Eating Clean With Your Spouse

I hear it all the time; “I want to eat healthy but my spouse doesn’t! They’re the reason why I have so much junk food in my house and why I keep falling in the trap of eating it!”

Trust me, I can relate. Just to give you a bit of a background. The way that my family cooked while I was growing up was completely different from how Kenny’s family cooked.

I come from an Italian background. My mom was always cooking with fresh ingredients, was very conscious of our health making sure that we had treats in moderation. Typically the only junk food my parents kept in the house was ice cream. We were never allowed to drink pop unless we were at a party. My mom was always reading up on the latest, greatest and healthiest way to eat. For a while it was the paleo diet, but then once she read a vegan book she went completely vegan and still is to this day. Even though my mom knew about this stuff, I was never really interested until I became older. Today I am a clean eater 80% of the time and 20% treats. This works for me, it’s simple and causes the least amount of headaches.

Kenny comes from a family who enjoys the good country cookin’ (said in my best country accent)! Health foods were never much of a concern for them growing up. Opposite from my family, he could drink pop for breakfast if he wanted to! And anything fried was the best way to eat anything in their opinion.

So now you get the idea of what I started with. A country fried chicken and gravy sucking monster. 🙂

I will say that I am blessed because my lil monster is also a garbage disposal; in other words he will eat pretty much anything or try anything at least once. He isn’t overly picky when it comes to trying new things.

Now as I shared before, when Kenny and I first got married we loved hot pockets, drank coke zero and weren’t overly aware of what we consumed. Until I decided it was time for us to make a lifestyle change because I was sick and tired of feeling low on energy.

So as I studied and took on this lifestyle I did ALL of the grocery shopping. It took some time before I trusted Kenny to pick out our groceries on his own. He really could have cared less about the health benefits, all he cared about was that he had something good to eat set in front of him.

When I made the transition to eating clean, I cooked all of our meals. There were some that he’d rather me not make again, but I started to catch on to the ones that he did like. The more flavor and spice you add to something the better it is!

For tip #1; when you start eating clean; choose flavorful meals and start to notice which ones your spouse likes and keep those in the rotation until you both get sick of them.

tip #2: Do your grocery shopping together. Kenny and I make grocery shopping a weekly date. Since he now does the shopping with me and after years of eating clean he has picked up on what I look for on the ingredients label. He now picks things off the shelf and looks at the label before throwing them into the cart.

tip #3: To start, still put some of his favorite junky foods into the grocery cart. When I did all of the shopping I would still throw in 2-3 of Kenny’s favorite junk food items. This way they don’t feel like you totally neglect them of their favorite things!

tip#4: Keep them involved with the dinner planning and prepping. After a few months of eating clean challenge your spouse to pick a clean recipe out for dinner and tell them you’ll make it. If you make it a team effort no one feels like they are being left out.

tip #5: If you have a picky eater. I challenge you to research some of your spouses favorite meals. See if you can find a cleaner and healthier option for it. Make it for them and see how they like it! Keep doing this. Chances are they will start to enjoy the healthier option more because they will feel good about doing something good for their body and they won’t leave the table with a belly ache. 🙂

This is not something that happens over night. It takes time and if you’re the one who wants to be healthy you need to be consistent with your habits first. Don’t confuse your spouse by eating really healthy one week and back to your old habits the next week. Chances are that no changes will be made for the long run if you follow that pattern. At least ONE of you needs to stay strong even when the other doesn’t want to.

Today I can trust my husband to pick out our groceries on his own if needed and know I won’t cringe at them when he brings them home. And some of the time he’ll even offer to do the cooking; BONUS! Of course there is still the occasional package of bacon or fatty treat that he’ll sneak in there, but that’s totally ok with me because it makes him happy!

Hope this helped! Please post any questions below or feel free to contact me. 🙂

#CleanEating #EatingHealthy