When my wife and I met 7 years ago, she was very adamant about eating healthy, exercising, and overall taking care of herself. Over the last year, she has kind of let herself go.
Rather than go for a walk, run or do an exercise class, she just comes home and reads or watches TV. I’ve asked her to join me at the gym or to go for a walk with our dog and 95% of the time she says no.
Everything came to a head the other day when she went in for her yearly wellness check and the doctor mentioned it to her and suggested more exercise for her higher BP and weight. She came home pissed off, and when I was honest, it pissed her off even more.
I love her dearly, but I find myself noticing the rather drastic changes in her and I want to help/encourage her to make better health decisions.
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We don’t know her sooo maybe you can approach it the same way we would:
* what motivated her in the past to eat healthy and work out?
* what changed since then?
* Can you recreate the circumstances that motivated her?
* Is her enthusiasm to do things with you always that low?
* Why did it anger her to hear the doctor mention the decrease in her health?
It might be depression or some psychological issue. You can suggest psychological evaluation but it might be hard. But definitely this shouldn’t be ignored as it might have permanent consequences.
Telling someone they should lose weight rarely works. They have to tell themselves they want to lose weight. Sounds to me like she’s feeling depressed.
weight is a hard topic. the people going through it and the people who love them never have an easy time with this. trust me, i’ve been there myself.
my wife has been on the gain/lose carousel since about 2006, and even these days if i get a little too happy for her or ask too many questions, she’ll say “why are you so interested in my weight?”.
weight and appearance are very touchy subjects. it’s tied up with self-esteem, etc.
i’ve found that there’s very little we can do. we have virtually no control over it.
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it’s sort of like addiction. no matter how much we love people, we can’t really make them do anything. either they’ll go to rehab or they won’t; either they’ll take the steps to get their weight and health under control or they won’t.
we can only encourage and support people so much. at the end of the day, we have to go along with what they decide to do, regardless of the final outcome.
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my dad was fond of saying: “when you love someone, you’re always in some kind of trouble.”
so when we love people who are having these types of issues, we have just two choices: love them a whole lot less and leave them, or love them a whole lot more, come what may.
i wish i could be more helpful, but over my life of being married for 20+ years and being a professional therapist for most of that time, including doing addiction and marriage counseling, this is the only truth that still resonates with me unchanged from then until now.
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try to remember that when we take vows, we take them “for better or worse”. marriage is about commitment–not just about being a “summer soldier”. anyone can be committed and dedicated when life is easy….but when things get hard, that’s when our commitment is really tested.
when we love people, we don’t just cut and run when things get hard. not when we really love each other.
i think a lot of people these days have forgotten that, hence the high divorce rate.
This is one of those things that is entirely up to her. You cant force someone to do something if they don’t want to
Maybe one day she will get back into it, maybe not. People change. Maybe she’s depressed or something but until its a problem to HER she won’t do anything. Trying to force it won’t work neither
Just have to talk it through properly without putting your expectations on her. If she just makes the changes because you ‘convinced’ her then she’ll likely not stick to them and it’ll build resentment between you. She needs to talk about if she thinks it’s an issue or not, what she wants to do about it and then the two of you can come up with a plan together. I think it’s possible for you to talk about your concerns (declining health affecting your time together) without using it as expectation of changes.
My first guess, and maybe it’s projecting, but I’d suspect stress/burn out/depression.
Exercise is hard, man. And it’s not just the doing of it, it’s the whole ritual. The changing of clothes, the putting on runners, changing again and showering so you’re not sweaty, driving to the gym or the walking track or the hiking grounds or whatever, when you’re stressed and wound up and feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders it’s a lot. It can be too much.
So that would be my angle of approach. Ask about her day, how she’s feeling about work responsibilities or parenting or whatever it is she does all day, maybe it’s family stuff, maybe it’s depression which needs no real world cause, who knows, but my thought is that if she was coming home and still feeling energised and stress free that exercise and eating healthier wouldn’t be as much of a problem.
Getting in shape is like quitting smoking really. You can’t force someone to do it, because unless they really want to, it’s pretty tough to force yourself to do it. People tell you all the time to quit smoking, but it’s an uphill battle and you have to be ready. Same with working out. I know a guy who was told he has fatty liver and high blood pressure and other problems that could easily lead to an early death and he still doesn’t put in the work. She’ll need that self reflection and personal accountability before she works out and makes those changes, but that usually doesn’t happen until a wake up call happens unfortunately. I don’t have an answer, because especially lately with the body positivity movement, you can’t say anything at all about overweight people, let alone your wife without having your head chewed off. My only suggestion would be try to get into hobbies that are physical that she would enjoy with you doing together maybe.
Ask her why she isn’t happy
How old is she? And how unhealthy are we talking? Give me some context please.
