How to motivate your partner to change their eating habits with you

On Nutrition

When you’re making changes to your eating habits, it’s one thing if you live and eat alone, another if you live and dine with a spouse or partner. If you’re thinking, “Life would be easier if they made the same changes,” you’re right. Whether you’re in charge of shopping and cooking, your partner is, or you both share these duties, being on the same page certainly streamlines things. So how do you motivate them to change, too? You don’t, at least not exactly.

You may be familiar with the idea of intrinsic (internal) vs. extrinsic (external) motivation. If you push your agenda, you may get your partner to go along with your changes initially, but that’s no guarantee that they will be fully on board. They may simply be motivated to make you stop pestering them — in other words, their motivation is extrinsic, which tends not to last. Or, they may totally resist you and the changes you’re encouraging on principle, since no one likes to feel coerced. This may make them even less likely to embrace your changes in the future. So, what can you do instead? Three tips:

Let your actions speak for themselves. If you’re trying to, say, rely less on takeout food for work lunches, eat more vegetables and break the habit of picking up fast food on the way home, then do just that. Pack your lunch and have a plan for dinner. Then, if your partner says, “Do you want me to pick up X on the way home,” you can say, “No thanks, I’m making Y and I have all the ingredients for it.” If you make a point of including more vegetables in shared meals that you’re responsible for without making a big deal about it, your partner might decide that they like the end results. They may choose to take similar actions on their own — and it’s action that leads to motivation, not the other way around.

Be responsible for yourself. Let’s say you’re trying to eat more fruits and vegetables or more plant-based meals. Odds are that at minimum, you’re fully responsible for preparing or procuring your own breakfast, lunch and snacks. If you and your partner share cooking responsibilities, it’s not the end of the world if their meals skew to fewer veggies and more meat. You can always make a salad or veggie side and eat smaller portions of meat.

Don’t proselytize. Your partner probably knows that vegetables are good for them — the reason that most people don’t eat as many vegetables as they could and probably should is rarely because they’re lacking that particular bit of information. And if you have chosen to embark on a new way of eating that has a lot of food rules and a whole culture around it, be careful that your diet isn’t becoming your religion. Humans can become very dogmatic about their diets, and that is not a good thing.

A few caveats to the above: If you have a very specific dietary need that’s related to a health condition — you’ve been newly diagnosed with celiac disease, a nut allergy or high blood pressure — then this is worthy of a deeper discussion and some household rules. In the first two cases, this may require taking steps to avoid kitchen cross-contamination with gluten or nuts. In the case of high blood pressure, this may mean the main cook or food shopper will need to reduce salt used in cooking shared meals and choose low-sodium brands of pantry staples such as canned beans.