You haven’t felt pain until you’ve looked over at your partner enjoying a pizza while you’re crunching on kale. Trying to get healthy on your own while in a relationship is doable. With the right dedication and perseverance, you can reach your goals on your own. However, having your significant other also starting their health journey with you can make the path a little easier.
Choosing to start a healthier lifestyle will not only benefit your overall well-being but your relationship as well. Haven’t you heard? Couples who work out together, stay together. Jokes aside, working towards health goals with your partner can improve intimacy, communication, overall relationship health, and more.
To learn some tips on how to help you and your partner get healthy this May, keep reading:
1. Determine & Set Goals
Before you can start, you must determine what your goals are. What is it that you would like to change, stop, or start to begin your health journey? Health goals can range from anything to eating healthier foods to making it a point to walk at least 10 minutes a day. Any goal no matter how small or big can make a big difference in your health.
Keep in mind that you and your significant other don‘t have to have the same exact goals. If you want to gain more muscle and your partner wants to lose weight, that’s okay. As long as you both are working towards bettering yourselves, it doesn’t matter if the goals differ slightly. Some good universal goals to put on your agenda include exercising, eating healthier, reducing stress, taking care of mental health, and being around loved ones.
2. Motivate Each Other
One of the best parts of working towards health goals with a significant other is the fact that you can motivate each other. Any time one of you feels like quitting or you lose sight of the end goal, you can remind one another why it’s important and why you started. Sometimes a quick refresher is all you need to get back on track.
Even if you both are struggling to stay focused, just having someone by your side that also understands what you’re going through can help you to feel better. If motivating each other still isn’t enough, there are things you can do. You both can join a group fitness class or encourage some of your loved ones to join in on some of your plans.
3. Don’t Pressure Each Other
Pressure is not motivation. While soft encouragement and holding your partner accountable is great, you also have to understand when you’re pressuring them too much. Trying to coerce your partner into continuing to do something or making them feel bad about not being able to stick to a routine won’t help things.
If anything, it will most likely make things worse by leading to arguments or making them want to quit the health journey altogether. To avoid burnout, set small goals and don’t drastically try to change things. Practicing patience and incremental changes are integral to making healthy habits stick. Furthermore, you should normalize taking a few days for R&R to get your mind back where it needs to be.
4. Have Some R&R
As it’s Mental Health Month and you’re both on a health journey, a nice goal to set is taking time to improve mental wellness. It will be difficult to achieve or work towards a lot of other health goals if you’re not in the right mindset. Making sure to take time to evaluate how you are feeling during your health journey is crucial. Mainly because it’s easy to start to overwork yourself or adopt less than healthy ways to get to your goal. Not hitting your goal as quickly as you would like can also influence your mental health.
When you’re feeling overwhelmed or close to burnout, please take a self-care day. And if you notice your partner burning out mentally, then suggest to them taking a break. A few day’s rest should allow you both the time you need to feel good about your journey again. If either of you are still in a mental slump about your health goals, then consider consulting with an online psychiatrist to try to determine if there is a bigger reason for your mental slump.
Whatever health goals you and your partner have, just make sure you’re having a great time while working towards them. Improving your health doesn’t have to be boring or tedious, especially when you have a partner. So have fun and feel great while doing so!