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A new study has found that the best way to help your partner make healthier life choices is to, well, make them yourself. Joining in on a partner’s weight loss regime/quest to eat more kale/desire to play regular hand ball matches is a much better way to change bad habits in a lasting way.
As the researchers behind the study, published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal, at the University College London put it, “Men and women are more likely to make a positive health behavior change if their partner does too, and with a stronger effect than if the partner had been consistently healthy in that domain.”
The researchers examined the lifestyle habits of 3, 700 couples over the age of 50, with a focus on couples where one party was either a smoker, didn’t do much physical exercise or was overweight.
The couples that gave up smoking, started exercising or lost weight as a team were more likely to succeed than in couples where one person tried to go it alone.
Which makes sense, both bad and good habits are much easier to uphold with company (who hasn’t eaten cake with friends because everybody else is, or felt compelled to order the fruit bowl when your partner suddenly orders the clean eater’s delight at brunch?)
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The findings work especially well with research that suggests that criticism of a someone’s weight tended to result in weight gain, not loss.
Which brings it all back to the idea that fat shaming is a poisonous and useless tool for weight loss.
Far better is to find someone to be on your team, and be each other’s cheerleaders. You know, like a true partner.
