Living a healthy lifestyle is one of the best things that you can do to yourself and your family. As is the case with most of the good habits that one must cultivate, maintaining a healthy lifestyle takes effort and discipline. In such a case it always helps if people around you are also striving to develop a healthy lifestyle. However most of us are lazy and do not want to put an effort. If your significant other or a loved one is not striving to live a healthy lifestyle then your odds of sustaining this good habit also go down. Therefore it is important that you try to encourage them to also lead a healthy lifestyle, as it is not just good for them but also for you. However being direct and criticizing their current lifestyle can be detrimental and might make them defensive. So what is the best approach for you to encourage them to live healthy? In this article we will provide you with a strategy that you can use.
Step 1: Before you try to encourage anyone else you have to make a commitment to your goal live healthy. You have to be totally committed to get in shape, whether others support it or not. If you are not committed to living healthy, you have no right to influence others and it will be hypocrisy on your part to ask others to live healthy. They will see your actions and will not heed your calls.
Step 2: If they are currently out of shape and unhealthy, do not criticize them for their current state. This might just make them defensive and totally closed to your request. Instead start from yourself and say that you feel that you are not happy with your own health and have decided to live a healthy life. You can be very specific on why you are unsatisfied with your health right now. As an example you can say that you are not happy that you find it really difficult to run a few miles.
Step 3: After you have made a decision to live healthy you might be all motivated to eat well and exercise, however they might not share you enthusiasm and so do not force your lifestyle on them right away. Instead start slow. You can decide to perform a few easy workouts together. As an example you can go for walks, easy hikes or go for biking together, instead of taking them for hardcore workouts. In terms of diets you can start off with eating out less and moderately decreasing things such as sugar and unhealthy fats.
Step 4: If they were out of shape, just the small changes listed in previous step will result in significant improvements in their health. Offer complements when you see these positive changes happen in them.
Step 5: Never try to take credit for their improved health as they slowly make improvements. Instead make them feel that these results are happening due to their own efforts, which actually is true. Your job here has mostly been to just provide more enthusiasm to them. If you are enthusiastic about health, it will slowly transfer over to them for sure. Any improvement they make, you need to amplify it and celebrate it to encourage them. Slowly as they make progress they will realize the joys of healthy living and realize what they have been missing.
Step 6: As you are motivating your significant other to lead healthy life, you must be going ahead full throttle with your goals and should be making good progress. Do not shy away from showing your progress. Share all the great things you can now do, which were beyond you previously. As you make progress they will see it and realize that even they can do it. This will be a big motivator for them. Now is the time when you can introduce them to more advanced workouts and more stringent diets.
Step 7: As they make more progress they will feel motivated to do more. Your job now is to help them stay in this loop as both of you make more progress. Life will come in your way and both of you will get busy with other things. You can now depend on each other to get back on track as you falter.
Final Note: Keep in mind that everybody has different perspective on things and your definition of healthy and theirs might be different. Do not try to impose your definition on them. Although you might be ready to push yourself harder they might not be. After a certain amount of effort you have to respect them for who they are and if they are not ready to push any harder then do not force it.