A Healthy Life For You And Your Spouse [Health]

Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 9m 2,307

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

You Are What Your Spouse Eats

You And Your Spouse Are Only As Important As You Make You Each

QUESTION ONE: My spouse is unhealthy, fat (or obese), how do I tell them?

QUESTION TWO: How do I become the priority in my significant others’ life again?

SOLUTION:

The short answer is to the first question is: If you want them to change, you will have to ultimately change your own habits as well, and work with them to change. You both must change your priorities and eating habits. This gets more complicated if they are stubborn and unwilling to change. If this is the case, there is no short answer that I can give that does not include the threat of separation or divorce, which is what we all want to avoid, since this article is entitled: A Healthy Life For You and Your Spouse.

The short answer to the second question is: While the children are important to both parents, they should be second priority and the two partners should make each other first priority in the relationship.

You choose to be in a relationship with your spouse, not your children. Therefore, your spouse comes first, and your children come second since they are automatically in the relationship.

In other words: Those who pay the bills are the most important and have the say. Those who don’t can spend time in the backseat.

Think it’s the other way around? Let me know how that relationship is working out for you.

The long answer will teach you much more. Continue reading on.

Relationships take a lot of hard work, communication, acceptance, understanding, and compromise. When you first meet your spouse, they are almost too good to be true; perfect in every way. They may have a great job or are working to get a great job or career; they sweep you off your feet, are gorgeous in everyday. You see their flaws as cute and acceptable aspects of that person. They are just right for you. Additional bonuses include that they can actually carry a conversation with you and the sex is actually good. You can even see that they eat fairly healthy and genuinely care about their health enough to keep in shape and look decent. A relationship forms and you two are on your way to a life together.

Unfortunately, the honeymoon phase wears off, and those flaws you see in the other person soon become annoyances, and things you no longer want to see. You get to learn the habits and behaviors of your spouse, and while you never really want to change a person completely, you really want them to change for the better. You make suggestions, offer to help, and even offer your own habits and behaviors as a bargaining tool, all of which make no difference at all. While there are certainly some changes that are made, and some factors that cannot be changed, there are a few major factors that both partners have complete control over, but ignore, and it seems to destroy many relationships and that is: health, weight, and eating habits.

In doing research on the subject, and this goes for both sides: The spouse gains weight, the other partner gains very little weight or none at all, and someone in the relationship no longer finds the other [sexually] attractive, because they are not the same person they were when they met. This is expected: People change over time. No one ever stays the same. We are all constantly growing, developing, maturing, and forming both – new and bad – habits.

Many times, both partners eat what the other eats, or cooks, and they both tend to develop the same body type. However, it is not always the case, and one spouse gains more weight than the other, leading to all sorts of problems in the relationship. Sometimes this can be prevented or changed if caught early on. More often than not, however, one spouse has no idea how to approach their partner to let them know that they have gained weight, or the spouse that gained weight is offended and upset, which leads to an even more destructive behavior.

There are plenty of men or women who complain that when they met their wives, their wives were gorgeous women with great bodies or handsome men with a six-pack set of abs. Whether they were skinny or had a few extra pounds, in her husbands eyes or in her eyes, she was gorgeous and he was handsome. Then something happened: Life. She may have had kids, a job, and took on responsibility, and it may not be completely her fault for gaining weight, but in fact, her husband may be to blame or her lifestyle may be to blame.

She may be too tired to cook and resort to fast-food; she may want the kids to just shut up and run to a quick fast-food restaurant to put something in her kids’ mouths; and she is not alone – her husband may do it as well. The other side of the equation is that he also has gained weight, from drinking beer and developing lazy habits, as two people in a relationship tend to share the same eating habits and lifestyle. He may not help around the house, not help with the children, or not make her feel attractive anymore, resulting her never being in the mood and the entire marriage suffering. Work may be the cause, as both partners work all day, come home, and are tired and lazy, and just looking to get the daily routine of the kids and food out of the way. This, unfortunately, usually leads to unhealthy eating and lifestyle habits, not just for the two partners involved, but the children as well.

Women are likely to become comfortable and feel their partner will love them no matter what, and get lazy when it comes to staying in shape in the relationship, not realizing that men can be very visual creatures, and seeing this new form of their wife, may not adjust properly, leading to feeling of not being attractive, and the sex becomes less and less, to almost non-existence, and the partner feels there is something wrong with the relationship: Yes, there is, it’s you.

But it could be your husband as well. Many husbands also grow comfortable in a relationship where they may not help their wives around the house and expect them to do everything, often feeling that going to work and paying the bills is enough, leading the wife to just never being in the mood for her husband.