Probably something affected her mentally, breaking a habit going over 6 years only happens if something drastic takes place
The best way is to not ask and just start doing. Focus on being super healthy for you. Just make it part of your daily routine. She will definitely notice and she may start being more proactive. But I learned trying to talk to someone about weight and stuff will usually make them defensive and resentful at you for bringing it up. So I think just adopting a healthy lifestyle for you will probably spark something in her. It definitely will spark the competitive side of her when she sees the other taking notice of the results of your healthy lifestyle.
I have been where you are and I found that just focusing on my health and becoming the change I want to see caused her competitive side to kick in and join me on the journey.
You seem to be coming from a point of care and love of your wife trying to help her.
I would approach this issue from a point of empathy. Saying you noticed her weight and apathy towards exercise and eating healthy has you concerned. Especially after her doctor pointed it out and said it would be better to look out for her weight. Being overweight comes with health risks and you want to help your wife life a longer and happier life.
Tell her your concerns and ask her if everything is alright. Its always hard gaining weight when you didnt want to and can feel shameful and weak to admit that something is wrong.
I wish you and your wife the best of luck.
There’s a few things here but:
1. Has she asked for help?
2. You can only change yourself, not others. In some ways you need to realise your partner is who she is today. Can you accept her as who she is? Whoever she becomes in the future is not real yet. She may want to shave her head or geta a tattoo or change her fashion sense in the future.
3. What are her barriers to weight loss and how can you help facilitate her? Is she doing a lot more of the chores? Take over. Can you cook more healthy meals? Can you perhaps treat her on a cheat meal once a week if she commits to the diet/exercise goals she has set out for herself.
4. Sometimes weight gain is psychological. Is she receiving any mental health help? When I work out for weight loss I often spiral. Getting into the gym regularly was only possible as I did it for mental health and even then getting through the door was hard. I’ve not lost weight either, I just have a better routine.
You said she likes to read, maybe she can listen to an audio book or podcast while going on the treadmill?
I’ve been doing this with my bf 😭 I just pretend to be obsessed with hiking, he seems to enjoy it too so we get exercise from that. Plus I do all the cooking so I’ve been making healthier food
Express your concern coming from a place of love and care, not judgment. Let her know you’ve noticed the changes and you’re worried about her health and well-being. And always offer support and help, rather than criticism.
Ask how you can support her goals and make healthy changes as a family.
Who does the cooking or how often are you eating out? I would make an effort to start cooking yourself or doing takeout from healthier options. This way you can handle the eating better part yourself.
It could be her hormones are changing/out of wack, depression, low thyroid, another underlying cause. There could be so many reasons other than her being lazy/not motivated (not saying you think this about her but sometimes people just assume that’s what it is when someone becomes unhealthy/gains weight) Some people use food for comfort if they are stressed. Life probably looked a lot different for both of you 7 years ago. So many things can change. I would suggest maybe asking her if she would be willing to talk to someone and see a counselor for why she is getting so defensive about her doctor’s appointment and you bringing it up. She could be embarrassed about her weight gain/health issues and struggling big time with insecurities. That in and of itself sometimes makes people scared to change.
Well, she might be fighting a depression and neither of you are aware of it. Depression has many facets.
Try to bring her along to things without her noticing the effort. Say you wanna go for a certain store in walking distance and **ask her to come with you, you don’t want to go alone**. If she asks why just say you like her company and wants more of her.
We don’t know her, so she might need therapy. If this has happened in the last year or so I can see why that is.
Also…
It’s an asshole move, but you know what will definitely work?
Start working out, get fit yourself and start posting on social media.
You don’t even have to have women hitting on you, *the fear of competition* alone will push her to move.
Worked for everyone I know that tried this so far.
None of these random people on the internet are going to offer you any meaningful advice based off of a four-paragraph peek into your love life. You should seek the counsel of trusted loved ones and a couple’s therapist to work out why this change has happened and what it means for your relationship.
Here’s what my approach will be. Start to take over the cooking more. Pretend it’s a new hobby. Cool good healthy dinners, personally don’t bring crap into the house. Most of weight gain or lose is in the diet not the exercise.
Also weight los or gain is like an addiction. It’s hard to do, a lift long commitment and really can only be motivated by the person doing it. Oh outsiders and their comments only make you feel worse about yourself and likely you’ll end up in a worse position. Tread very carefully, you approach could make it worse.
Happens to a lot of folks once married, male and female.
She won’t change unless she wants to I’m afraid.
Here is some life advice – the only person you can change is yourself!
Tell her that you need her help. You can frame it in such a way that her actions have a positive consequences on you.
Something like, without you, walking is lonely and I need your company to make it happen.
This sometimes helps break the threshold of getting out of the house. Also, instead of pushing for a big walk, just say a quick walk. Once people break that initial inertia, they’ll be happy and go further.
There is a lot of good advice here so I won’t get into too much detail here. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. What you can do is offer to listen and support her for things she is dealing with outside of the realm of physical health. Then see what the situation is.
There is also the possibility that she has changed and health isn’t a priority anymore. It is up to you how much that matters to you.