well Lived, we don’t advocate diets. So, this is a lifestyle. And lifestyles are made of habits.
So, at its core, healthy eating is a habit. And all habits go through four stages as James Clear, author of Automic Habits explains: cue, craving, response, and reward.
Whether you (or your husband) recognize it or not, your brain cycles through these steps in order each time you complete a habit.
Since we know it’s a habit, there are four things we need to do in order to make it stick (we’ll use these as we discuss the 6 ways to get your husband onboard):
Make it obvious.
Make it attractive.
Make it easy.
Make it satisfying.
Help him acknowledge his need for change
No one likes to admit they need to change. But if change is going to occur, the person must first acknowledge there’s a need for it (i.e. your husband).
A study, published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, found the question-behavior effect is the key to behavior change.
This psychological tactic asks a question about the future to speed up an individual's willingness to change.
For example, if you want your husband to start eating healthier you might ask, “Do you feel good from the way you eat?”
Discomfort motivates people to change. And saying, "No," would likely create some slight discomfort for your husband who isn't eating healthy.
The key is to ask a question that forces your husband to answer with a yes or no (as opposed to an open-ended question).
Why does this work? Because we get uncomfortable when our ideal self doesn’t match with our reality. Everyone wants to be healthy, to live a life that allows them to be the person they want to be.
So, when you ask your husband if he feels healthy, saying no is going to create discomfort.
6 steps to encourage your husband to get on board with eating healthier
You’ll come across all sorts of “hacks” for habit formation. But when it comes to encouraging someone else to develop a new habit, it requires some additional thought.
And now that we know the goal is to make a new habit (i.e. eating healthier) attractive for your husband, I want to give you 6 ways to accomplish it.
State the goal:
Don’t tiptoe around what you want to accomplish. If your goal is to start eating healthier, then clearly explain it to your husband. And also say you would like his help. Explain that you don’t expect him to revolutionize his way of eating, but tell him you’d like his support.
Explain that part of this process will be moving things around in the kitchen, pantry, and refrigerator. You’ll come across all sorts of “hacks” for habit formation. But when it comes to encouraging someone else to develop a new habit, it requires some additional thought.
You’ll remember that step number 1 in making a new habit is to make it obvious. While making it obvious for yourself, you also need to make it obvious for him.
Be consistent yourself:
Emulating the change you want to encourage your husband to make is one of the best ways to make it attractive. And this is step number 2 to making a habit stick.
When he sees you being consistent and begins noticing the positive changes he’s more likely to take notice and want those positive changes for himself.
Keep change to a minimum:
Don’t try to change everything at once. Changing too much is a recipe for frustration. It doesn’t work for you and it certainly won’t work for him.
Taking small steps is one of the keys to habit formation.
If your husband comes home to a pantry full of foreign snacks and a refrigerator loaded with strange items, he’s going to run the other way.
I can’t speak for you women, but when us men are told we can’t have “X” that’s all we hear. We forget about whatever you may have said beforehand to prefess it or whatever you may have said afterward.
I remember when Kara suggested I swap my soda for sparkling water. All I could think about was not being able to enjoy my favorite drink… forever.
(In reality, she simply suggested I try and cut back by adding some flavored sparkling water to my rotation.)
Instead of changing everything, focus on one thing at a time. This correlates to step number 3 in making a habit stick: make it easy.
Don’t eliminate his favorites. Is your husband a beer fan? Let him keep his beer. Or maybe bacon is his thing – then leave it alone.
Maybe in time, he will change. But the goal is not to completely change his way of eating. It’s to help him make improvements.
Do it together:
I can’t speak for your husband, but when Kara demands change from me, it rarely goes over well. Sure, her heart is right because she’s my wife and she wants what’s best for me. But men are independent folk – we like to feel like we’re a part of the change process.
Decide what you’re going to do outside the home: will you change the way you order when you go out to eat? What about at social events? How are you going to handle it when you attend an event that doesn’t accommodate your new way of eating?
Decide together what you’re going to do when places and events don’t accommodate this new way of eating.
Present the facts:
We guys tend to be less emotional with these types of decisions. Or at least we say we are.
Share what you learn. Information is powerful! Tell him about someone else who has experienced positive results from what you're encouraging him to do.
Take notice:
Yes, we like to have our success noticed. And this relates to step number 4 of habit creation. Acknowledging his progress will help make it satisfying for him and reinforce the positive change.
Conclusion:
Having the support of your spouse is a huge part of success in anything in life. I don’t want to be overly optimistic here… it might take your husband a while to come around. But following these steps will make it more attractive to him. Taking what is working for you and laying it out for your husband will help him be more likely to change.