Life has changed drastically and dramatically over the course of the years, from creating children, to being overworked, and just not thinking about each other or communicating as much, leading ultimately to separation and eventual divorce, for a couple that loved each other, and most likely still loves each other, but thinks they are incompatible and cannot make it work.

How do they fix this issue? The majority turn to marriage or relationship counseling. While this is a good start, there are two other suggestions I have to make it work: Prioritizing the children and the eating habits of both partners.

Before we get into food and eating habits, lets cover the priorities of the children. You both both had children, you both love them and want the best life for them. Great. That is a commonality for you both, but you forgot something in the process; You forgot to prioritize each other.

PRIORITIZING EACH OTHER

In my research findings on the subject, the majority of wives or husband prioritize their kids to be first in their lives, and the spouse takes a complete backseat. It is like the wife or the husband is in a relationship with their children, and the spouse becomes a roommate who is just there to help with the financial responsibilities. Conversations quickly become only about the children and what the children have done or did or are doing. Life is not just about the children. Life should still about the two spouses.

The two spouses hardly talk to each other about their relationship, about their lives, about ideas and dreams and goals. This is the ultimate destroyer of all relationships: lack of communication to each other about each other. What comes to finally end the relationship usually is the fact that one side or both sides do not listen or understand each other at all, leading to a divorce and a hatred of each other.

Young children need to come first, of course. If an infant needs its mother, a mother should never ignore it. This should be a mutual agreement between both parents. As the children get older and become slightly more independent, the spouses should reconnect with each other. While children should always be a priority, the needs of the relationship still need to be explored, met, and fulfilled. A woman still needs to be told she is a sexy beautiful woman. A man needs to know that he is a man. When a man is put in the backseat to the children, he no longer feels like the man of the household. Without these re-assurances, relationships with children are doomed to fail.

Sexual needs and desires also need to be met. A rekindling of the relationship and a rediscovering of each other through communication and sex need to be explored. This might be easier said than done, but two spouses who are willing to continue to make each other a priority and life about each other, rather than making life completely about the children, are more likely to have a successful marriage than those who only have a relationship with their children, and keep their spouse around for the occasional sexual fulfillment or for financial reasons.

FOOD AND EATING HABITS

Food and eating habits are where things can get very complicated, but have a somewhat easy fix that not too many are aware of. As I stated earlier, two partners tend to eat the same foods, tend to cook the same foods, and tend to develop the same eating habits, especially when it comes to fast-food.

Not everyone has the same metabolism though and one spouse may gain weight faster than the other. With a busy lifestyle of work and children, the relationship inevitably suffers, as does the health and eating habits of one or both partners.

One partner wants to tell the other they are not the same person, they do not look the same, that they have put on weight, and this usually leads to a big fight, so the one spouse usually avoids the problem, and it only gets worse. Worse meaning that the spouse continues to put on weight – 10, 20, 30 – and even up to 60 pounds.

The result? One partner becomes less attracted to the other and feels like they are just living with someone they no longer even recognize. No amount of therapy or money spent on counseling is going to fix a relationship if one partner is not attracted to the other. The sex will ultimately suffer and then the relationship.

This seems to be common among many relationships. If it were not, I would not have to write about it. But again, in my research of a completely different topic, this seemed to be the topic that kept coming up and many of the complaints from both men and women were that they were no longer attracted to their spouse because of laziness and weight gain. It is quite a sad statistic that the majority of relationships fail because one partner or both partners become too comfortable with each other and laziness and weight gain occurs.

So, what is the solution? There are two easy solutions, actually.

You think I might be headed towards telling both partners to figure out how to get to the gym more often, but I am not going to go there. I already know you both live a busy lifestyle and do not have time for the gym life. If you did, you would not be reading this article.

I will suggest that both partners DO figure out ways to exercise that are easy, such as going for a family walk after dinner, and if possible, a weekend walk together without the children. The duration? A half hour to an hour. If it happens to end up being a longer walk, than that is better, but not necessary.

The second solution is also easy: Change your eating and exercise habits.

By changing your new diets, you will both lose weight easily without much effort, you will have more sexual energy, you will both feel like you have something in common again: You will both be losing weight and feel good about it, and you will both feel passionate about each other again.

Yes, you still have the children in your lives that you have to worry about, but there is nothing wrong with making each other number one: feeling sexy, passionate, and turned on by each other, and having enough energy to put the kids to bed, and still have amazing passionate sex with each other. You married each other for a reason, you love each other, found each other attractive and sexually attractive. Get it back. Change your entire family’s eating habits, and you will feel better about everything, especially your spouse.

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