This has come up a few times now. So, I thought I would write a post about getting a reluctant spouse to change their eating habits. Sometimes, they can be worse than the kids! I am fortunate enough to have an amazing husband who has been on board since day one. His high cholesterol and scary family history was enough for him to change his ways. His cholesterol dropped over 76 points in 4 months of eating clean with no meds!
1. Don’t change everything at once. That can sound overwhelming. Instead, try baby steps to make the change a little smoother. Maybe you can change one thing a week. My first thing I changed was, I stopped buying packaged granola bars. I just started making my own. After that, it was processed sugars.
2. You can use healthier processed foods as a stepping stone. Maybe you can stop buying Kellogg’s cereals and start buying Nature’s Path Organic.
3. Educate your spouse by suggesting books to read like In Defense of Food, or even movies like Food Inc to watch. That movie is an eye opener for so many.
4. Hide healthy foods in normally not so healthy ones. You can sub out white flour in recipes with white whole wheat flour and maybe move on to spelt flour. Or make a homemade spaghetti sauce that had ground up veggies inside.
5. Let your spouse have a say in the shopping. Perhaps if they have a choice to pick out some healthy things, it may not feel like as much of a power war.
6. If you have young children, maybe you can explain that you want to set a better example for them. I can tell you that is the number one reason why we are on a journey to clean eating.
If anyone has any other suggestions or maybe something that worked for your family, please feel free to add in the comment section of this post.
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